Why Is Content Marketing Right for Small Businesses?

From the archive. First published February 2021.

When I started writing for online platforms, using ads for customer acquisition was still the trend. Then I lived through its gradual fade into ad blockers.

Advertisements have grown less effective over the years.

Of course, there are still creative ways to use ads to attract customers to your brand. But more often than not, the ads disappear into irrelevance.

Gary Vaynerchuk has been predicting this downfall for over half a decade.

“Get your shit right.”

Part of the reason is ad blockers. About 25% of customers use ad blockers on their devices, and that number is only going up.

So, as a small business without a massive marketing budget, what can you do to keep selling your bread and also buy new ovens, so you can bake bread for years to come?

The answer is to invest in content marketing.

Investing in content is a long-term strategy.

It uses various formats (text, video, podcasts, images, and more) to build a relationship with your audience by creating and sharing helpful content over a long period.

Instead of focusing only on the immediate impact, content marketing creates brand equity.

It captures the attention of your audience.

It builds trust.

It improves engagement.

And that leads to positive brand recall.

But what does that mean?

It means that your brand becomes more valuable as it produces more valuable content.

It is about helping your audience until they are comfortable enough to walk into the store and try the product or service themselves, without a push.

For a small business, it’s a great opportunity to gain a reputation as a leader in your field.

It starts slowly, but as you gain momentum you gather more and more attention, until one day you’re leading your field.

It’s different from other ways of gaining an audience, because here people come looking for your brand voluntarily. They come to you. And that’s where your content strategy comes into play.

There are a few things you need to keep in mind.

Your audience has a problem and they want to solve it. Simple.

As a brand, you’re helping them and simultaneously growing your business.

• First, work out who your audience is. Make a list of the problems they are struggling with and build a resource that solves them.

• Second, start speaking the language of your audience. Are they interested in text or video? Or are they the bunch that listens to podcasts? Once you know the format, the game becomes experimenting and adjusting your content to their needs.

• Third, grow with your audience. Design all your content around one central topic and keep producing useful, relevant content over the months and years to come. Say I am focusing on the marketing problems small businesses face. Then almost all my posts should try to solve those problems.

That’s it. Those are the bare bones of what you need to do as a small business if you want sustainable growth.

Good content has always driven the world of marketing. It doesn’t cost much. And it sticks. It has for decades and probably always would.

This applies to your videos and audio too, since they are made of words.

The right words ring the right music in your potential audience. They make a difference.

There is no secret here. Invest in Content.

Recap

Content marketing is currently the best bet for small businesses. You make a list of the problems your audience faces and you solve them.

To create a successful content strategy:

• Determine your audience.

• Speak their language.

• Grow with your audience.

If this helped, subscribe to Yogic Productivity on Substack, where the Sunday post arrives by email. If you would like somewhere to think out loud, an Explorative Letter is a pen friend who writes back. And if you run a yoga or wellness brand and want content that sounds like you, let's talk.