Content Marketing for Small Businesses: Ideas, Tips, & Examples

Content marketing remains one of the most effective ways to attract, engage, and convert your customers.

But today, your content strategy needs so much more than keyword-optimized blog posts. A strong content marketing strategy starts with understanding your audience, creating valuable content that answers their questions, and consistently delivering it through the right channels.

These channels include blogs, yes, but also social media channels, long-form videos, newsletters, and even interactive content.

In this guide, you’ll get everything you need to start, optimize, and track a super-successful content marketing program for your small business.

Contents

• What is content marketing?
• What does good content marketing look like?
• What are the benefits of content marketing for small businesses?
• How do you create a content marketing strategy for a small business?
• Essential content marketing tips for success
• Content marketing ideas and examples to get you started

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the strategic approach to creating, producing, and distributing relevant, valuable content from a brand to an audience.

The goal of this strategy is to offer educational materials, rather than sales-focused content, so that you can showcase your expertise and speak directly to your ideal customers. And we’re using speak here intentionally.

With content marketing, you’re not giving a hard sales pitch. Instead, you’re speaking to your audience to build a relationship, establish your brand as a resource, and encourage trust, which will lead to sales down the line.

Content in this context includes a wide variety of types, including:

• Blog posts
• Email newsletters
• Social media posts
• Infographics
• White papers
• Ebooks
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• Videos

Even interactive content—think quizzes or certifications—can be considered content marketing. There are many mediums in content marketing. The only golden rule is to make sure you’re creating quality stuff.

Cotton Candy Fabric Shop offers free patterns on its blog, a clear value to its customers.

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What does good content marketing look like?

Good content marketing is original, high-quality, and audience-focused. This means it provides value to your audience, whether by answering a specific question, sharing a step-by-step tutorial, providing information on a relevant topic, or offering entertaining and engaging material.

At the same time, good content marketing is also beneficial for your brand. While you’re not always selling directly, you do want your content to be working towards your business goals.

That means your content marketing strategy is helping you build a relationship with your audience and encouraging them to take an action. Remember, this will help make your effort more directly attributable to results.

For example, a home improvement contractor might create educational content about undertaking DIY projects around the home. This may seem counterintuitive at first, because you want prospects to hire you to do the work. But in reality, educational content like this does a few things to help the business.

Mr. Rooter’s blog shares plumbing tips, tricks, and basic education. 

First, it solves a problem for your customer. If your social media post teaches them how to do something important, like find their own property lines ahead of a renovation, you establish yourself as a helpful guide in the industry.

Second, it builds trust. If your advice for locating the property lines works, they begin to see you as a reliable source for accurate information.

Finally, it keeps your business top-of-mind. By consistently creating content, you stay on people’s radar screens. When the time comes for a homeowner to undertake the renovation they’ve been dreaming of, you’re more likely to get a call to quote the job.

What are the benefits of content marketing for small businesses?

You can put a lot of work into content marketing. So, is the effort worth it?

First, consider these stats:

• Businesses that actively write and publish blog posts get 55% more website visitors.
• 70% of people prefer an article or blog post over a traditional ad when it comes to learning more about a company.
• Content marketing produces 3x more leads (per dollar) than other types of marketing.

Content marketing helps you grow your audience and attract more leads organically, serving as a strong complement to your paid marketing strategies.

Specifically for your small business, content marketing will help you:

• Build authority: Regularly creating and publishing content related to your industry positions your business as an authority in your space. Prospects and customers may turn to you to find helpful information, which can lead to increased business down the line.
• Increase your reach: Publishing content that’s optimized for search engines, AI, and social media algorithms will help you get found in relevant searches. For example, if your plumbing business publishes content about how to fix a sink, a new potential customer could find that post when searching for that query.

A local plumber and home inspector show up in this AI Overview because of their content marketing.

• Encourage brand loyalty: Over time, content marketing helps you cultivate long-term relationships with your customers, so they remember you and choose you more often.
• Grow a stronger social media presence: Content marketing supports your social media strategy because what you build for your blog or YouTube channel can be repurposed for your social feeds.
• Set up long-term value: A well-written article, an engaging video, or even a useful infographic can continue attracting visitors for months or even years. Even better, this long-term value can make content marketing more cost-effective over time.

With all of these benefits, content marketing is worth the investment of time, effort, and budget even for small businesses. The trick is setting up a strategy that works for your business, which we’ll get into next.

How to create a small business content marketing strategy

To realize these benefits for your business, you need a solid content marketing strategy in place. Here’s a step-by-step guide to setting up a plan to get started.

1. Define SMART content goals

You can’t have an effective strategy without goals, so the first step is to define yours. It’s best to have a clear, specific goal for your content from the start. For example, growing your following on Instagram isn’t a complete goal in itself. Neither is getting more site traffic.

Real content goals should be SMART:

• Specific: Detail exactly what you’re looking to do.
• Measurable: Attach a clear, quantifiable metric to your plan.
• Achievable: Be realistic. Can you actually create a new blog post every day? If not, skip that one and stick to what you can do.
• Relevant: Your content goal should support your business goals.
• Time-bound: Give yourself a deadline.

Let’s say you run a yoga studio. A SMART goal for your content strategy might be:

Increase organic traffic to our blog by 25% in the next three months by publishing weekly posts. Topics focus on yoga for stress relief, and target keywords include phrases like “beginner yoga poses” and “yoga for anxiety.”

This is the kind of goal that gives your content a job. And when your content has a clear goal behind it, it either performs well, or you quickly realize that it needs to be adjusted.

Tie your content goals to business outcomes. If you want more class signups, for example, the content could point people toward a free community flow on Saturdays. Or, if you want to sell more mats at the studio, the content could cover gear essentials or products that your instructors recommend.

2. Develop audience personas

We already mentioned that your content needs to speak directly to your audience. In order to do that, you need to know who you’re talking to. And the stakes are only getting higher as people increasingly want—and even expect—personalization. In fact, McKinsey found that 71% of consumers expected personalized interactions, and 76% even got frustrated when that didn’t happen.

In order to speak directly to your audience in your content, you want to have clear personas. Try creating two or three based on your best customers. Look for patterns in customer data and pay close attention to any similarities that those high-value customers share.

Let’s stick with the yoga studio example here. You might find that your repeat clients fall into two buckets: stay-at-home parents who attend your 10 a.m. sessions and like the social aspect of class, and young professionals who show up at 5 p.m. to loosen up after a day at the desk. These are two groups you can create content for.

🔎 Still not sure who to target? Get How to Find Your Target Audience in 6 Steps (With Examples!)

3. Analyze what your competitors are doing

Your content strategy shouldn’t be purely reactive, but it’d be short-sighted not to consider that you’re competing for attention in addition to rankings, clicks, and conversions. That’s why analyzing what your competitors are doing is an important step in developing your content strategy.

Look at what your competitors are doing to answer these questions:

• What’s working for them? What keywords are they ranking for?
• Do their Instagram Reels and TikToks get engagement? What types of content are they posting? How frequently?
• Do they publish long-form video content on YouTube? How often? Any series?
• How is their newsletter structured? What’s the cadence?
• How often are they publishing on their blog? What are the topics?
• Are there any gaps? What aren’t your competitors talking about?

Determining the answers to these questions will give you a sense of what your audience is getting from other sources, which will help you figure out what your content strategy needs to include.

You can use SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to help you identify which content is gaining traction for your competitors. But sometimes just scrolling through comments and Google reviews can give you insight into audience reception. Even a brief competitive analysis can provide some significant direction.

Take a look at your local competitors’ Google Ads and organic search results to see what you can learn.

4. Identify keywords to target

The next step in determining a content strategy is looking at keywords. People usually search for what they need, like “weekly cleaner” or “pest control.”

That’s where keyword research comes in. You can use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and WordStream’s Free Keyword Research Tool to source some keywords to target in your content. You should also make sure to spend some time looking at TikTok’s search bar auto-complete, Instagram’s suggestions, and scanning common questions on Reddit.

Try entering the base words of a hashtag in a social media platform’s search bar and see what it autofills.

There’s a lot to learn about keywords. These resources will help:

• How to Do Local Keyword Research (+Free Template)
• 16 Types of Keywords in SEO I+How to Find & Use Them)
• 22 Best Keyword Research Tools for Every Need (Free & Paid!)

5. Determine your content pillars

Once you’ve identified your target keywords, it’s time to organize them into content pillars, the core topics your business wants to be known for. A content pillar is a broad subject that reflects your expertise and addresses your customers’ most common questions, while supporting several related subtopics.

For example, a local veterinarian might have pillars for each type of pet. Grouping your keywords into these categories helps you create content with a clear purpose, avoid publishing random, disconnected posts, and build topical authority with search engines.

As you build out this content, you can create clusters. These are related blog posts connected by internal links.

6. Audit your existing content

Before going off and creating new content, you should take the time to review the existing content you already have. There could be some promising stuff that just needs a quick refresh to update it, or some solid starts that could perform better with some new additions.

To perform a content audit, start with content that lives on your website. Throw all your page URLs into a spreadsheet and then ask:

• What’s still relevant?
• What’s outdated?
• What’s underperforming?
• What topics are missing entirely?

Start simple and add more data for a better view of your content audit.

Let’s say you have a blog post on “Best sneakers for gym workouts” that’s five years old and barely gets any traffic. Can you update that content with new sneaker models and internal links to your latest inventory? Is it missing a section about a subtopic, like walking shoes? Would it work better as a social video?

Sometimes, refreshing an old piece of content will give you better results than a brand-new article can—plus, it saves you time.

7. Create a content calendar

Content calendars get a bad rap because people think they’re restrictive. But a good calendar is flexible. And it keeps you from publishing similar things back-to-back or forgetting about seasonal topics.

There are a few things you want to set up for your content calendar:

• Frequency: How often can you realistically publish? Weekly? Twice a month?
• Themes: Match your content to customer needs by season or product cycle (e.g., marathon training gear in summer).
• Formats: Mix it up with how-to guides, videos, listicles, customer stories, and more. Not everyone will consume the same format (here are the content formats currently winning search).

Here’s an example of what a calendar for that shoe store might look like in September:

8. Build content briefs

A content brief will give you background and direction, so that you’re not wondering what to cover or how to lay things out.

A good content brief doesn’t have to be fancy. Here’s what you should include at a minimum:

• Primary keyword: A phrase like “restorative yoga” as the main focus.
• Secondary keywords: Phrases to include like “yoga for beginners,” but with less of a priority.
• Persona: The type of person you’re tailoring the content to.
• Audience takeaway: What someone should learn, feel, or do after reading.
• Headline ideas: A couple of ideas to set the tone.
• Outline or subtopics: A simple structure with headings and bullet points of talking points.
• Call-to-action (CTA): Defines what the next step is (i.e., Book a class; Download a free pose guide).
• Internal links: Links to relevant pages on your site, such as a class page or related blog post.

If you’re working with a team or using freelancers, these content briefs will be essential for communicating exactly what you’re looking for in your blog, guide, or video. But if you’ll be producing all the content yourself, this might sound like an extra step. It’s worth it.

You can batch content briefs so that you have a bunch done at once while you’re planning content, and then you can ensure the results of your research and analysis don’t get lost between your planning and your creating.

9. Encourage your audience to engage with CTAs

You may not publish a helpful post as a direct sales tool. But it does need to help your business. That’s why encouraging actions and using clear, compelling calls to action (CTAs)  are important parts of your strategy.

Let’s say your yoga studio publishes a post titled “3 Gentle Morning Stretches to Help You Wake Up.” You might want to sign off with a suggestion for more: “Want to turn these stretches into a 30-minute flow? Stream our free morning yoga class for beginners.”

Or maybe you’re sharing an Instagram Reel showcasing your new candlelit restorative class. Include a “Interested in joining? Find the sign-up link in our bio.”

CTAs can be soft nudges or actual invitations. Either way, they keep the momentum going, just like switching from one yoga pose to the next.

This blog post concludes with several CTAs.

10. Adapt your content for multiple platforms

When you’re creating content, you’re going to keep the specific platform in mind. A blog post is different from a YouTube video, yes. But a TikTok is different from an Instagram Reel, too.

Still, you want to share your content on all the platforms your brand is active on to get the most return on your investment. That’s why you need to plan to repurpose content by tweaking it to fit the vibe and expectations of each space from the start.

Let’s say your footwear store just launched a new guide that compares minimalist trail shoes. Instead of pasting the same message everywhere and calling it a day, do something like this:

• Instagram: Post a 15-second, slow-mo clip of shoes hitting the ground and a caption like “Maximum control. Ever tried barefoot-style?”
• LinkedIn: Break down the biomechanics in a thoughtful post for fitness professionals with a link to the guide and a message like “Here’s why more coaches recommend minimalist shoes for balance.”
• Email: Give your community timely perks, like a one-day flash sale of 20% off all trail shoes. Encourage subscribers to read the guide before ordering.
• YouTube: Turn the guide into a video. If you have a longer video, splice that up into short clips for social.

Planning to adapt your content for multi-channel distribution from the start helps you approach your content creation most efficiently for your time and budget, ideally yielding the best outcomes, too. Shopify, for example, has both a blog post that explains drop-shipping and a YouTube video that shares almost the same information. Both are high-quality, trustworthy resources, just different mediums to reach audiences with different preferences.

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11. Promote your best content with ads

We all want our content to be a success. We want our blogs bookmarked, our YouTube tutorials watched and rewatched, and maybe even our TikToks to go viral. But this kind of organic growth isn’t guaranteed, and it’s not likely when you’re starting out. Instead, it’s a good idea to try promoting your top-performing content with a paid boost.

Look at the engagement of your social posts and videos that are killing it with lots of clicks, comments, and even conversions.

You know that popular review post that compared running shoes for flat feet and got 100 comments? Pay to boost it. The Reel you made promoting your upcoming open yoga studio day that’s been reshared by all your students? Promote that with ads. Double down on what’s already working for you.

Carousel ads on Instagram or LinkedIn are a great way to promote your content.

12. Update content based on performance

Once your content is up and posted, you’re not quite done. You need to measure your performance, and we’ll break that down later. And based on this performance, you’ll want to keep updating your content to get better.

Let’s say the blog post “3 Gentle Morning Stretches to Help You Wake Up” from earlier isn’t getting action. Rather than treating it as a lost cause, give it some TLC. Try this:

• Rewrite the headline so it pops (“Better than coffee? 3 Morning yoga poses that actually wake you up”)
• Add visuals, like a short demo video or original photos from your studio.
• Conduct additional keyword research and update the content with relevant new terms.
• Expand on the content if you see opportunities to provide greater detail. Or turn the three posts into four.
• Promote the post again. Maybe it didn’t do well on Instagram, but it did on Facebook. Share it again there with a new message, or consider sharing only the images instead of a link.

This is good for lower-performing content and for outdated content. For example, if you have a YouTube video of a yoga class with a caption referencing your 2024 schedules, you can update the caption to make it evergreen, too.

Essential content marketing tips for small businesses

Having a solid strategy in place is the perfect start, but there are a few more tips that you’ll want to follow in order to see the best results. Here are some essential best practices to keep in mind as you build out your strategy and start creating content.

Ensure your website is in order

When you’re launching a content marketing strategy, you’ll be driving people to your website. So before investing your time and money, you need to make sure your website is ready to convert visitors into customers. (And if you’re among the 17% of small businesses without a website, now is the perfect time to get that set up.)

Even the best content won’t deliver results if your site is slow, difficult to navigate, outdated, or missing clear calls to action. Your website should provide a seamless user experience, clearly communicate what you offer, and make it easy for visitors to take the next step, whether that’s digging into more content, requesting a quote, or making a purchase. Think of your content as the engine that drives traffic and your website as the destination. If the destination isn’t ready, that traffic—and the opportunity it brings—will be wasted.

Content will attract visitors, so make sure your website is ready to convert them.

Be consistent

In order to gain traction with a content marketing strategy, you need to be consistent. That’s why it’s essential to find a realistic schedule for your small business’s capacity (and stick to it). It’s better to have fewer channels with active schedules and engaged audiences than to have a scattered approach across every platform imaginable.

Here’s a quick overview of ideal frequency:

• Publish blog posts or articles 6-8 times per month.
• Post on Instagram 3-5 times per week.
• Post on TikTok 2-5 times per week.
• Post on YouTube at least once a week.
• Send newsletters at least once a month and no more than twice per week.
• Release a podcast episode weekly.

Your content calendar will help you stay organized and even plan your content ideas ahead of time. You can also create content briefs and even content in batches that you can store and use later, so you’re not scrambling for ideas on what to write about at the last minute.

BakerHostetler law office hosts the AD Nauseam podcast about legal issues in advertising.

Prioritize quality over quantity

This is particularly true for long-form video and written content. A few well-researched, useful articles and videos are often more valuable than many short, low-quality posts. Aim to create content that is accurate, practical, and genuinely helpful. This is because it’s going to resonate most with your audience, yes, and it’s also going to perform the best. According to Google, its algorithm promotes “helpful, reliable, people-first content.”

In fact, Google suggests a self-assessment starting with these questions:

• Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?
• Does the content provide a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does the content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious?

Keep this in mind when you’re creating new blog posts or guides. Quality posts that rank will do more for your brand and your audience than rushed blogs that get lost.

Make sure your content is scannable

We’re all looking for quick answers, takeaways, and visuals to illustrate concepts. If your content is a wall of words or the same screen of a person talking, it’s overwhelming and, worse, boring.

To keep readers engaged, structure your content so they can find what they need fast. Here are a few tips to do that:

• Use headings and subheadings: These guide the reader and make the content easy to skim. Not everyone will read your page from beginning to end.
• Use bullet points and numbered lists: These highlight bite-sized bits of information and keep attention from drifting. They make step-by-step instructions clear.
• Keep paragraphs short: If your paragraphs are longer than three to four lines, consider breaking them up. Nobody wants to sift through walls of text to find something.

Databox even breaks up its long reports into chapters with buttons to go directly to the sections at the top of the box. 

To keep your viewers engaged, structure your videos so they can quickly find value and stay interested from beginning to end. Here are a few tips to do that:

• Start with a strong hook: Capture your viewer’s attention within the first 5-10 seconds by highlighting the problem you’ll solve or the key takeaway viewers will get.
• Break your content into clear sections: Organize your video with logical transitions or on-screen chapter titles so viewers can easily follow along and know what’s coming next.
• Keep the pace moving: Eliminate unnecessary tangents and lulls (looking at you, Millennial pause). Use B-roll, graphics, screen recordings, and text overlays to reinforce key points and maintain visual interest.

Educator coach Molly Wheatley uses text overlays and chapters in YouTube to make videos super easy to navigate.

Leverage generative AI in your process

Generative AI can help you have a more efficient and effective content marketing process. In fact, 93% of marketers use AI to create content faster. This might include drafting long-form content, but it can also include anything from brainstorming topics, optimizing for SEO, drafting headline or caption options, or even producing custom images for your content.

By reducing the time spent on repetitive or time-consuming tasks, AI can help you focus more on the strategy and spend more time getting creative. You know, the more engaging part of a content marketing strategy for your business.

Just remember that AI should be used as a tool to enhance human expertise—not replace it. The most effective content combines AI’s efficiency with a business’s unique knowledge, experience, and brand voice. You should always review and edit AI-generated content, even if it’s a simple caption.

Content marketing ideas for small businesses

Your strategy will help drive your focus, audience, keywords, cadence, and distribution plan. But when it comes to the content specifics, it’s easy to draw a blank on the type of video or the structure of a blog post.

Here, we’re sharing tried-and-true content types, experiments to test out, and more content marketing ideas to get you started.

Use your Google Business Profile as a resource

Google Business Profile is a great resource for distributing (and creating) content. With it, you can:

• Share business updates and news (you can do this easily through Google Business Posts!).
• Post visual content (e.g., photos of your products, team, location, etc., to generate interest in the business).
• Direct profile visitors to content you’ve created, such as your latest blog posts, case studies, white papers, etc.

An example of a Google Business Profile Post update

Pro tip: Encourage customers and others who’ve had positive experiences with your business to leave reviews. You can then incorporate those reviews into other content to make it that much more powerful.

Use social media as content inspiration

The social media platforms your audience is most active on are a goldmine for content marketing ideas. So pay attention to:

• Your posts that get the most engagement so you can create more like them or create more in-depth content on topics that perform well.
• Emerging trends in your industry and across the internet.
• The types of social media content your competitors are creating and having success promoting.

Pay attention to your competitors’ content to find new ideas and themes.

Plus, you can always poll and chat with your audience to find out what content they’d be most interested in seeing.

Go all in on video content

Videos can be used for explainers, teasers, testimonials, demos, ads and sales, customer service, and more. And they’re only becoming easier and less expensive to create. Even better, video marketing gets a high return on investment:

• 93% of video marketers say video has helped them increase brand awareness.
• 82% of video marketers say video has helped them increase traffic.
• 85% of marketers say video has helped with lead generation.
• 83% of marketers indicate that it’s driven sales directly.

Ohio-based florist Huber Heights Floral offers a great example of what going all in on video can look like for a small business. The collection of videos gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at owning a flower shop and shares tips for making your own floral creations, like corsages and different arrangements.

Create case studies

Especially in crowded industries, case studies are a powerful tool for standing out from the crowd. They don’t just detail how your products or services have helped solve real-world problems. They provide an opportunity to showcase your unique capabilities, differentiate yourself from your competitors, and earn the trust of potential customers as a result.

A case study example from MailChimp

Test out interactive content

Traditional text, audio, and video content aren’t dead. However, interactive content—quizzes, polls, calculators, maps, sliders, and so on—has its benefits.

For one thing, it’s eye-catching and exciting. For another, because it’s engaging, it’s also more memorable, shareable, and more likely to generate word-of-mouth hype surrounding your business.

Try infographics

Visuals in general are an effective way to make text more eye-catching and easier to read. But infographics, in particular, make it easy to distill complex or in-depth information in a clear, concise, visually exciting way.

And remember that many people skim content (especially long-form pieces). So, providing infographics gives them the TL;DR, helping them make sense of the main points quickly.

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The bonus is that, because they’re so attractive and packed with value, infographics are great for racking up social shares. As a result, they can increase the reach of your brand significantly.

Expand your email marketing

79% of marketers consider email to be one of their top three most effective marketing channels, and this makes complete sense.

Email marketing allows for audience segmentation, so you can reach the right people with the right message and, therefore, achieve better results. This is especially effective at providing the personalized experience we discussed earlier. And the extra work is worth it. According to Campaign Monitor, marketers have found a 760% increase in revenue with segmented email campaigns.

Plus, since email marketing is an owned channel, it’s more future-proof than unowned channels like social media that aren’t within your control. Consider adding regular content-specific emails to your plan or launching a newsletter.

Answer FAQs

Here’s one of the lowest-risk ways to get a return on your investment in content marketing. Answer what people are asking. Your audience has already shown interest in the topic, which suggests that related content may perform well. From there, all you have to do is answer those questions in a way that’s clearer, more comprehensive, and more engaging than competitors.

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You can also feature this content on a FAQ page on your website, another great way to get more out of your content.

Dispel industry myths

People love insider information, and there’s misinformation in every industry. By dispelling industry myths, you can earn the trust of potential customers and maintain the respect of existing ones.

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Take people behind the curtain

Many larger companies lack the transparency and down-to-earth, human element that small businesses have. That—coupled with the fact that many people are naturally curious, especially about brands they like—makes behind-the-scenes content effective.

Could you do a day-in-the-life video with your team? Give a sneak peek on social media while you set up for a special event? Show how you make a product or carry out a service?

Even better: This is a great opportunity for lower-production content, too. People aren’t expecting super polished content here, which can save you time.

Introduce yourself and your team

Just like people want to know what happens behind the scenes, they also like to know who is behind the scenes. So, although it might feel uncomfortable to put yourself out there at first, let people get to know you and your team. It will make you more memorable and them more likely to buy from and recommend you.

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Do original research

You are an expert in your field, and you can share that expertise. Doing original research—conducting a customer feedback survey, for example—can differentiate your marketing from everyone else’s and provide an opportunity for you to display your expertise. And it can make you a trusted source of information in your industry. More trust equals more future customers and better customer retention.

A simple customer poll is all you need for original research.

Partner with influencers and affiliates

86% of US-based marketers partnered with influencers last year. That’s because it’s such an effective way to reach your intended audience with a recommendation from a trusted source. It’s easier than ever to find influencers of all sizes with engaged audiences that overlap with yours who are creating content (perhaps in your niche) that consistently performs well.

The key is finding them and figuring out a partnership that works for your budget.

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If you can get those individuals or brands to incorporate your message into their content and promote it to their audiences, you can increase your reach, credibility, and sales in one motion.

Interview thought leaders

Remember, your goal with content marketing is to provide value to your audience. By interviewing relevant industry thought leaders, you can offer insight, education, and entertainment. Plus, your business will be more credible and trustworthy by way of thought leaders’ good reputations and the trust they’ve already earned among their followers.

The Cooler newsletter by LaunchSquad shares interviews with leaders in climate tech.

Share relevant news and industry content

You and your team are reading articles, blogs, and news stories related to your business. Why not make your reading list into content?

Curating and sharing your expert opinion on the content you curate has several benefits. It eases your audience’s struggle to find reliable content on industry topics. It relieves the pressure and expense that comes with creating all content from scratch. And it can help to build relationships with other content creators. When you share their work, they’re likely to return the favor, and this can help to increase your content’s reach (and it’s easy with Google Alerts).

The Cooler shares news with commentary, too. This is a great content idea for a newsletter.

Gather user-generated content

Your customers may very well produce some great content about your brand all their own, or they might be interested in doing so. These customers don’t need to be influencers. Many regular people post online about brands they love, and that kind of authenticity speaks volumes.

You can put that user-generated content to use for you. Re-sharing user-generated content, with a hearty thank you to the fan who created it, is a great way to fill gaps in your social media content calendar.

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Instagram has a built-in feed where tagged posts live. This example from the coffee brand La Colombe shows some great user-generated content, including a recipe for a toasted marshmallow latte made with the coffee and a promotion for a community event at a fitness studio.

Create a “find your match” quiz

One specific form of interactive content helps potential customers find the perfect product or service for them.

Here’s a great example from The Sill, an ecommerce plant store. An evergreen quiz that makes recommendations fun.

How to measure content marketing success

We’ve mentioned measurement a few times throughout this guide, because you need to have a goal in place and check in on progress in order to improve. Now, we’ll walk through exactly what that looks like.

Revisit your SMART content goals

Earlier, we shared that the first step in your content strategy is to set goals, SMART goals specifically. As a reminder, your goals should connect to broader business objectives. Common content marketing goals include:

• Increasing brand awareness: Reach more potential customers and improve visibility.
• Driving website traffic: Bring qualified visitors to your website through search, social media, and other channels.
• Generating leads: Encourage prospects to sign up, request information, or contact your business.
• Increasing sales: Convert content consumers into paying customers.
• Building customer loyalty: Keep existing customers engaged and encourage repeat business.

These are the areas where many marketers have their goals for content; just remember to add in the specifics and the timelines for yourself. Like increasing website traffic 20% MoM, for instance.

Choose the right metrics to track

Once you know your goals, you need to select key performance indicators (KPIs) that will show your progress. Selecting a few that make sense here is important, because you don’t want to waste time tracking everything. Instead, focus on metrics that provide useful insights.

If your goals are related to brand awareness, you should track:

• Website visitors
• Social media reach and impressions
• Video views
• Brand searches

If your goals are related to engagement, you should track:

• Time spent on page
• Comments and shares
• Email open and click-through rates
• Video watch time

If your goals are related to generating leads, you should track:

• Form submissions
• Newsletter sign-ups
• Content downloads
• Consultation requests

Match your content to your KPIs, like hosting giveaways for engagement.

Set up your tracking tools

In order to measure these metrics, you need reliable data from your website and social media platforms. We’d recommend starting with a few essential tools:

• Website analytics: Use Google Analytics to monitor traffic, user behavior, and conversions.
• Search performance tools: Track how your content ranks and which search terms bring visitors with Google Search Console.
• Social media analytics: Review performance across your platforms and use a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to combine analytics.
• Email marketing analytics: Measure subscriber engagement and campaign results with your platform, whether that’s Mailchimp, HubSpot, or another tool.
• CRM data: Connect content activity with leads and sales outcomes. We’d recommend testing out what works with your CRM and leaning on an automation tool like Zapier if it’s easier to track outside of the CRM.

The exact tools that you use will depend on your marketing tech stack, but these are a good start for having access to all the data you’ll need to measure your content marketing performance.

Measure your content performance regularly

The best way to stay on top of your content marketing performance is to set a regular reporting schedule. Reviewing results monthly or quarterly helps you identify trends without overreacting to short-term changes that you might catch if you’re checking in every day.

Start with questions like:

• Which content brings the most website visitors?
• Which topics generate the most engagement?
• Which channels deliver the best results?
• Are visitors taking the next step after consuming content?
• Which content formats perform best (blogs, videos, newsletters, social posts)?

This will give you an idea of what’s working and what isn’t. Remember to look for patterns instead of focusing on a single successful or unsuccessful piece of content.

Evaluate content ROI

Your content marketing strategy needs to work for your business. It’s a good idea to regularly calculate whether the time and money invested in content are producing meaningful results.

Consider this:

• How much does it cost to create your content? Think time here, too.
• How many leads or customers does it generate? Think in aggregate by platform, content group, or medium.
• What revenue can be linked back to your content efforts? Again, you can focus on the aggregate here for now.
• Are certain content types producing better returns than others? Time to dial down here.

Like measuring, you don’t want to do this too often. After two quarters or even annually might be better. And remember that not every piece of content will create immediate sales, and that’s fine. But overall, a successful content strategy should help build a pipeline of future customers.

Remember, content should do something for your business, and evaluating its ROI is how you show it.

Identify places you can improve

This measurement is a tool, and you can use your data to refine your strategy. Successful content marketing is an ongoing process of testing and learning.

When you’re looking at performance, you may discover that:

• Certain topics consistently attract your ideal customers.
• Some platforms attract more followers than others.
• Updating older content improves performance.
• Different audiences prefer different formats.
• Calls-to-action need to be clearer or more compelling.

This is all information that you can use. Revise existing content to get more out of it, update content for new life on different platforms, and rethink your content calendar moving forward. Then, of course, keep measuring to see if your work paid off—and figure out where you can improve next.

Making your content marketing strategy work for your business

Now, you have everything you need to get started with your content marketing strategy. And remember, you don’t need a big budget to make content marketing work. You need a smart strategy, a clear understanding of your audience, and a willingness to be helpful and authentic. Start small. Be consistent. And go get started.

Meet The Author

Céillie Clark-Keane

Ceillie runs content at Unstack, a no-code CMS built for marketers. Previously, she was the managing editor of the WordStream blog.

Other posts by Céillie Clark-Keane