To those without experience, content marketing can seem like a “nice to have” rather than an essential feature of your online promotion. And sure, techniques such as pay-per-click and social media can sometimes appear more fruitful and instantaneous, simply because you’re pumping in resources and enjoying immediate results that just wouldn’t be possible when you take the content marketing route. Content is, by its very nature, a “slow and steady” approach to online promotion.

Content marketing is, however, one of the most effective forms of marketing your small business online. It should come as no surprise to learn that 26% of all marketing spend is on content – and that figure is set to rise as more people come to terms with the benefits of such techniques. However, for small businesses who have a limited, or sometimes nil, marketing budget, can content marketing still offer the same benefits and returns as it does for multinational firms?

Benefits of content marketing for small businesses

All small business owners want to improve their search engine optimisation (SEO) rankings, and content marketing is the number one way of doing so. An effective content marketing strategy will allow you to rank for a range of keywords in your chosen industry and do so consistently and repetitively, outranking competitors and bringing free, organic traffic to your website.

Another considerable benefit of content marketing is being able to position yourself as an authority figure in your industry. You can use your decades of experience and know-how to create tutorials, how-to guides and white papers that’ll provide genuine value to your readers – and give them a reason to keep coming back to your website. And, as Sales Force notes, tracking your customers’ content consumption will expose their current and future interests and needs, allowing you to deliver the right products and services to increase customer loyalty and retention.

Should you invest in content marketing?

We’ve put together an infographic to highlight the benefits of content marketing for your small business. Let us know your thoughts on small business content marketing in the comments!

Article Written by Max Greene of Business 2 Community