How to Do Cost-effective content marketing for small businesses.

Good content marketing makes you an authority in your field, builds trust with your customers, generates valuable backlinks through organic distribution, improves your search engine ranking, and helps you leverage the power of social media to improve your reputation and attract more visitors to your website. Here is a list of actions you can take to do cost-effective content marketing for small businesses.

• Blog at least three times a week. Blogging helps you reach new customers, boost search engine rankings, become a thought leader in your niche, increase brand awareness and build a community of followers. Plus, your top content is more likely to go viral if you turn it into blog posts.
• Write guest blog posts. Guest posting on popular blogs in your niche brings you traffic, organically builds backlinks, establishes you as an expert, and helps you connect with new audiences as well as other people who are doing the same thing you are. Guest blogging is much more effective than article marketing for most marketers and should be one of the starting points in your co-marketing strategy.
• Publish an eBook every now and then. The most popular eBooks on the Internet cover a topic in-depth, offer lots of tips, advice, facts and statistics, and include images/tables/graphics. It is advisable to keep your eBooks short and sweet, i.e. they should not be longer than 40 pages.
• Write articles and publish them in good article directories and social platforms like Medium or LinkedIn. Although article marketing is not what it used to be, it still works for those who use it for indirect marketing by gaining customers' trust with valuable content offered for free.
• Create compelling case studies. By making short case studies of just a few pages describing how one of your products or services helped a customer, you build credibility and subtly market yourself. Customers are more likely to buy from companies that offer case studies.
• Host a webinar every quarter. Webinars are a form of live events, where employees from your company and other experts you invite discuss important topics in detail. The most popular webinars tend to be educational and have a support team to answer and monitor questions live in the chat. You can after use the replay for an emailing campaign to registered contacts or use it as a webhook for lead generation.
• Record weekly or monthly podcasts. To create podcasts, you'll need basic recording equipment, an interviewer (probably you), and a customer or expert in your field with whom you can discuss a hot topic. Podcasts are useful because many people who do not otherwise have time to read your articles can listen to them while driving, jogging, or going to work in the morning.
• Create white papers. White papers, which explain complex topics in detail and often contain original research, can establish you as an expert in your segment. They can also serve as a foundation for your ongoing marketing efforts, as you can turn key findings into blog posts, guides, infographics and tweets.
• Record videos. Video tutorials/case studies/customer interviews are very popular online, whether they are posted on your website, social sites, or YouTube channel, and they also rank well with search engines. Many users would rather watch a video than read an article. Keep them short, straight to the point and easy to digest, it allows your audience to consume little bites of your content daily keeping them engaged with your brand.

Content marketing is still the most effective way for small businesses to become better known online, improve their search engine rankings, and ultimately increase their sales. It may take time or money (if you use freelancers), but it always pays off in the long run.

To summarise, content marketing is a great way for your brand to succeed in the increasingly competitive digital world we live in today. With the right strategy and quality content, you can help your brand drive web traffic, increase brand awareness, and drive sales. To take your brand to the next level, you need to explore all forms of content that media platforms have to offer. With the wide variety of content available to you, you are sure to find the one that best suits your brand!

Not sure where to start? Book a free consultation with us, we have plenty of tips to get you started right away!