• Your website isn’t bringing in the customers you hoped for.
• You’re spending money on ads, but the returns are disappointing.
• You’re not sure how to stand out from your competitors online.

If any of these ring true, you’re not alone. Many small businesses struggle to make their mark in the digital world.

But there’s a solution that doesn’t require a massive budget or a marketing degree: content marketing, a strategic approach to creating and sharing valuable, relevant content to attract and engage a target audience.

Done with the right strategy and a little help from content marketing tools and SEO software, content marketing helps build brand awareness, foster customer trust, and drive traffic without relying solely on paid ads.

It’s also a long-term strategy that can continue to pay dividends long after it’s implemented. Whether you’re a startup, a local shop, or a service provider, this guide will show you how to use content marketing to grow your business with top tips and content ideas.

Ready to get started? Let’s dive in!

It’s a perfect top-of-funnel strategy because it brings leads to your site who are already interested in what your business offers. It’s like a shortcut that accelerates your conversions by increasing the share of incoming visitors who are ready to jump right to the middle of your sales funnel.

It’s a far more effective marketing strategy than you might imagine. Small businesses can create countless forms of content to fuel their content marketing strategy, spread across a variety of channels.

Along the way, you’ll establish yourselves as an expert voice in their field, raise the public profile, and gain exposure for your products and services.

Since your content strategy won’t be happening in a vacuum, it’s also worth noting that creating plenty of high-value content gives you an edge over competitors who aren’t offering the same to their audience. It allows you to flip the typical business-customer dynamic on its head by beginning each new customer relationship by establishing the business as a helpful force in the customer’s life.

Instead of trying to compel them to make purchases, you can position yourself as a trusted advisor to the customer. In that type of relationship, the customer is far more receptive to further brand messaging and efforts to convert. After all, you’ve given them something, so they’ll be more apt to engage and remain loyal. It’s a strategy that checks every imaginable box.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to building an effective content marketing strategy that suits your small business:

1. Define your goals

Start by clarifying what you want your content to achieve and who you want to reach. Are you looking to increase website traffic, generate leads, boost sales, or build brand awareness? Define what success looks like for your business.

 Maybe it’s all of the above, or perhaps your focus is on building trust and nurturing existing customer relationships. Whatever the goal, be specific. Define what success looks like for your business, in numbers, whether it’s getting 1,000 new website visits per month, doubling your email subscribers, or securing five new clients each quarter.

The clearer your goals, the more targeted and effective your content strategy will be.

2. Research your audience

To get started, you have to conduct some in-depth research to better understand the audience you’re targeting.

To do this, you’ll have to:

• Field preference questionnaires with existing customers
• Analyze the online and social media presence of key competitors
• Conduct keyword research
• Examine the content profile of other industry leaders

Doing all of that will give you the data needed to create a well-targeted content marketing strategy that’s likely to connect with the right audience. 

3. Choose your content topics and channels

Once you know your audience, identify the main topics your content will cover and the channels where you’ll share it. Three points to think about here: 

• Your niche: Choose topics closely aligned with your products, services, or expertise. For example, if you’re a small bakery, focus on baking tips, recipes, or dessert trends. Stick to topics that showcase what your business does best, as this establishes credibility.
• Your audience pain points: Consider your customers’ biggest challenges and create content that solves these problems. Whether it’s a tutorial, a troubleshooting guide, or an FAQ page, helpful content positions your business as a trusted resource. 
  Use tools like Google Keyword Planner to find relevant keywords that align with your topics and audience needs. Prioritize long-tail keywords to attract more specific, intent-driven searchers.
• Your audience’s preferred channels: Identify where your target audience spends most of their time online. If they’re more likely to engage with professional content, prioritize LinkedIn, podcasts, or in-depth blog posts. Email newsletters can effectively nurture existing customers, while YouTube or TikTok may be ideal for reaching a broader, younger audience.

It’s also necessary to prepare your business website and social media accounts to host and promote the content you’ll create. That means optimizing the site for conversions to maximize the traffic your content will drive. 

It also means seeding your social media audience to let them know that they should expect some high-value content to be coming their way shortly. That way, the audience will be pre-primed to consume the content, and it’ll be far easier to kick-start your first content campaign.

4. Create a content calendar

A content calendar keeps you organized and consistent, crucial for building an engaged audience.

• Plan content weekly or monthly: Map out blog posts, videos, social media updates, and other content for the upcoming weeks. 
• Mix up content types: To keep your audience engaged, include a variety of content, such as how-to guides, infographics, videos, and customer stories.
• Consider seasonality: If applicable, align your content with seasonal events, holidays, or trends that matter to your customers.

A well-planned calendar helps you maintain a steady content flow and ensures you’re covering the right topics at the right time. Remember, this content calendar should help you achieve the goals you set out to achieve. 

4. Start creating content

Now, it’s time to start creating content that adds value to your audience and helps you achieve your goals. Here are things you should remember as you go about content creation. 

Create original content

When looking for ways to keep useful and original content flowing, consider the following content types, which are hard for others to duplicate and which promote social sharing within your target market:

• Real-world case studies featuring actual customers that demonstrate the specific benefits of your small business’s products and services
• Useful and visually pleasing infographics that customers (and other content creators) can cite when looking for industry-specific data
• Original videos featuring staff experts who can share their wealth of knowledge and experience with the audience
• Podcasts to discuss issues relevant to the customer or to provide useful guidance in an easy-to-digest format

Content originality can make or break your entire content marketing strategy, so creating nothing but original content is as close to an immutable law as you’ll find in the endeavor.

Show expertise

Content marketing allows you to demonstrate your expertise on subjects related to your core business, products, or services. Providing comprehensive and in-depth information within your content topics makes it possible to establish the business as a thought leader in its industry. That makes your small business website a destination for anyone looking for reliable knowledge about what you do best.

That has ramifications that will extend well beyond your content strategy. It will also feed positive word-of-mouth among your target audience, encouraging them to evangelize your brand’s identity far and wide. It’s an outcome whose value and importance simply can’t be overstated.

Follow a consistent brand voice 

Keep in mind that your overarching goal is to establish a relationship with your customers. That means it’s critical to ensure that the content always represents your small business in the brand voice you’re trying to establish.

Create content with a consistent tone and quality because your audience will identify your business by every piece of content you produce. If necessary, create your own brand guidelines to follow. 

Think before scaling up

A single instance of poorly thought out or badly executed content can set the whole strategy back.

It’s a good idea to consider a plan to scale up content creation before putting any new content strategy in place so you can execute it without growing pains, missteps, and interruptions. Doing so can help to guarantee high performance and excellent brand-building results over the long term.

5. Promote your content

Another key aspect of a successful content marketing strategy is creating share-worthy content that social media followers will want to spread to everyone they connect with. Doing so not only amplifies your small business’s social media presence by attracting new followers but also helps your future content succeed by creating a built-in promotional network for each new piece.

Repurpose your content. Transform a blog post into a video, turn customer testimonials into social media graphics, or compile popular posts into an eBook. This allows you to maximize each piece of content across multiple formats.

Join local Facebook groups, Reddit forums, or industry-specific communities to share your content and engage with potential customers.

Again, this is a function of building a trusting relationship with the audience you’re hoping to attract.

Once it’s in place, your small business’s social media accounts can function as a brand-promotion machine with feeds that are always chock-full of useful, engaging content tailor-made for audience needs and tastes. That helps to ensure a steady stream of valuable traffic to your small business website while extending your reach well beyond your business’s core customers and followers.

6. Monitor results and refine your strategy

Tracking performance is crucial to know what’s working and what’s not.

• Track key metrics: To measure success, focus on metrics like website traffic, social shares, lead conversions, and engagement rates.
• Use A/B testing: Experiment with different headlines, images, or CTAs to see what drives better results.
• Refine your content: Use analytics insights to improve your content strategy. If certain topics or formats perform better, double down on them.

Just because you know the goals you’re trying to achieve with your content marketing strategy doesn’t mean you know the exact types and formats of the content you need to achieve them. In fact, some marketers cite as many as 105 types of content your small business can use to fill up a marketing release calendar.

Depending on the type of small business, you may find yourself building a content strategy that includes many of those types or focusing more on long-form blog posts to establish the business as a thought leader. There’s no single right way to do it.

However, there are some tips to ease the process and ensure that the content you’re creating performs well and satisfies all of the goals outlined in your content strategy.

• Prioritize quality over quantity: Don’t try to fill up a release calendar with more content than you can reliably produce while upholding a high-quality standard. If you do, your lower-quality content will damage the performance of your high-quality content and can undermine the brand’s expert image in the eyes of the audience.
• Use free tools and AI tools: Take advantage of free or low-cost design tools like Canva for design, Google Analytics for tracking performance, and free generative AI tools for image, text, and video creation. 
• Collaborate with local influencers: Engage with local customers by sharing their stories, featuring testimonials, or highlighting community events. This fosters a sense of connection and loyalty. Also, partner with micro-influencers or local bloggers who can help promote your content to a broader audience within your community.
• Use user-generated content: Encourage customers to share their experiences and tag your brand on social media. This not only provides free content but also increases credibility and trust. 
• Experiment with paid promotions: If your budget allows, use paid ads on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Google to boost your content’s reach and drive targeted traffic.
• Gather and use customer feedback: Regularly ask for feedback on your content. This helps you understand what resonates with your audience and adapt your strategy accordingly.

Start creating

For a small business, a content marketing strategy promises to create a self-sustaining marketing ecosystem that helps you increase your business’s visibility and punch above your weight. It establishes your brand in the minds of the right audience to guarantee a steady flow of leads and prospects.

So, all that’s left to do is implement a content marketing strategy for your small business! 

Looking for some more help? Explore the top AI writers that’ll help with your content creation process.

This article was originally published in 2020 and has been updated with new information.