7 key steps for a strong content marketing strategy
After going through the company formation process, founders are often stretched across operations, compliance, and other day-to-day commitments. This can leave little room for content marketing. However, it’s still possible for entrepreneurs to craft and execute effective marketing plans – even with limited time and budget.
A strong small business marketing strategy helps owners focus their time and resources more effectively. Good content marketing involves creating useful, relevant content that appeals to potential customers.
In this article, Quality Company Formations shares practical guidance to help founders build a content marketing plan that supports long-term business growth, informed by its experience working with small businesses.
- Start with clear goals rather than content ideas
Many content marketing strategies fail because people start by thinking about what they should create, rather than identifying why they’re creating it. If you want to create content, start by clarifying why. Do you want to build awareness, educate customers, or increase sales?
What you want to achieve from content will likely vary depending on where you are in your business journey. For example, if you’re a newly formed company, you’ll likely prioritise building visibility and credibility. In contrast, a more established business may want to use content to help nurture leads or retain customers.
Set clear goals first, then use them to shape your content. If you need to get your business’s name out there, you may decide to build up a presence on social media or collaborate with influencers. If you’re looking to encourage repeat purchases, you might focus on sending newsletters to your subscribers.
Having clear goals also helps businesses measure the success of their content. You can assess awareness-focused content through follower growth or reach, while you can review conversion-focused through enquiry levels or sales activity.
- Understand your audience beyond basic demographics
Knowing your audience is about more than knowing ages, genders, locations, and job titles. Effective content should speak to your audience’s problems, questions, and motivations. To do that, you first need to understand what those things are. Understanding your customers will help you create better content. This information can also inform wider business decisions.
To identify your audience’s concerns, think about the questions customers ask most often. Is there a common problem they come to you to solve? If your goal is to support conversions, identify what causes hesitation before buying and which factors typically help customers decide. You could then explain these solutions through content.
If you’re still unsure what your customers’ needs are or what types of content they value most, a short survey focused on common challenges and preferred content formats can provide useful direction.
Understanding what your customers want can help you create more relevant content that’s more likely to attract their attention. It can also build trust, as you’ll show your customers that you understand them.
- Choose content formats you can create
Content marketing can feel overwhelming when businesses believe they need to maintain a presence across multiple platforms at once. However, creating relevant content consistently for one platform is usually more powerful than producing occasional pieces for lots of different channels. If you can only spare enough time to run one social media account well, stick to that rather than spreading yourself too thinly.
It’s important to choose content formats based on your available time, skills, and resources. If you struggle with writing but are comfortable with being on camera, experiment with video. If you don’t want to be the face of a brand but still want to share your knowledge, a blog may be a better fit.
When crafting out your content marketing strategy, it’s worth thinking about it for the long term. How much content can you realistically continue to create over a longer period? Consistent, regular publishing can help you build an audience and increase the likelihood that viewers later become customers. So, it’s worth coming up with a content creation plan that’s sustainable.
- Create content that answers real questions
Often, the strongest marketing content solves problems. After consuming the content, the potential customer should feel in a better position to understand something or make a decision. While the aim of the content for a business might be to boost conversions, the consumer doesn’t want to feel like they’re being sold to. Instead, it should be genuinely helpful.
Useful content can continue to attract and support customers long after it’s published. Publishing an advice guide about how to take your measurements for clothing will help readers find a better fit and gain trust in your sizing options. By addressing a practical concern, the business reduces uncertainty for the customer and positions itself as knowledgeable.
- Plan distribution
Creating content is just one part of a marketing strategy. No matter how strong your content is, it can’t leave an impact if no one sees it, which is why distribution should be a core part of your marketing plan. It’s worth considering distribution before you even publish content.
To help plan distribution, think about where your audience already spends time and how you can share content in those spaces. For example, your audience may be on TikTok more than YouTube. If that’s the case, you might want to focus more on shorter, vertical videos. If you’re considering being active on multiple platforms, be realistic about how much you can get done. It’s OK to not be everywhere. However, if you do decide to cover several channels, think about how you can adapt content to suit those different platforms. This might mean recording a longer video that’s suitable for YouTube while filming TikTok clips.
Thoughtful distribution can also extend the lifespan of content, which makes the effort you invest in creation more worthwhile. For example, when blog content is written in a way that helps search engines find it, the content has a better chance of appearing in relevant search results and being seen by new audiences.
- Measure what matters and refine over time
To get the most out of your content in the long term, it’s worth measuring how your content performs and using this information to adjust plans.
You don’t necessarily need advanced tools to understand your content’s performance. Many channels, such as social media platforms, readily display metrics like views and comments. Simple website analytics can tell you how many people are visiting your on-site articles, too.
When it comes to tracking, it’s important to look for metrics that align with your goals. You might want to see if newsletter subscriber rates are growing or if sales for a certain product have increased.
It’s OK if some content doesn’t have the positive effect you were hoping for. You can’t know if something will work until you try it. If some content underperforms, try to view it as an opportunity to learn and refine your approach as part of an ongoing review process.
With regular reviews, content creation can become more effective and efficient, as patterns emerge around what works and where effort is best spent.
- Align content marketing with your wider business strategy
Content marketing doesn’t sit in isolation. It should reflect the values, direction, and needs of the wider business. For example, if there is a product line that isn’t selling as well as hoped, it likely needs more marketing efforts to support it than a long-running bestseller.
It’s also crucial that content marketing matches with how the business appears in other areas. There should be consistency between content, services or products, and customers’ experiences. This helps build credibility. Plus, when content aligns with how a business operates, it feels authentic rather than promotional and is therefore usually more useful to potential customers.
Laying the foundations for a stronger content marketing strategy
As a small business with limited time and budget, getting your content marketing plan right can be tricky. However, it’s possible to make effective content by planning and focusing your efforts in the right areas.
If you understand what you want to achieve, who your customers are and where you’ll find them, and how to distribute helpful content, you’re on your way to creating a stronger content marketing strategy.
While content marketing does take time, breaking down your strategy into seven clear steps can help make the process more manageable. Remember that progress is better than perfection, so it’s OK to struggle to begin with. Over time, you’ll improve your content skills and learn which areas to focus on.
Like many aspects of running a small business, content marketing benefits from making informed decisions and reviewing them regularly. With these foundations in place, small businesses are better equipped to make confident, informed content decisions that support sustainable growth.
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