Content marketing for small businesses is often difficult to do, especially when you’re trying to run a company! Tess Wittler is a content marketer who specializes in helping companies tell their stories through their content, and in this week’s Brown Bag, she talks about how content marketing for small businesses doesn’t have to be intimidating or difficult. So make some coffee, pull up a chair, and join us for this week’s Brown Bag Business Chat.
Content Marketing Is A Big Term, So Break It Down For Us Tess. What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing for small businesses is any information you are sharing with your audience, so this could include podcasts, videos, brochures, whitepapers, newspapers, blog articles, pins on pinterest, tweets, or your website. Basically, content marketing is figuring out what the ideal content is for a specific client.
Why Is Content Marketing Such A Well-Known Term? What Makes It Such A Big Part Of Your Marketing Mix?
In the olden days of the 2000’s, we had to live with a lot of ancient technology, like Nokia cell phones, Windows XP, and Shamwow. Selling us all these products was an equally outdated marketing technique: push or interruptive marketing, which includes TV ads, radio ads, newspaper ads, and other types of ads that pushed their way into the content we were really interested in, interrupting our entertainment or education.
As our lifestyles changed due to new technology, marketing had to change as well.
Today, in the advanced modern era of the 2010’s, instead of radio, we have satellite or Spotify. Instead of cable, we have Netflix or Amazon Prime. Push marketing doesn’t work in these contexts. You wouldn’t pick up a Nokia brick to replace your iPhone 5 would you? So don’t use push marketing to sell your products. Not today.
Content marketing is so interesting because the goal is to make sure you’re being helpful, useful, and educational for the audience. Instead of interrupting their lives (push), you want to pull people in to read or view your content.
Paint A Picture For Me Of What Content Marketing For Small Businesses Can Do: Where Have You Seen It Do Something Impactful?
A remodeler in the Toronto area decided to invest heavily in content marketing. They began with a website, which became the hub of their content marketing mix. Then they added a blog and email newsletter.
The blog let them continually publish content to the website, which was good for SEO and provided fresh, valuable content to push on social media.
Then every other month, they sent out an email newsletter to their 150 – 200 customers. Every newsletter included a project they did and a little bit of writing on another topic. From this simple start, they got immediate responses from customers who were thinking about a project (they didn’t even know these customers were considering a project).
The company was able to tap into existing customers and get them off the fence (where customers seem to congregate) and on to a project, keeping that pipeline open. They now have projects lined up 4 – 6 months out, instead of being only 2 – 3 months out. Content marketing really made a difference in their business for a small investment of money and time.
An Email Campaign Seems Simple, But Then So Does Skydiving Until You Try It. What Are Some Quick Tips On How To Successfully Manage An Email Or Newsletter Campaign?
- Do not send your emails through your Yahoo or Gmail account! Seriously, you will get flagged as spam: try Mail Chimp, which is free, or a paid service like constant contact.
- Don’t automatically enroll your customers: stop spamming! Bad! Instead, just like in real life, ask for permission. If you have already communicated with them, that’s a form of asking permission (just like in real life…). Seriously, you can’t just take people from your Google account or your Outlook account and export them into Mail Chimp.
- Commit to send out emails on a regular basis. Don’t make it a massive thing: start small and work your way up.
Start with a welcome message, a friendly hello, add some personal things unique to the customer if you can, or just mention things going on in their area, local to them. Have a project spotlight and talk about how happy the customer was, then include a seasonal home tip. It’s a very simple formula that seems to work with all clients.
It’s not easy; it just has a low-cost entry. It’s a matter of committing the time. You may want to do it on a weekly or biweekly basis, but think long term. Start with once a month or once every two months to see if you can handle that, but don’t jump in at once because it takes some time and has a learning curve.
How Do You Know You’re Sending At The Right Frequency For Your Audience?
Depends on the industry. Go into the analytics of Mail Chimp or Constant Contact and check the open rate and unsubscribe rate; that’s how your customers tell you if you’re sending too frequently.
Next, ask your audience how often they would like to get emails – sounds crazy right? No, seriously, ask them directly. I promise you they will answer.
And do a gut check, ask yourself if you would want to get these many emails this often, and ask others what they do, and then tweak it to what the audience is telling you.
Also, look at their buying cycle to see how often are they using your product or service. For instance, if people are only buying your product every few years, then you don’t want to email every week because you’re not at the top of their mind (unless you have jaw-dropping content).
What Balance Should You Strike Between Promoting Your Own Work And Your Specials And Providing Education Or Information?
I see a lot of mistakes made with this, especially on social media.
Think of it like this: if you walk into a room and all you do is talk about yourself non-stop, you’ll turn people off.
Focus on Building Relationships
You’re not going to build those relationships only talking about yourself, so whatever online content you are marketing, you want to be more helpful than talk about yourself.
Try the 80/20 rule: 80% of the time you’re being helpful and sharing content, and 20% of the time it’s about you and about your sales. Focus on building relationships and not on selling products, but don’t wait too long to throw in the 20 percent about business.
Remember, you’re not there because you and your customers are totes BFF: you’re there because you’re a business selling a product or service. People will forget that you’re a business, and then they will literally get offended when you ask for their business. At the end of the day, content marketing for small businesses needs to do just that: market the product or service.
Don’t Focus On Your Most Popular Service
Most small businesses want to focus on their sweet spots, but they do other things that people forget about, so make sure you remind your customers of your full range of products and services.
Keep Nudging Your Customers To Act
Always have a call-to-action at the bottom of the email newsletter, something asking them to please call or contact you online. Content marketing is a gentle nudge done in such a way that it is easier to digest because it comes at the end of a story or informative article.
That’s the difference: content marketing reads more like an article; it’s more fun and inspirational or educational, whereas traditional marketing was in your face and pushy (And if you call now, you can get double the offer! That’s pushing the offer in my face. Stop.)
How Can A Small Business Approach Content Marketing In A Reasonable Way That Is Sustainable?
Do the Easy Stuff First
First they need to look at their business and see what’s working and what can be improved.
Usually, they aren’t tapping into the “low hanging fruit,” or the stuff that’s easy to do for a low-entry cost. We talked so much about email newsletters because they’re so easy.
Have a Home Base
There’s only one place online that you own, and that’s your website. You don’t want to build your entire presence on Facebook or Pinterest because they can change.
Your website is the hub of your online marketing, so ask yourself: does it have the right pages? Is it formatted the right way? You need to be constantly looking to where you can tweak your website or add to it, and that’s why blogging is so effective.
Build That Email List
Start building your email list. That can be done many ways. For instance, if you’re on Facebook, you many have many followers, but you don’t have their names or emails. Facebook and Twitter can change their rules, so build that email list because that is gold.
Keep in Contact With Them Regularly
Start building that email list and develop a strategy to keep in contact with your customers on a regular basis. Ask yourself these questions:
- How’s my website?
- Where’s my list?
- Am I keeping in touch?
What Are Some Great Resources That People Can Use To Do Content Marketing for Small Businesses Correctly?
Shameless plug alert: Heather and Tess are great. You want an expert? These are the experts. Check out Tesswittler.com and Bluesteelesolutions.com.
You can also try Socialmediaexaminer.com or Copyblogger.com for good, free resources. Even Hubspot.com is good; they have great content a couple years back if you want to dig for it.
Basically, it all starts with your website. If you didn’t have a great year, you can do a website review fairly cheaply that will give you feedback on what’s going on with your website. Sometimes it just needs a tune up. You need an objective party to look at your website and see if you need to make changes. Once everything starts working better, you will you start generating leads and attracting the right customers, but it all starts with the website.
Any Last Words?
I’m innocent! Just kidding, but if you have any questions about content marketing for small businesses, contact me below.
How to Contact Tess
“Tweet me, Facebook me, email me, whatever; I am happy to point people in the right direction and Heather is the same. It gives me good information about questions and challenges so I can write blog articles and help others with those things.”
Email: tess@tesswittler.com
Twitter: twitter.com/TessWittler
Facebook: facebook.com/TessWittlerWritingServices
Website: Tesswittler.com
Now get out there and take charge of your content!