As a small business, we know that some of your top concerns surround generating revenue and maintaining a lean budget. We also understand that funnelling funds into marketing without seeing a hard ROI can be exhausting.
We are here to say that times have changed and expensive traditional marketing is no longer the only way. Enter inbound marketing and more specifically content marketing. Content marketing has become the most cost-effective way to drive website traffic, grow a presence online and the best part is that you can easily track the ROI of your campaigns.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is essentially developing quality and relevant content to share with your online community in order to drive traffic and foster quality leads. Content marketing can be in the form of blogs, infographics, videos and educational ebooks.
It also extends to social media, which offers the perfect opportunity for sharing and community engagement. Publishing on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Linkedin, Youtube, Pinterest and Instagram are all a part of a content marketing strategies.
Okay, so why is content marketing important to small businesses?
It's effective
For many small businesses, the number one marketing goal is to gain brand awareness. Consistent content marketing allows you to do so, quicker than any other form of marketing. Each time you write a new blog or a content piece you have the opportunity to generate interest through organic searches and social engagement.
Here are a few relevant stats that drive home the effectiveness of content marketing
- Inbound marketing delivers 54% more leads into the marketing funnel than traditional outbound marketing
- 61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content, and are more likely to buy from that company
- 70% of consumers prefer getting to know a company via articles rather than ads
- 79% of companies that have a blog report a positive ROI for inbound marketing
It's accomplished at a lower cost with transparent ROI
Inbound costs your time or an employee's time, that’s it. No need to work with sales persons and pay excessive amounts for placement. And stat after stat reflects a higher ROI for those marketers that do use content marketing.
- Using inbound tactics saves an average of 13% in overall cost per lead
- Brands relying on inbound marketing save over $14 dollars for every new customer acquired (source)
Using a content management system like HubSpot allows us to track the engagement, views, leads and customer interaction associated with each piece of our content. If you're looking for transparency in the success of your marketing, content marketing will give you that.
It builds trust and positions you as an industry expert
If you are consistent with your brand's blog and consistent in your content's quality and relevancy you could become a known expert within your field. Brands who have achieved this status have hungry followers who look to their content weekly or even come back to find the content that they’ve missed. Simply, it positions you at the top of the game, watch out competitors.
It helps you learn about your own industry
You probably already consider yourself an expert in your field and we are positive that that is true but, like any industry, change is constant. When you are committed to producing weekly or monthly content, you’ll find yourself staying on top of and learning from industry news and trends. This helps you stay relevant and at the forefront of your field, a great added bonus.
Content marketing is the new competitive advantage, one that you can't afford to miss out on. It requires planning, consistency and creativity, but when done right you'll experience incredible growth in both leads and web presence and that's why content marketing is important to small business.
Visit our blog for a rounded list of content marketing strategies.
