Content Marketing for Small Businesses

You’ve likely heard the term “content marketing” with increasing frequency, though you may or may not understand exactly what it means. We’re here to uncover exactly what it is. Why it has the potential to be a highly valuable part of your small business’s overall marketing strategy. And finally, what practical tips you should keep in mind as you begin to test the content waters. After all, content marketing builds trust with your consumers, and that leads to sales and growth.

What Exactly Is Content Marketing?

Joe Pulizzi, one of the godfathers of this modern marketing practice, offers this formal definition in his book Epic Content Marketing:

“The marketing and business process for creating and distributing valuable and compelling content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

~Joe Pulizzi

The main takeaway here should be the term valuable. Doing marketing this way is all about focusing less on communicating information about your business. It is more about the informational needs of your target audience — like solving their problems. It is also concerned with the means by which you share that information using tactics such as blogs, newsletters and social media.

Where traditional market relies on “renting” media — think print or digital ads — content marketing aims to own media, like newsletters and blogs. We have previously detailed the steps you can take to start content marketing next year, to build your business. Front Porch executes monthly newsletters, blogs and other content marketing tactics for several of our clients to help them build their customer base and grow their companies.

What Is The Value of This Type of Marketing?

At its core, Pulizzi conceives of this type of marketing as a “strategy focused on the creation of a valuable experience.” In this way it is the future of marketing. Consumers are becoming increasingly disillusioned with transactional interactions. They are instead opting to build relationships with brands they love. From a business perspective, it means attracting and retaining customers by creating a dialogue with your audience. Open up communication with your target audience in this way. Then you can continually refine your approach and product using first-party data.

Practical Tips

As you create a strategy it’s important to invest in writers and strategists. They can produce high-quality content that will resonate with your target audience. If building out a content team inside your company is not currently within your budget, don’t fret. You’ll need to create brand and content guidelines that can be shared with marketing firms like ours, to ensure consistency.

Front Porch acts as a supplement to many of our clients’ in-house marketing teams. Pro-tip: The majority of your website traffic resulting from content marketing like blogs and newsletters is likely to come from a mobile device. So be sure to make mobile your top channel strategy.

If we can help you set-up and maintain content marketing for you, just holler!

Blogs. Social media. Video. White papers. Infographics. All these things, and more, are content and can be used in content marketing. But what is the point of generating all this content?

The point is this: in an increasingly fractured media landscape, building an audience and a community around your company is one of the few ways to directly reach consumers. By giving them something of value, they will give you some of their attention.

Content marketing is about building trust. If consumers trust your company, they will be more likely to buy from your company.

Today’s consumer is used to doing their own research before they buy. According to a 2016 Demand Gen Report, 47% of buyers view 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep. Wouldn’t you rather have one of those pieces of content be from you?

The Marketing Funnel is Changing Shape

The marketing funnel isn’t so much a funnel anymore as a flywheel. This Forbes article excerpt explains it best:

A change in mindset and a library of high-quality content will replace this traditional funnel with something more sustainable (and effective). The funnel is becoming more of an ongoing cycle that prioritizes continuous engagement over transactional relationships. This increased focus on nurturing, especially post-sale, makes customers more likely to stay with you or buy again — and more likely to give recommendations to friends and colleagues.

With content, you can transition your brand from vendor to partner. To be honest, someone else in your space can almost always come in and undercut you on price. But when you continuously engage your clients, build lasting trust, and form genuine partnerships, you’ll have much greater staying power.

The Oldest Content Marketer on the Block

Content marketing has been around for as long as there has been, well, content. One of the earliest, and in my opinion, one of the best content marketing examples is The Furrow magazine produced by John Deere.

What started out as an advertorial-driven publication turned into a beloved resource for generations of farmers. Today, The Furrow is a story-telling vehicle, with great photography and advice on how farmers can run their businesses.

And, there’s not much actual mention of John Deere. The Furrow is happy to be a trusted source for farmers, and in exchange, farmers let John Deere into their homes.

Fun With Fireworks

You don’t have to be the flashiest company on the block to use content marketing. Case-in-point, high-end cooler company Yeti. From the beginning, Yeti forged their own marketing path.

In addition to targeting “prosumers” with sponsored programming on hunting and fishing television stations, Yeti created a series of short video clips that put their product to the test. They pitted their coolers against a professional wrestler, a slingshot, and even fireworks.

Content marketing is usually educational. But it can be fun, too.

Canva is another great example of content marketing that takes care of the customer rather than pushing them through a funnel. Canva is a graphic design app that also publishes helpful content through their Design School blog and social media. They are a resource for their customers and earn their trust.

I used Canva when I was working in a job where I did not have access to Adobe products (the industry standard when it comes to graphic design.) I also tried out different software alternatives. Truthfully, if the Canva software didn’t work as well as it does, I might have gone with one of their competitors. But, Canva works well and it’s a great resource. So, I went with them.

Yes, eventually I moved on to Adobe products. But it certainly wasn’t because of price (graphic designers often call it the “Adobe Tax”). For a long time, I relied on Canva for graphic design basics and how-to information. And now, I tell anyone and everyone who needs graphic design software cheaply to try out Canva. I am no longer their customer, but I am an advocate for them.

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Content marketing is a slow roll. It’s like leaving a bread crumb trail for consumers to follow. Spread those bread crumbs around, make them irresistible. Everyone wants to be remembered, so tell your story.