When it comes to marketing your small business, do you have a plan or do you just fly by the seat of your pants? There is wisdom in the old saying “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” While content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing such as direct mail or cold-calling, it generates more than three times as many leads. To be successful, it is important to distribute high-quality content that is relevant to your audience.
Planning is Essential
A marketing campaign is complex with many moving parts. Having a strategy and an outline for your marketing campaign is very important and will have a major impact on your success.
If you haven’t focused your approach, you will also find yourself working much harder than you need to, taking time away from growing other areas of your small business. One of the most common mistakes for content distribution is lack of planning.
Define Your Target Audience
The first step when developing a strategy for your content marketing campaign is to define your target audience. Who is your typical customer? Are they consumers or other business owners? What interests them?
The content you chose to distribute should be specific to your buyer persona. In addition to publishing content that interests your audience, it is equally important that this content be found by your audience.
What Channel Should You Use?
There are important questions to ask when deciding which distribution channels will best suit your content marketing campaigns.
Think about:
Which search engine is most commonly used by your target audience?
What type of content will engage this market?
Which channel is best-suited for that type of content?
How will the content be shared?
YouTube can be a great place to start online marketing, as it is the second largest search engine on the web behind Google. Video content performs well on YouTube and Facebook. Eye-catching images perform well on Pinterest. If you are sharing long, written content, consider LinkedIn or Medium.
Adapt As You Go
As crucial as planning is to the success of your content marketing campaigns, understand that not everything goes as planned. You will need to be able to adapt and refine your strategy as time goes on. The world of digital marketing is constantly changing and what worked a few months ago might not be the best strategy today.
Search engine algorithms and the behaviours of customers never stay the same for long. For the very best results, your plan of action should be routinely updated to accommodate changes in the online world.
In conclusion, content marketing can be a powerful tool for growing your small business if you plan carefully, use content and distribution channels relevant to your target audience, and adapt to change.
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