Mastering content marketing 101 is a critical step for businesses looking to elevate their strategy.
The digital landscape has evolved, and traditional marketing methods are no longer enough.
To thrive in today’s competitive market, understanding the ins and outs of content marketing 101 is essential.
This is not simply about generating material; it’s about forming valuable data that speaks to your target market and brings forth conversions.
As a new or burgeoning business, you probably recognize that marketing is super important. If you are marketing online, then you’ll want to start (if you haven’t already) preparing your content marketing strategy.
We decided to lay out a guide that breaks down Content Marketing for SMBs. This guide will fill you in on what content marketing is, why it is important, and a checklist for your marketing team to consider when developing your content marketing strategy.
Content Marketing is a form of inbound (and typically) online marketing that focuses on producing high-quality and informative content. It differs from traditional marketing or outbound marketing in that leads are obtained as organically as possible. This means that you are paying less for advertisements and more for providing information to readers.
Content marketing excels in online blogs, but it is also present in web copy, through distribution platforms and social media posts, and in other forms of marketing.
The Rising Trend of Content Marketing in B2B Space
With the digital age upon us, content marketing has become a fundamental strategy for many businesses. According to the Content Marketing Institute, an impressive 91% of B2B marketers now employ content marketing strategies to reach their target audience.
This trend reflects a shift from quantity-focused tactics towards creating compelling and valuable content tailored specifically for your defined audience. It’s about sharing your brand story in such a way that it resonates with potential clients while establishing you as an industry expert.
Beyond just producing blog posts or social media updates, successful content marketing efforts involve understanding what types of material resonate with your target market.
This knowledge then informs every aspect of the process – from topic selection through distribution channels – ensuring each piece aligns perfectly with both business goals and customer expectations.
Focusing on Research: The Backbone Of Successful Content Marketing Efforts
A key driver behind this rising trend is research. Understanding not only who makes up your target market but also what they care about most allows you to tailor these efforts more effectively, leading to better results from these initiatives.
Understanding the buyer’s journey plays a significant role here too. As per HubSpot‘s findings, 47% of buyers view between three and five pieces before engaging a sales representative, underlining the importance of knowing where exactly they stand in terms of the purchasing decision-making process.
This knowledge helps shape effective strategies accordingly.
Diversifying Your Strategy With Various Types Of Content
Variety is another factor contributing significantly toward the upward trajectory observed recently.
Diverse forms like case studies, white papers, videos, infographics, webinars, podcasts, etc., are all designed to cater to specific stages within the buyer’s journey, providing value at each step along the path to purchase.
This ultimately builds credibility and trustworthiness throughout the interaction period, influencing perception and positively impacting the bottom line.
This results in greater success rates and ROI achieved via this approach compared to traditional methods employed previously.
Unpacking the ROI of Content Marketing for SMBs
The world of content marketing holds immense potential, especially for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It’s a strategy that can yield significant returns if executed correctly.
Research has shown that firms who make content marketing a priority have an improved chance of seeing positive ROI – 13 times more likely, to be exact.
This isn’t just speculation; data is backing this up. A report by Kapost found that per dollar spent, content marketing generates three times as many leads compared to paid search advertising strategies.
However, it’s important to note that not all SMBs experience these results – the difference often lies in strategic planning and execution.
Strategies for Maximizing Content Marketing ROI
To maximize your company’s chances of success with its digital marketing campaign, effective use of compelling visual elements like infographics or videos, along with insightful blog articles, case studies, and white papers, among others, is key.
Consistency
Consistency, both in terms of frequency of posts and types of content shared, regularly in a variety of forms, including expert interviews and reviews, will keep readers engaged and coming back. More importantly, it will convert them into loyal patrons in the long run.
High-quality Content
To ensure you’re one of the successful majority when it comes down to profitable endeavors, several tactics should be considered. The first step is creating high-quality material that directly appeals to your target audience.
Doing so effectively requires understanding buyer personas – detailed profiles representing different segments within your customer base.
These profiles will guide topic selection and tone while ensuring relevance to readers.
Crafting Narratives
In addition, crafting narratives, insights into industry trends, addressing common questions, and offering solutions to problems faced by your clientele will essentially make you the go-to resource for their related needs and interests.
Proper Distribution
Beyond the creation itself, though, promoting through appropriate channels is critical in driving outcomes.
Social media platforms offer vast opportunities for reaching prospective customers, while email campaigns help maintain connections with existing ones.
SEO & Measuring Outcomes
Optimizing each piece using SEO best practices increases visibility online, thereby attracting organic traffic to your site.
Measuring performance regularly allows you to identify areas needing improvement, thus enabling constant
Comparing Content Marketing with Traditional Marketing Methods
In the realm of marketing, content marketing and traditional methods often find themselves on opposite sides. The research conducted by Demand Metric reveals that while content marketing costs 62% less than its traditional counterpart, it generates about three times as many leads.
This significant difference is primarily due to the strategic nature of content marketing.
Unlike traditional forms such as TV commercials or print ads, which cast a wide net in hopes of capturing potential customers within their broad audience, content marketers can create personalized messages aimed at attracting and retaining clearly defined audiences who are likely already interested in what they have on offer.
Making the Switch from Traditional to Content Marketing
If you’re considering transitioning from conventional advertising strategies towards more modern digital ones like content marketing efforts, there are several factors you need to take into account for an effective transition.
The first step involves understanding your target audience thoroughly—knowing where they hang out online (content channels), what type of information they seek (content types), and how best your brand can provide value through useful engaging information (valuable compelling content).
A well-researched buyer persona should guide these decisions.
To put this into perspective, consider HubSpot’s finding that nearly half (47%) of buyers view between three to five pieces before making any sales engagement decision.
Incorporating Visual Elements in Your Content Marketing Strategy
Beyond creating compelling written articles, visual elements play a crucial role too. Incorporating relevant images, infographics, and blog posts enhances user experience by breaking up text-heavy pages and providing another way for readers to absorb valuable information.
A study found that when people hear something without seeing a related image, they only remember 10% after a few days. However, if paired with an image, recall increases significantly, up to 65%. So don’t forget to add visuals.
Transition doesn’t mean abandoning old techniques but rather incorporating newer ones alongside, forming a hybrid model that leverages the strengths of both, thus maximizing ROI and the results achieved by each individual campaign run over some time.
These results should be measured against set predefined baseline numbers.
The Power of Blogging in Driving Conversions
Content marketers are increasingly recognizing the power that blogging holds for driving conversions.
Data from HubSpot illustrates this point clearly, showing companies with an active blog boasting a conversion rate of 6.9%, compared to only 1.8% for those without.
This substantial difference underscores the value blogs bring to content marketing efforts and can be attributed primarily to the consistent delivery of valuable content targeted toward a defined audience.
Maintaining an Active Blog: A Strategic Approach
To leverage your blog effectively as part of your strategic marketing approach, there are several key elements you need to consider.
An important aspect is maintaining consistency in posting frequency; regular updates keep readers engaged while also signalling search engines about your website’s relevance – both crucial factors contributing positively towards SEO ranking.
Diversifying types of posts keeps things interesting for existing customers and attracts new visitors who might prefer one type over another.
Strategic Planning for Search Engines
Another critical element often overlooked by businesses during their quest for creating compelling content is keyword optimization: including relevant keywords naturally within the text helps improve visibility on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Tools like Google Keyword Planner can assist you in identifying high-volume yet low-competition phrases related directly or indirectly to your business domain.
Lastly but certainly not least important are calls-to-action (CTAs) at appropriate points throughout each post – these serve as prompts encouraging readers toward taking desired actions such as signing up for newsletters, subscriptions, making purchases, etc., thereby significantly increasing conversion chances.
Decoding the Buyer’s Journey in Content Consumption
In the realm of content marketing, understanding your buyer’s journey is a critical step toward crafting an effective strategy.
A study by HubSpot underlines this point; it found that 47% of buyers view between three and five pieces of content before they engage with a sales representative.
The Impact of Valuable Content Throughout the Buyer’s Journey
The essence lies not just in creating content but in delivering value through it during every phase: awareness, consideration, and decision-making. Let us delve deeper into what type of material works best for each one:
- Awareness Stage: At this juncture, potential customers are identifying their needs or problems and still need to fully grasp them. Educational blog articles or white papers work well as they provide insights into possible solutions.
- Consideration Phase: Prospects have clearly defined their problem and are actively seeking methods to address it. Case studies demonstrating successful resolution using your product/service prove compelling here.
- Decision Stage: This final step involves choosing among vendors offering similar solutions. Detailed comparisons highlighting your edge over competitors, along with testimonials from satisfied clients, help differentiate you from others on offer, leading the customer closer to a purchase decision.
Maintaining a Smooth Transition Between Stages
Beyond simply producing appropriate materials for different stages, ensuring a smooth transition between phases and providing a seamless user experience guiding prospects gently along the path until they are ready to make a purchasing commitment is of paramount importance too.
It ideally leads them to become loyal repeat customers who refer friends, family, and colleagues based on the same positive experience they had.
This helps further expand your reach and influence in the marketplace while simultaneously building a stronger brand reputation, credibility, and trust among existing clientele.
The main aim shouldn’t be simply to sell items or services, but rather to form enduring connections founded on mutual respect, appreciation, shared ideals, common objectives and congruent interests for both the consumer and supplier.
Why Content Marketing?
We wrote back in December as to why content marketing has made a splash:
“B2C is all about creating content that stands out in the minds of your potential consumers. B2C marketing works best when it evokes emotions in consumers in a positive and relevant way.”
Understanding the difference between content and traditional marketing might be difficult. However, what I want to point out is that content marketing is content-forward and consumer-centric.
Content marketing has been touted as one of the best ways for businesses to garner more organic and genuine leads and to promote your business as a brand. There is a lot that you can do with content marketing.
In many ways, you can express your brand (or self) as an expert on a given topic, you can interact with consumers in new and informative ways, and it can help you evolve your brand to better suit your customers.
So why is this ideal marketing for your SMB and what should this look like?
This graphic from Hubspot is a good visual representation of how content marketing works, even for SMBs. Hubspot also likes to talk about content marketing in terms like “attract” and “delight.”
Since content marketing is all about content and emotive responses, then it is a perfect marketing tool for SMBs. With content marketing, you can effectively move past a large business with your company’s own unique stories and experiences.
Key Components of Your Content Marketing Strategy
After all is said and done, content marketing is still a strategy. So it’s really important that you establish your strategy from the ground-up, and preferably before you’ve started.
This means that your content marketing plan will have thought-out goals, directives, tangible initiatives, and campaign components.
Before you start, ask yourself:
Why are you pushing out content?
What would you like for this marketing campaign to accomplish?
What’s so great about what you’re offering?
Who (and what type of buyer) would want to interact with and ultimately purchase your products/services?
The why’s, what’s, who’s, how’s are all pretty standard marketing concerns, so make sure you nail those down before you move on to generating content.
Effectively Distributing Your Glorious Content
While it may seem odd to look at content distribution before content creation, it’s important to nail down the ways how your content will be distributed so that the content makes sense.
If you want to push out a blog post through an influencer, you’ll have to analyze the unique ways that these two methods interact so that the content will make sense in that context.
Distributing content involves promoting your content through social mediums, as guest blog posts, and in influencer marketing, but also establishing when is the right time to post your content.
Identifying Your Content Topic(s)
Once you’ve generally identified what your content marketing plan is going to hit (and how), then you can start to strategize your content topics. This will play in with all the other factors in this list (such as who you’re speaking to and what you’re selling/promoting), but it will also lend itself to search engines and brand development.
Like the other aspects of your foundational marketing strategy, your content topics are clutch.
Your content marketing topical strategy addresses what problem buyers are looking to be resolved and finding ways that your company can solve them.
By identifying and working within these niches, your content (and company) gains topical authority around a relevant topic. Speak to a certain niche repeatedly and effectively solve the problems in that niche and you may be considered a thought leader in that niche.
The Obvious: Brand Building, SEO, and Leads
Brand building, search engine optimization (SEO) and gaining leads are the three most commonly talked about aspects of content marketing.
This means that your content can really effectively navigate relevant SEO to build your brand and garner leads.
But you have to make sure that your strategies’ individual goals are directed towards this end and that your strategy accounts for it in content production.
Brand Building: Brand building is about relating your brand to a certain topic, component, or niche. If you are a software company, you don’t necessarily want to write about selling furniture… unless it is directly applicable to your software. Instead, you will want to showcase that you are knowledgeable and an authority on software, your specific type of software, and why your software (specifically and generally) is worth buying.
SEO and Rankings: Building authority also involves appropriate SEO tactics. SEO involves optimizing your web page so that search engines recognize your web pages. In terms of content, you’ll need to be familiar with what long-tail keywords relate to your brand and your topic. There are many factors that go into SEO, so hiring out an SEO expert will make your life easier.
Leads: While all these aspects will account for leads, make sure that your content is giving readers a direct opportunity and reason to connect with your company. Things like a call to action, questionnaires, and the option for a newsletter are usually strong motivators.
Content production is not just writing. It also involves the strategy behind which content to write, internal elements like the calls to action and backlinks, and identifying relevant topical authority.
Therefore all these elements will need to focus on clearly communicating your brand and asserting your brand as an authority on what you’re writing.
Tools and Tactics to Adopt for Content Marketing
There are tools and tactics necessary to any marketing strategy.
Your tools are the software, programs, clients, etc, that your strategy requires in order to function efficiently. Marketers rely on tools for functionality and speed.
Tactics, on the other hand, are the directions in which you want your marketing to go. Not all marketing strategies will have a podcast, but instead you may be marketing out to social media or on a blog post.
For this section, we’re going to list the a few tools and tactics we recommend a marketing agency should be working with (in some way).
We also dive into tools more in-depth in Chapter 7.
Content Marketing Tactics
There are a variety of tactics that fit under the umbrella of content marketing. The common denominator is that they are content-centered, and provide value to their relevant audiences. Other, unlisted tactics include videos or podcasts, infographics, paid advertising, and PR firms.
Blogging
By and far, blogging is the easiest and more surefire way to positively contribute to your marketing plan’s goal to drive in more organic traffic. You can hire on writers to blog for you (as if your team wrote the content or as guest blogs), hire a writing stack, blog yourself, or have influential writers guest blog. Blogging will need to be directed at your target audience and for a specific goal.
Social Media Distribution
Social media is a great way to connect with people. That’s why many businesses use it to share blogs, new product releases, or exciting events on social media. There are thousands of ways to use these social media hubs, so make sure you identify why you want to reach out to social media in the first place.
Create an eBook
We’ve included eBooks on this list to show that not all marketing strategies need to be the same. Companies in finance or real estate might require a more concrete way to present a report or a large bastion of knowledge. Even if you’re new to the marketing arena, eBooks are a strong way to represent your brand. eBook building can be easy but it does take a little bit of work. All you need is Adobe InDesign or a program to make PowerPoints.
Content Marketing Tools
The level of tools that your marketing team will use will depend on how much work they will be doing. If you plan to outsource your marketing, then a content marketing management team will be the ones working with and recommending tools. However, if your team is doing all (or part) of the marketing, then you will need a few tools to make your life easier.
A Content Management System (CMS)
A CMS is a fancy way of saying a “website builder”. A powerful CMS will allow you to design a website from a template (or import through a custom design), add content to your web pages, and make it look good. CMS systems like WordPress also have plugins such as Jetpack and Link Whisper which make website management easier.
Content Marketing and/or SEO Management
Investing in a content marketing management service will ensure that your content is competing against and hopefully winning out against competitors. A content marketing management service like MarketMuse or Ahrefs can comprehensively analyze your competitors, your current content, keywords, backlinks, and much more to recommend for search engine ranking positioning (SERP).
Distribution
Powerful distribution tools can save a lot of time sending out your content to social media platforms. Whether you are creating content for a social media campaign or email marketing, distribution software can house all your data and schedule these posts regularly. We highly recommend using Quuu Promote for social media and Klaviyo for email marketing.
Measuring Content Marketing Success
Marketing firms regularly reassess a campaign’s success. Tools like Google Analytics and Google My Console (for local SEO) can present clear data graphs, tables, and percentages so that you can understand how much traffic inflow is coming, the monthly changes, and the funnels from which that traffic came from.
Again, measuring your success can happen in many ways. Many companies will not only want to rank in the SERPs, but they will also want to see a fiscal return.
Identify what it means for your company to succeed, and what a successful content marketing strategy will do for your company in the long run.
Room For Growth
As your marketing strategy continues to evolve, make sure to adapt along with it. This is really important, and something that many SMBs cannot account for. If you plan for a long-term marketing strategy, then there will be a higher chance of success in the short term. Make sure that you are working through the short-term plan first, and then reassessing your plan as your company grows.
So, you’ve dived deep into the world of content marketing 101.
You’ve seen how it’s transforming the B2B space and boosting ROI for SMBs.
You understand its cost-effectiveness compared to traditional methods and the power of blogging in driving conversions.
And you know that understanding your buyer’s journey is key to crafting effective strategies.
Content marketing is a valuable asset that can enhance your business if utilized appropriately.
The next step?
Take these insights and apply them to your own content creation process.
okwrite is an award-winning content marketing agency that can link content with conversions and bring more traffic to your site using authoritative, SEO-driven, high-quality content. Connect with us to learn more.
