How New Businesses Can Gain Big From Content Marketing

Marketing is No Longer About the Stuff That You Make, But About the Stories You Tell

Seth Godin

We all are very well aware of the evolution the contemporary business world is going through. Nowadays, individuals are not afraid to take a risk and raise a startup on their own. In fact, according to research, more than 600,000 new businesses open each year in the United States.

Moreover, it is also an undeniable fact that building a business is tough, but what’s tougher is marketing the business to the relevant target market. You would certainly love to make it to the list of Fortune 500 companies in the future. For that, how innovative you get with your marketing is going to be the underlying difference.

When we talk about marketing in contemporary times, it’s a lot different than how we’ve known marketing traditionally. Contemporary marketing is becoming more synonymous with digital marketing as the internet has become the new land of amazing opportunities for young businesses to acquire great success in little time.

Even digital marketing is quite diverse in its ways. It can be a very big subject to cover, so what we’re focusing on here is content marketing specifically.

Bill Gates once said, “content is the king” and that is certainly coming true in this digital era. Today, the world revolves around content, and even purchase decisions are driven by content. This explains why businesses are allocating large funds to content marketing.

Rebbeca Lieb summed it up nicely by saying, “Content is the atomic particle of digital marketing”. Hence, ignoring content marketing while working on digital marketing is just like making a spicy dish but forgetting to put spices in the same.

Every product you market gets attention through the way you market it. In such scenarios, focusing on your content is really crucial especially when you are at such an early stage of business.

However, only writing high-quality content is not the key. You need to choose the right direction to market your product to your potential customers. To simplify, all you need is the latest and actionable strategies that will assist you in enhancing your new business growth through content marketing.

Having said that, this blog will effectively highlight the top 5 ways in which startups can get major exposure through creative content marketing.

5 Ways New Businesses Can Benefit From Content Marketing

Optimize Your Content

As this is one of the most crucial points, let’s understand this by an example. Let’s assume you have written an article that is well researched and very clearly explains the concept you’re pitching. You published it on your website, but you failed to reach your target audience.

Now the question arises that irrespective of the fact that, you provided high-quality content, what could be the possible reasons for low reach?

The answer is “content optimization”. (or lack thereof in your case)

Before your website reaches your audience, it is important that you convince Google that you are adding value to their search engine experience, and doing so is only possible through content optimization.

Having good readability is the most basic way to convince Google, however, below are some other SEO practices that can assist you in optimizing your content in the most efficient and effective way.

Focus on keyword optimization

The most common way to optimize your content is by placing links back to your site from high-ranking keywords on authoritative websites.  These keywords should be decided before writing the article. The better volume of your keyword, and the authority of the website, will determine the sites your select in your targeting.

However, you need to make sure that your keywords are relevant to your target audience and your content. Alongside, you also need to make sure that you should not focus on keyword stuffing or keyword cannibalization. Diversify your anchor text to avoid any issues.

A well-structured keyword strategy depends on effective keyword research. Make sure to use a tool like Semrush to uncover keyword opportunities and put the best plan in place to boost your site in search results.

Leverage the benefits of Videos

Did you know that Google loves videos? This implies that if you have added videos to your blog and your website, there are better chances that it will rank better on search engines. To validate, blog posts with videos experience 157% increased search traffic compared to only text-based blog posts.

If you’re unfamiliar with how to add video to your blog posts, relax. It’s simple to embed a video clip on your blog, and it’ll tend to keep your visitors on the page much longer. Here’s a tutorial (video, of course) to help you get started.

Hence, you can add your video-based content along with your post to optimize your blog content more efficiently. Moreover, people also like to see videos. This also enhances your chances of engaging with your audience through interesting videos.

Focus on technical elements

Focusing on SEO’s technical side is another important aspect of ranking higher on the result pages. Some of the technical terms of SEO include:

• Meta Titles
• Meta Description
• Short Description
• Alt Text
• Image Text

All these technical aspects (and more) have some rules and regulations that assist in keeping Google happy. Hence, in order to rank higher on Google and enhance your visibility, it is essential for you to keep the rules of these technical terms in mind.   

Be a backlink magnet

Backlinking is one of the most important SEO practices that can assist you in optimizing your content and website. Backlinks will help you in enhancing your domain authority and domain ratings on search engines.

In order to become a backlink magnet, you need to present the most unique and relevant content to your target audience so that other websites want to backlink your blog for some solid insights.

Here are some great link building tips: Best 12 Link Building Tips to Boost Your SEO

As you build your backlink profile, be sure to leverage an SEO tool to gain insight into your site’s authority, the number of referring domains, how many backlinks you’ve earned, the number of toxic links, and more.

Personalize Content

Another strategy to optimize your content is to give a personal touch to your content.

As a new business, it is really important for you to connect with your target audience on a deeper level in order to leave your mark on their minds. That being the case, the personalization of the content you produce will allow you to connect with your target audience on a personal level.

Alongside, people also like to interact with businesses that provide personalized content. This will also assist you in building up your brand authority. To substantiate, as per the statistics, 91% of customers are more likely to shop with brands that provide relevant offers and recommendations.

Hence, the bottom line is if you use the above-given tips and tricks to optimize your content, it will effectively assist you in reaching your target audience and enhancing your visibility on SERP (search engine result page).

This will eventually add up to enhancing your visibility on search engines which will attract more visitors to your website and will assist you in generating more revenues. The personalization efforts will keep them coming back for more.

Leverage Online Mediums

Although content marketing can be performed online as well as offline, keeping in mind the popularity and effectiveness of digital marketing, online content marketing would be the best option for your new business.

Moreover, whenever we talk about content marketing, the first thing that crosses our minds is SEO and website optimization. Although SEO is a major part of content marketing, there are other platforms on which content marketing can be executed.

Below you’ll see a variety of tools through which you can optimize your content in an efficient and effective manner.

1. Social media
2. Email marketing
3. Websites
4. Video marketing
5. Digital advertising
6. Forums (think Reddit and Quora)
7. Guest blogging

Using these tools and platforms to enhance your content marketing strategy will effectively assist you in getting fruitful results. To elaborate, if people like your content on social media, it will automatically get more shares, higher engagement, and better reach.

To validate, as per the statistics, 78% of audiences are ready to purchase from a company after a positive experience with them on social media. All these will effectively contribute to enhancing your brand awareness and will increase your online presence.

Once the brand authority of your business gets established, people trust you more easily and this will encourage them to make purchases from you. This way, all these will contribute to enhancing the growth and revenue of your new business. 

Create a Content Calendar

As discussed above, when you start a new business, you already have a lot on your plate. From handling financials, production, and marketing, you wear a lot of hats. That being the case, it is essential to plan some things ahead of time to make sure everything functions smoothly.

In the case of content marketing, you can create a content calendar. Consistency and staying organized is the key to content marketing success. Moreover, to stay organized it is essential to create a content calendar to keep yourself updated.

There are lots of online tools that do this, but if you’re looking to save money, you can use a simple spreadsheet. Here’s an example:

For those who are not aware of the term, the content calendar – also called the editorial calendar – refers to the written schedule of your posts including the time and date they will get published, along with notes about keywords, authors, and other important elements.

The content calendar will assist you in staying organized and punctual with the posting of your content across all the platforms. It also offers your content creators a nice roadmap and all the info they need to create amazing content.

Along with this, as a new business owner, your effective management of time will reflect your productivity and effectiveness. Hence, planning before creating the content will assist in arranging all the resources beforehand. This will assist you in saving your time and being more productive in the successful attainment of your SMART goals.

Establish Goals With Metrics

As Peter Ducker once correctly quoted, “if you can not measure it, you can not improve it.” This quote is especially significant when you are new in the market. There may be plenty of things and strategies that you will try, and in order to measure your growth and improvement, it is essential to set goals. 

However, marketers often know that they have to set goals but they are not aware of a way to measure the attainment of those goals. This is where the role of key performance indicators will enter the picture.

Key performance indicators will assist you in measuring the success of your goals and will also indicate the areas that require improvement. These indicated strengths and weaknesses will assist you in filling out the remaining gaps and will make your content marketing more effective and efficient.

Moving ahead, when it comes to content marketing on digital platforms, below are some of the major key performance indicators that can assist you in measuring the attainment of your established goals.

1. Traffic on social handles
2. Customers’ engagement
3. Backlinks
4. Keyword rankings
5. Lead generation

These KPIs will assist you to track your growth in terms of the implementation of your content marketing strategy. Once you get clear on your performance, you can effectively improve and perform better in order to gain major benefits from your content marketing. Constant improvements will assist you in gaining maximum profits.

 Bring UGC into The Picture

As it is hard for your target audience to trust you because of being new in the market, it is essential for you to present proof to your target audience in order to gain their confidence. In such scenarios, user-generated content is one of the most effective forms of content marketing strategy that can assist your new business in achieving major gains.

To define, user-generated content refers to the brand-centric content created by users that are further utilized by the company to acquire new customers.

User-generated content will act as social proof for your customers that will encourage them to trust you and move ahead on the purchase journey from your brand. To validate, as per stats, 55 % of consumers irrespective of their age trust UGC over any other forms of marketing.

You can collect UGC from your existing customers through feedback, ratings, or reviews. Further, you can present the content in an engaging form such as video on various online platforms to hook your target audience. In fact, as per statistics, 85 % of customers stated that visual UGC is more influential than brand videos.

This way, UGC will assist you in enhancing your social engagement and presence among your target audience. Moreover, it will also help in enhancing your brand awareness and the growth of your new business.

Moreover, if you think you don’t have enough customers to present your social proof, we have got a solution for that too. You can collaborate with influencers, and send them your product for free in exchange for feedback or reviews. This will assist you in two ways

1. You will get popular faces for promoting your product.
2. You will get reviews to kick start your UGC strategy.

Working with influencers takes UGC to another level and offers tons of benefits.

Final Thoughts on Content Marketing for Your New Business

To encapsulate, it takes a lot of patience to build a new business.

Content marketing is a powerful way to boost your brand’s presence and save money at the same time.

Content levels the playing field for small businesses and startups. Lots of major players across all industries are still struggling to get their content marketing game together, so take advantage and put your new business on the map through content.