Marketing as a small business presents a number of challenges. Not only do you have to compete with the more established brands that exist in your industry, you’re also typically working with a much smaller marketing budget when compared to larger and more established businesses. The fact that consumers today are more resistant to traditional advertising than ever by subscribing to ad-free digital content and installing ad blockers on their browsers makes it even more challenging for a small business to get the brand recognition needed to grow.

To stand out from the noise and make your brand known in what’s certain to be an overcrowded market, small business owners need to embrace crafting a message their target audience will actually respond to. This means developing marketing content that’s more than just a cleverly disguised sales pitch, but is something that provides your audience with real value. The message your brand imparts should no longer come in a form that disrupts – such as traditional advertising – the consumer from their day, but rather adds value by providing relevant information that actually enhances the lives of your target audience.

This is where content marketing can help your business grow. Content marketing requires your small business to consistently create and distribute information that is both relevant and valuable to anyone you would consider a potential customer or client. When done correctly, a successful content marking strategy will not only lead to more business, it will help establish your brand as an innovative leader within your industry.

While the idea of consistently developing content may seem a little intimidating at first, a successfully implemented content marketing strategy can offer your small business a number of significant advantages. Here are a few ways that content marketing can help your business grow.

Improves Brand Awareness

A successful content marketing strategy requires dedicating yourself to consistently producing content. This means that you need to publish new content with regularity, either on your website or through social media. New content creation will then enable your brand to receive consistent exposure to your target audience. Your brand becomes more familiar to your audience, and you’ll become the first business they think of when they need your services.

Enables You to Become a Thought Leader

If there are five dentists in a community, but only one takes the time to publish content related to improving the health and appearance of their patients’ smiles, that brand will begin to stand out as the leading expert. By providing this type of content, a brand is demonstrating its expertise, so that potential new patients won’t question their experience or credentials. Since this dental practice is also providing helpful information at no cost, they also develop the reputation as being a trustworthy and respected voice within their industry.

Encourages Customers to Take Action

Consumers looking to make a purchase typically fall into one of two camps: those looking to gather information and those looking to buy. What generally separates these two camps in a lack of information. By creating content that answers your customers’ questions, you expedite the process so they no longer need to look, they can immediately move to buy.

Sharable Content Creates Exposure

Developing a steady stream of fresh content on a variety of relevant topics creates the ability to drive traffic to your small business’ website. Posts shared on social media or through advertising avenues like Google Adwords lead to phone calls, clicks, form submissions, and foot traffic. Unfortunately, very few consumers are going to click on an ad or post that doesn’t offer some relevant information, so you need dynamic content to promote.

These type of content portals, however, require content that generates interest. Publishing new, relevant content gives people a reason to click and visit your site. To drive the most interest possible, consider developing more content around unique, seasonal, or timely topics. The more you develop content that people are actively searching for, the higher you will appear in search rankings above the competition.

Keeps Your Website Up-to-Date

Depending on your industry, you might struggle to find a reason to update the content on your website if you don’t have a blog or another type of content publishing platform. While a small boutique may constantly update its website when new products arrive, more static services businesses such as a dental practice may struggle to expand the core content of its website. Blogging or creating other relevant content provides your business with an easy way to consistently add new content to its website, which offers a number of benefits.

Not only does creating content provide customers a reason to keep coming back, it also improves a website’s Google search rankings. Google’s algorithm rewards websites that feature fresh content that’s viewed as being more relevant to a user’s search. Older, static websites are viewed as providing less relevant information, and their rankings suffer as a result. While having an older website won’t necessarily cause you to plummet in a Google search ranking, it could be the difference to appearing above the competition or below.

Local Fresh Can Help Develop Your Content Marketing Strategy

As a small business owner, you’re probably already feeling overworked and overextended. The very idea of developing fresh content on a regular basis may seem impossible to manage considering your current workload. That’s where Local Fresh can help. Our team of content marketing specialist can help create the kind of timely, relevant content your small business needs to establish its brand among the top of your industry. Click here to find out more about what Local Fresh can do for you.