It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the success of a business relies heavily on the quality of the content it puts out there. And it couldn’t possibly be otherwise in today’s relentless competition, regardless of industry.
Content is included in every aspect of marketing activities a company may use to attract new leads and create strong relations with its existing customers. If done well, creative content marketing can increase your company’s visibility and enhance its reputation. On the contrary, if done poorly, a brand may suffer and lose its otherwise loyal clients.
Here, the quality of your creative content marketing campaign is an important factor no matter the marketing strategy you decide to follow. It has to be valuable to the audience, educational (if applicable), and problem-solving. By answering these needs, you’ll most likely have successful content marketing efforts.
However, creating such meaningful content is not easy; the point is to come up with the right content at the ideal timing and serve it to your target audience. Sounds extremely tricky? It really is!
Main content marketing outlets
So, how and where can you use content in order to optimize your marketing efforts? Here we have the main outlets:
Your Website
It should contain valuable content that informs the visitor about what you offer and your unique features and low prices, for example. By including eye-catching CTAs and contact forms you invite prospects to discover your quality products or services.
Social Media
In our previous article “Easy techniques to improve your social media presence”, we discussed how important it is to be relevant and interesting on your social pages. Your small business’s content on social media is key to keeping your followers and gaining new ones.
Ads
You have to create meaningful content for your advertising campaigns, be it Adwords or social media ads! From visuals (images, videos, etc.) to the accompanying texts, your advertising efforts need to stand out.
Your newsletters and promotional messages are critical to increasing your sales and spreading the word about your small business. Their content has to be on-point and interesting; you want the recipient to follow a link to try out your product or get a quote for your services.
Mobile
This tends to become obsolete. However, there are certain segments of the population that respond well to text messaging campaigns. You can always include a link along with the main content to “drive” them online. Yet, some mobile applications, such as Viber, have also introduced marketing features that can enable businesses to send out their promotions including images and external links. This is the contemporary version of traditional texts!
Depending on the channel and marketing goals you have set, there are several creative content marketing types you can employ in order to carry out your campaigns.
Also, your audience may have specific preferences; some people are more visual so they enjoy a good video ad, while others are more into reading texts.
You want to include all these different types of content into your strategy in order to reach more and more people. In this article, we are going to discuss the most creative and effective content types that will help you deliver your message to the desired recipients and achieve maximum engagement.
Ideas and tips for a successful marketing strategy for your small business
#1 Blogging and articles
A great way to offer valuable content to your audience is blogging in the form of 3’-4’ mins read articles. Their subjects could be anything that provides some sort of insight related to your fields, such as marketing advice for small businesses and social media marketing tips for small business owners.
Your content could be posted on your own website if you have a blog section. If you don’t, think about creating one. You could also do the same on affiliate websites in the form of guest blogs with backlinks and on your social media accounts. The main benefits of blogging are that they are easily found by Google and readers can share them, thus increasing your reach!
Moreover, the process of writing one is relatively simple and above all, cost-effective! So, by let’s say, offering social media marketing tips for small businesses you increase the effectiveness of your marketing strategy!
Always remember that your articles need to be consistent. They must align with your brand with respect to aesthetics and quality. These factors are essential if you want to bring in more traffic and make conversions.
#2 Visual aids
As we mentioned above, some people are innately more drawn to visual aids rather than texts! Your content marketing will be even more effective if you include attractive imagery in your online presence and posts.
Your message can be more condensed by using graphs and infographics that are carefully designed to be clear and simple for your audience!
Choose tasteful, high-resolution photos to put on your website and to complement your blogs so as to convey the right message. Colour palettes and shapes have special meanings, so make sure to look them up for maximum engagement.
#3 Videos
Another way to create more leads by using creative content marketing is through videos. People love to learn new things, it’s in our nature!
One of the best content marketing examples is creating tutorials; for example, how-to videos that make it a lot easier for leads to understanding how your products work.
The goal here is to illustrate the problems your product or services solve. By proving that, you automatically come across as an expert in your field! One of the benefits of incorporating videos into your content marketing is that people can pause, rewind and download them and re-watch them anytime they want on any device.
Once again, it’s important to include your brand and make your videos fun, or at least, interesting to watch.
#4 E-books & Presentations
If done right, e-books are a great way to offer valuable and creative content to your audience!
The most common practice is giving them away for free to your newsletter subscribers, in order to increase your conversion rate.
However, they are a bit time-consuming and apply mostly to companies that offer somewhat educational services. They can also be guide-oriented in case you want to both attract customers and present how your products work!
Presentations and slideshows, using SlideShare for example, are useful when you want to provide useful information about your business or key advice snippets.
#5 Copywriting
Texts all over your content whether it is an article or just a headline, need to be attention-grabbing and cause clicks on your website.
One of the most important elements that should be part of any social media marketing strategy for small business owners is copywriting. Any accompanying text you may put on posts and advertisements should aim to increase brand awareness and persuade the audience to perform some kind of further action. For example, they can subscribe to your services and contact you for more info among others.
Which creative content marketing type is best for your small business?
Attracting your target audience, at the right moment is difficult; however, you need to keep in mind that there is no single recipe for increasing your conversion rates! You should also pay attention to creative content marketing trends that pop up every year.
The content you choose to put out there lies entirely in your hands. Therefore, unless you try different combinations of content you’ll never know what works for your business!
Every content format has its benefits and drawbacks but it all boils down to which ones align best with your brand. So, make sure you provide content for people who like to consume videos as well as for the ones who find articles more interesting! Or even think about doing some creative marketing through your invoices.
