How to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy for a Small Business Part

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 | Content Marketing

Whether you’re a small business owner keen to make the most of digital opportunities, or a marketing manager at an SME tasked with getting the business’s online presence off the ground, the words “content marketing” can sound like one of the many marketing buzzwords now floating around in cyberspace. Yet this is a technique with staying power, and it’s shaping up to be the future of digital marketing…

This post will help you get to grips with building your own strategy and succeeding online with cracking content.

Why embrace content marketing?

If you or your employer is relatively new to digital, it can be tough to know where to start when you want to win more custom online. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is constantly evolving, PPC (Pay Per Click or paid advertising) can be costly and complex….

Content marketing, on the other hand, is the digital marketing technique du jour – and, at its core, this is a practice which is all about long-term, cost-effective online growth any business can achieve. The technique can be bolstered and boosted with SEO and PPC, but if you can get a strong content marketing strategy up and running, you’ll be well on your way to achieving digital wins as a small business.

Getting started

To help you get going with content marketing, we’ve compiled a quick and simple guide to creating your first content marketing strategy. We’ve broken this task down into five steps and we’ll be providing actionable tips to help you tick all the boxes as we go…

Know your audience
Planning your content
Create your content
Promote your content
Measure your success

What is content marketing?

Before we dive into the nitty gritty, it’s important to understand the principles behind content marketing. This technique is all about the “soft sell”. Online consumers are increasingly savvy about digital advertising. The beauty of the internet is just how much freedom of choice users have, but this also gives users a choice to close and ignore any advertising they feel is pushy and intrusive.

With adblocker software now a common piece of kit for many surfers, and with paid banner advertising (which typically has a hard sell approach) generating fewer and fewer clicks, it’s increasingly clear that the best way to get a consumer’s attention is to give them something they WANT. And that’s where content marketing comes in.

Content marketing serves up stuff that consumers are interested in and will want to check out. From articles and listicles to viral videos and infographics, content marketing makes brands focus on becoming a “channel” full of stuff their demographics find helpful or engaging. This content draws the right people to a brand’s website, earning sites more traffic, building brand awareness, increasing the reach of online businesses and encouraging visitors to share the brand with others. The result? More digital exposure which translates into better online business.

Sounds simple enough, right? Well, there’s more to it than that. Here’s how to get started with your first content marketing strategy.

#1. Know your audience

The most important part of your content marketing strategy isn’t the product you have to sell or the brand you’re trying to promote – it’s the people your business is for. Your audience are everything and, the better you know your target customers, the more effectively you can brainstorm and create content that they care about.

What’s the best way to get to know someone better? Well, talking to them, of course!

Here are a few ways you can kick off your audience research to give your content marketing a strong, factual foundation…

Utilising your resources
Who knows your business better than you and your team? You have dealings with your customers and clients on a daily basis, which means you already have a wealth of information about your target audience. Take some time to profile your typical customers, looking at factors like:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Industry and profession
- Income
- Marital status
- Education
- Typical budget
- Interests and hobbies

Make sure you talk to your sales team and anyone involved in customer service to learn more about the type of people who already connect with your brand. If you already have an online presence, use resources like Google Analytics and social media platforms to get even more insight into your target audience.

Undertaking interviews and surveys
From contacting customers by phone, to running surveys on your website, asking your customers direct questions can give you indispensable insight into your key demographics. It’s a good idea to incentivise these surveys and interviews with discount codes or freebies to help get a better response. If you’d like to create a survey quickly and easily, tools like Survey Monkey and Google Forms are very useful. Some key questions to ask include:
- What are your most visited websites?
- Which social media platforms do you use?
- Where do you go for entertainment online?
- How do you spend your leisure time?
- What are your favourite online brands?
- Which websites do you visit for news?
Building customer personas
Once you have all of this valuable information, it’s time to turn it into a resource you can use to inform your content marketing strategy. One of the very best ways to do this is to distil everything you’ve learned into a series of key customer personas.

Take a wide angle view of all your audience data then pick out key themes and characteristics. Then amalgamate common characteristics and traits into individual personas which represent the different groups of people your business wants to entice. When you come to brainstorm and create your content strategy, you should ensure that every piece of content you plan is directed towards at least one specific persona, taking into consideration their interests, preferences and outlooks.