Content marketing is a great way for small businesses to grow and eventually widen their pool of customers. Not solely focused on increasing conversion rates and profit margins, doing content marketing is also a good way of staying on top of industry trends and letting customers know that you understand their needs and concerns. However, it is often easier said than done.
If you are the owner of a small business, you will understand the frustration that comes with generating fresh content marketing ideas from time to time! If it feels like you are at the end of your rope and have already exhausted all your ideas, let us give you some tips and suggestions in this article.
Start a Blog
If you are one of the few small businesses that have yet to do so, starting a blog with posts relevant to common issues faced by your customer base is a must. Besides being informative and entertaining, starting a blog shows your customers that you understand their concerns. This positions your business as a friendly professional who is ready to offer advice and practical solutions in your field, potentially resulting in higher conversion rates.
Revise and Reuse Old Content
Chances are you have already started a blog for your business. If so, browse through the archives and see if there is any old content you can revise and reuse. How about taking that “how to” guide you posted last year and turning it into an instructional video? Which, incidentally, brings us to the next point.
Create Engaging Videos
This is especially true if the product or service you are selling isn’t very straightforward. For instance, if you are a company that provides resources for beginning investors, the many terms involved can get confusing to explain. In such cases, where text explanations simply won’t cut it, creating engaging and informative videos that engage your client base can help your content marketing strategy.
Make Use of Infographics
Another good option would be to incorporate infographics in your explanatory blog posts if making videos isn’t a viable option for your business. Tools such as graphs and charts can really help in illustrating a confusing concept or in a “how to” guide for crafts and recipes.
Conduct Interviews with Industry Experts
If it feels like you have already exhausted all possible content and presentation outlets, consider contacting industry experts in your field and asking for an interview. This kills two birds with one stone: not only do you provide your clients with a behind-the-scenes view of your industry, you are promoting your interviewee, thus expanding your network and building the foundation for future partnerships. Furthermore, interviews can be in any format you wish: teleconference, a recorded in-person video, or even an email with written questions.
Host Webinars
Another fresh way of content marketing is to host webinars where your customers can tune in to a live workshop held by your business. Giving customers the opportunity to get their questions answered directly, this can be incredibly helpful in raising brand awareness as customers get to interact personally with your business.
Relook Your FAQ Section
Now you may be asking, what if you host a webinar and there aren’t as many customer questions as you’d expected? You can’t possibly just sit there quietly in the remaining time, so what do you do? Although this is not just limited to webinars, taking a relook at your FAQ section can be useful when it comes to mining for new content marketing ideas. If your webinar doesn’t garner as many questions as the time you have, fill in the time by addressing some of your existing FAQs. Or if you notice that a FAQ hasn’t been addressed in your blog, you can make a new post out of it!
Write Short Newsletters and/or Reports
Although this may not be applicable to every small business out there, taking the time to produce longer content can be a good content marketing strategy for some businesses. If you are a business that focuses on obtaining few but repeating loyal customers, producing a short newsletter or report regularly can be a way of making your customers feel invested in your business. Going the extra mile to help your customers feel engaged increases your brand image in their eyes and ensures that they stay with you for a long time to come!
Produce Seasonal Content
If you are a business for whom writing regular newsletters doesn’t really make sense, you may want to consider publishing one around seasonal events such as Halloween or Christmas. If you are a candy shop, for example, producing an annual Halloween newsletter featuring the latest “trick-or-treating” candy can be a good content marketing tactic you never thought of! Or if you are a winter sports equipment retailer, sending out a newsletter when the season approaches can help to keep you fresh in customers’ minds.
Get Your Customers Involved through Reviews and/or Testimonials
Although many businesses are already doing it in some way, you can take a fresh look at your existing customer reviews and testimonials and find ways to optimize it for content. Making your customers feel important is a huge part of the online marketing process.
By shifting the spotlight back onto them, you are letting your customers know that their opinions are valued and taken into consideration when making business decisions. Furthermore, reaching out to a customer to do a case study or offering perks in exchange for written or video reviews is a good way of increasing customer engagement.
Get on Social Media
Lastly, the trend we all love to hate. Whether you love or loathe social media, there’s no escaping the fact that there’s where all the action is. Joining Facebook groups relevant to your business can help you uncover trends in your industry you didn’t know about. For instance, if you are a Korean language school, joining travel groups or fan groups for K-Pop lovers can be an interesting and effective way of engaging directly with potential customers.