Whether you are a fledgling startup or an established organization, you simply cannot underestimate the power of content marketing in today’s digital world. Creating engaging, relevant, and meaningful content for online audiences can generate brand awareness and increase sales in an unbelievable way.
According to Content Marketing Institute’s Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report, 91 percent of B2B marketers and 86 percent of B2C marketers are leveraging content marketing. Even small businesses are taking a strategic approach to content marketing so as to meet their marketing objectives more effectively.
Every organization that is content-savvy seeks to create a content marketing strategy that converts.
But, more often than not, startups and small businesses often face budgetary constraints while going about with content marketing. Startup marketing isn’t a piece of cake, but a well-planned content marketing strategy can help marketers reap maximum benefits.
If you are running on a limited budget but looking for ways to create a killer content marketing strategy, here are a few tips to follow:
Understand your goals and your audience
Unless you set concrete and achievable goals and profile your audience, your content marketing strategy will fail to convert. In order to create a strong content marketing strategy on a shoestring budget, you need to specify what exactly do you wish to achieve from the campaign. It can be driving web traffic, increasing brand awareness or pushing up the number of email subscribers.
At the same time, you need to know your customer demographic so that you don’t waste money targeting the wrong audience. Knowing where your audience is spending most of their time and what type of content they look for will help you channelize your money towards more profitable channels and content formats.
Find the right writers
The success of content marketing depends hugely on how well the content is crafted. Businesses have to focus on creating content that is not only engaging and relevant but is also optimized for visibility on search engines. If you wish to create good-quality content, you can have a full-time in-house writer who possesses knowledge of your niche. Hiring an in-house writer is great for meeting year-round content requirements.
You also have the option of hiring freelance writers who have a standard per-word rate or go for a content marketing agency. You can check out freelance platforms such as Freelancer or Upwork or use the services of a full-time content marketing agency such as Godot Media to get professional content writers without breaking your bank.
Leverage different tools
If you are operating your business on a low budget, perhaps you need to use a few free tools for maximizing the effectiveness of your content marketing. This becomes particularly useful when you are using content marketing to maintain a strong social media presence. There are different content marketing tools that small businesses and startups can use to curate, automate, and distribute different types of content on a day-to-day basis. Not only do these tools save money but also save marketers’ time by automating content publishing on social channels. At the same time, it’s important to add email marketing and SEO to your arsenal of content marketing tools in order to increase reach, generate leads, and to increase sales.
Organize your schedule
There’s no doubt that organized workflows lead to greater efficiency and productivity, which is a sign that your money is going into the right business aspects. One good way to organize your content marketing processes is by creating a proper publishing schedule. Creating a content schedule helps you focus on the content you intend to create in the future. San editorial calendar can perhaps help you in this.
An editorial calendar is one of the most important parts of a business’s content marketing process. Creating an editorial calendar helps you in saving time and publish content in a timely manner. It puts the entire month’s schedule before us and helps us decide the frequency of posting. It makes the publishing schedule more consistent, which helps in increasing the volume of content created.
Consider influencer marketing
Influencers are basically people who have a strong fan-following and have the potential to generate positive word-of-mouth about your brand. Influencer marketing is certainly not a new concept in today’s social media-driven world, where audiences follow popular celebrities and personalities for inspiration. Influencer marketing is all about leveraging the reputation of a person to promote a brand before consumers.
Influencer marketing has become a highly-adopted marketing form because it can generate brand awareness without marketers having to spend whopping sums of money. You can approach an influencer who can bridge the gap between your brand and your audience by promoting your content, product or services on their public profiles. Not only will they make your brand popular but also inspire consumers to choose your offer.
Don’t forget affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing certainly involves some cost but it also offers a good return on investment. Affiliate marketing has been used for years now, under which a person refers an online product to some other person and gets a commission. Depending on the product being promoted, the amount of commission may vary between $1 to $10,000. it requires you to approach affiliates, who are publishers who use affiliate links to promote a product and increase sales.
Companies and brands that use affiliate marketing tend to get a number of advantages. But the most common benefit of such programs is the free promotion. Discount or coupon links are common examples of affiliate links which can push consumers to purchase the product. This is a good way for brands to save money on expensive advertising campaigns.
Content is certainly ruling the digital space today. As such, marketers cannot afford to ignore the importance of content marketing for rising above the competition. You can follow the tips above to craft a content marketing strategy if you have a shoestring budget. There’s already enough potential in content marketing. You just have to take the necessary steps and actions to up your game.
Aashish Sarma is a content strategist specializing social media and content marketing. Writing, travel, music, and socializing are hobbies that he pursues whole-heartedly.
