How Content Marketing is the Key to Small Business Success?

Before content marketing, paid advertising was the leading method for generating leads and sales. You can probably recall pop up ads showing up on your screen when you visit specific sites. These ads can range from vacation rentals to obtaining a business insurance quote online. Even though many businesses still use paid advertising, this method is becoming less valuable.

According to Business Insider, over 200 million people rely on ad blockers. Currently, 615 million devices use ad-blocking software. Up to 11% of the world’ Internet population actively uses adblocking programs. Although this improves the online experience for patrons, it is trouble for businesses that rely on paid advertisements to acquire new customers and reach out to new ones. What’re the best ways to circumvent ad-block programs. The answer is content marketing.

What is the Difference Between Paid Advertising and Content Advertising?

You’ll think about social media posts, listicles, articles, and blogs. But content marketing encompasses much more than. A long-term plan relies on stellar content in several formats to reach out to target audiences. Good content builds relationships, captures customer attention, and improves engagement and brand recall.

Paid advertising is committed to getting something from the audience, such as sales leads. Content marketing provides value and offers good content to build trust with customers. Given that nearly 70% of consumers like to learn about a business via an article instead of through paid advertisement, it makes sense to invest in content marketing.

Here are five reasons why content marketing is essential for your small business’s

1. Content gives a better return on a small investment. 

Content advertising is more affordable than other forms. It costs approximately 62% less than outbound and traditional marketing strategies. And it also produces three times more leads. How? Let’s say you post an article that teaches readers how to compare business insurance quotes online (because your business is selling insurance). If readers find your article helpful, they will like it, share it with others, post it on their social media page, etc. Your content can give you superb brand visibility.

2. Content promotes your business without over-selling yourself. 

When a customer follows your business page on social media channels and subscribes to content updates, they are interested in hearing from you. Your followers want to hear about upcoming promotions, special offers, and sales. What they would despise are promotional blasts.

Your services and products provide a helpful solution to your customers, but they also have concerns unrelated to your offer. Content marketing enables you to offer value beyond your service or product.

3. Content exposes your business to a larger audience.

High-quality content is like the news, and it can rapidly take the lead on the Internet. When you publish valuable content, your followers will notice and share it quickly. For instance, if your followers like your article about starting a small business online, they will share it with their contacts, who may likely do the same.

Every share puts your business’s brand on display in front of a growing audience. Your article can generate traffic for more than a month without any additional monetary investment from you. With paid advertising, your brand’s reach finishes once the campaign is over.

4. Content improves trust with your customers. 

Content marketing enables you to conduct lead nurturing. It helps you build consumer trust. As customers start to develop their faith in your brand, they are more likely to return to you for more information and share it with others.

As this pattern grows, so will recall and engagement with your brand. For example, lead nurturing allows your business to personalize content for specific customers. This increases the chances that they will purchase from your company. Examples of personalized content include:

– Providing a discount, promotion, or special offer

– Give them tips and tricks to better use the products

Personalized content improves a customer’s ability to remember your business brand, identity, and value. It creates a positive feedback loop that benefits both your business and your customer.

5. Content adds relevance and newness to your website. 

When Google determines your website’s relevancy and rank concerning search inquiries, it’s looking at how fresh the content is. This is a score based on the following factors:

– When was the piece written?

– How frequently does the content get updated or changed?

– What is the rate of inbound links to your content?

– Engagement and traffic metrics

If you create new content regularly for your business, it generates an ongoing stream of new links and updates arising from the older content. In addition, the content has to have provided value and relevance to your target audience. Google likes this too.

Conclusion

Whether you’re selling business insurance, organic vegetables, or providing cleaning services, stellar content exposes your business to a large audience, builds trust, gets you a higher SERP ranking, and better return on investment. Business insurance is an excellent way to protect your business from unexpected risks. Find out more here.