Content marketing for small businesses – how your company can benefit
If you’re responsible for your company’s marketing and communications efforts, you may have heard about the rise of content marketing. But did you know that it’s a practice that has particular advantages for small businesses?
Essentially, content marketing is a way for companies to share their knowledge and expertise regularly to attract the attention of potential customers using tools such as blog posts, articles and customer case studies. By publishing your own content, you can also demonstrate how your company can help prospects, and address typical customer questions about your business.
While content marketing can work for a business of any size, it provides some particular benefits for small businesses:
- Differentiation - To embrace content marketing successfully, you need to dedicate regular time to the process. As this can be a challenge for some small companies, it’s likely that many of your competitors aren’t doing it. This makes it easier for your business to stand out.
- Increasing your visibility online – One of the benefits of content marketing is that search engines favour websites publishing fresh and helpful content. By addressing typical customer questions in your content, you will also find yourself using the same language that potential customers are using to search online.
- Improving engagement - As they see regular and useful content from you, prospects will become more engaged with your business over time, and come to understand the value that you can provide for them.
Small businesses new to content marketing do face some challenges. Finding the time to create content, sticking to a regular publishing schedule, and deciding what your content should cover are all typical concerns.
But you can address these challenges by planning your content in advance (perhaps with the help of an editorial calendar), addressing customers' typical questions, and involving your whole team to help make content creation a priority.
Done right, content marketing provides an excellent way to improve your company’s presence online, reach new customers and stand out from your competitors. For small businesses seeking a competitive edge, that can make a big difference.
If you’d like to learn more about how your company can benefit from the use of content marketing, have a look at this recent article that we contributed to the British Chamber of Commerce’s monthly magazine, ‘Britain in Hong Kong’.
If you'd like some help with your small business content marketing, please contact us now.