Your content is the fuel that drives your marketing. Whether it is online or offline, your content should entice and engage your ideal customers. But with so much content out there, how can your small business stand out from the rest?
1. Know your customer
Before you even begin creating content, make sure that you know who your ideal customer is. For your content to stand out, people should feel some connection to it. They should feel that it is relevant to them and that your company understands their challenges and knows how to solve them.
Define your audience as much as possible. Instead of just targeting ‘small business owners’, try to analyse this further. What type of small businesses are you targeting? Are they mostly female or male? What would a typical work day look like for a business owner? What would be their most common challenges and how could you help them solve it?
These types of questions can help you create ‘buyer personas’, which, in turn, will help you create content that is relevant to them and will resonate with them on a more personal level. You can collect information on your customers in various ways, including your website analytics, google trends, keyword research, employee feedback, customer feedback and social listening.
More resources on Buyer Personas:
How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business – Hubspot
The Complete, Actionable Guide to Marketing Personas – BufferApp
Buyer Personas You Want to Use: the 9 Essential Parts – Content Marketing Institute
2. Know what you want them to do
A clear call-to-action (CTA) helps consumers take the next step in the buyer’s journey. Whether this is signing up for your email newsletter, downloading a demo of your product, making a booking or ordering a product, make sure that your content includes a call-to-action.
This is where a documented content strategy becomes an essential part of your marketing. For a small business owner, it may seem like an unnecessary academic exercise, but it will help you to clearly articulate what you would like to achieve through your content and makes it much easier to determine what action you would like your customer to take.
Knowing why you are creating the content not only ensures that your content will be more engaging and relevant to your customers, but also gives you a better return on your investment.
Further reading on CTA’s:
31 Call-to-Action Examples You Can’t Help But Click – Hubspot
Call to Action: The 10 Most Effective Techniques – Paul Boag
75 Calls to Action to Use in Your Email Marketing Campaigns – Campaign Monitor
3. Know what you want your customers to remember
For your content to stand out, you need to make a strong impression with your content. Dr Carmen Simon, co-founder of Rexi Media, suggests thinking of three or four points you want people to remember about your content. Focus on these key points and let it stand out from the rest of your content elements.
Resist the temptation to save money by communicating every possible piece of information through a single piece of content. Cluttering your content with too much information will only confuse your audience and end up in the forgettable bin. Use negative space to make your key points stand out.
Make use of fonts and lay-out to highlight your key messages and use original images that are relevant to your key points. Try to use custom-made graphics that will highlight your key message whenever possible.
4. Surprise your customer
Bring in elements of surprise that will grab your customers’ attention. Try different ways of presenting your content. Instead of your normal blog, use a quiz or self-audit questionnaire. If you have to do a presentation, use images or videos instead of tired old powerpoint slides.
Instead of having the same company profile with the same standard information as everyone else, try a new, unconventional lay-out or use a different medium to tell people about your brand.
Why not send a special message to a loyal client on an important day like birthdays or anniversaries? Give out prizes or free gifts to your social media followers. These unexpected surprises will make people look forward to your next piece of content.
5. Be original
It’s one thing to see what has worked for your competitors, but don’t be tempted to copy their strategy. Rather look for your own unique and original way of covering a topic or presenting information.
Put a new spin on an old topic or take a different view from what is generally accepted. Write honestly and authentically. Don’t use tired old clichés or PR spin to get your message across. Remember that you want your customers to connect with your content and that is difficult to do when your message is unoriginal or overly sales-y.
Use your own images as much as possible and if you have to make use of stock photography, choose ones that haven’t been used a million times before. The images you choose should tell your own unique story.
6. Tailor your content to the buyer’s journey
Create different content for different stages of the buyer’s journey. Are they looking for information on solutions to their issues? Are they comparing various solutions? Are they ready to make a buying decision? Have they already purchased from you before? Depending on where they are in the buyer’s journey, you need to adjust your content to achieve the result you want.
In the Awareness Stage, for example, people identify a need or a challenge. As a small business, your content should be focused on creating awareness of your business and how you can meet their need or solve their problem. During the Consideration stage, people begin researching various options. In today’s world, most of this research takes place online, so making sure that your website and content is easily found is an important part of this stage. Finally, in the Decision Stage, people are ready to commit, so you would need to validate why your product or service is worth the investment.
Don’t forget about your customer once they have made the purchase. Research has found that it is six to seven times more expensive to attract new customers than it is to keep existing ones. Keep surprising and delighting your customers throughout and they will keep coming back for more and, even better, tell others about how great you are.
7. Create a story angle
We all love a good story. Especially if we can relate to it personally or if we can learn something from it. That is what makes it such a powerful tool in content marketing. Not only do people connect with stories on an emotional and personal level, they share it with others.
“The story angle is the soul”, says Neil Patel in his article entitled 4 Ways to Make Your Content Stand Out. Think of ways in which you can create a story around your product or service. Start with an overall theme and think about what you want people to remember about it.
When crafting your story angle always ask yourself why your audience would care about this. What is in it for them? Why would they rather listen to your story than your competitors? The story angle that you take is what will differentiate your content from everyone else’s.
GoPro has become synonymous with extreme sports and adventure. That is their story angle and they have used it to produce various types of content that tells this story. Their ‘Driven’ series features a number of extreme sportsmen and -women who talk about what motivates them. There is very little mention of the GoPro product itself, but the association with extreme sports is part and parcel of the GoPro brand.
And it works for small businesses too. Burroughs Family Farm’s story angle is that of a family-run business. The content that it creates tells the story in different ways, focusing on ideas of wholesome goodness, country living and family values.
8. Promote your content on social media
Promote your content through your social media channels and remember that different content works best for different channels. For company news, such as special events or product launches, Twitter and Facebook are good options. Video works great on YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and Periscope. Pictures and infographics work best on Instagram, Pinterest or Tumblr.
It’s not necessary to be on every social media platform. Your buyer personas will help you identify the platform that most appeals to your customers. This is where you want to be visible. Your website analytic tool can also give you an indication of where your current referral traffic is coming from.
Keep in mind that people use social media on different days and at different times. Use your analytic tools to find out the best days and times to promote your content.
9. Leverage your expertise
As a small business, you are most likely an expert in your niche market. After all, that is how you make an income. Don’t be afraid to share that knowledge with potential customers. Remember that you want to always create content that is relevant to them and helps them to make a buying decision.
Show that you have the knowledge and skills to help them solve their business issues. If potential customers can see that you know what you are talking about, they will feel more comfortable about doing business with you. The key is to provide information and insight that they will not get from your competitors.
The most obvious tactic is to use blogs. Writing about what you know and using your experiences not only helps your customers with information they crave, but also helps to show that you know your topic. Blogs also give an excellent return on investment. Business-to-business (B2B) marketers who use blogs get 67% more leads than those who don’t. And the only thing it will cost you is your time.
Another great way to share information is through webinars. Use this tactic if you would like to educate your target audience about a specific topic. They are relatively easy and cost-effective to produce and you can run them as stand-alone sessions or as part of a series.
You can also consider using ebooks, whitepapers, infographics and video.
10. Encourage engagement
One of the most effective ways to make your content stand out, is to encourage your audience to participate. People will be much more likely to remember you content if they have interacted with it on a personal level.
The comments section of you blog offers an excellent way to engage with your audience. But don’t just let them give feedback. Reply to their comments quickly and professionally and answer any questions they may have.
Social media is another opportunity for you to engage with customers. Again, respond to their comments in a timely manner and always keep it professional. Address any negative comments or feedback and use them as an opportunity to improve your products or services.
Make your content interactive using slideshows, quizzes, games or interactive infographics.
These tactics will help make your content much more memorable and engaging.
Content Marketing is being used by more and more businesses. It has levelled the playing field – allowing small businesses to compete more effectively with larger organisations. This means, however, that there is more and more content out there, all competing for people’s attention.
But don’t let this stop you. Remember, you are only competing for your specific customer demographic’s attention, and by following some of these guidelines, you can ensure that your content stands out from the rest.
Sources:
http://neilpatel.com/blog/are-you-already-forgotten-how-to-create-content-people-will-bookmark-and-remember/
http://www.intelligentcontentconference.com/science-creating-memorable-content/
http://damolade.com/blog/10-content-marketing-mistakes-youre-still-making
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/01/content-stand-out/
https://ivetriedthat.com/2016/05/12/5-ways-to-make-your-content-stand-out-from-the-rest/
https://venturefizz.com/blog/how-create-stand-out-content-marketing-strategy
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/06/stand-out-strategies-content-creation/
http://www.pardot.com/buyer-journey/
http://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-channels/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vala-afshar/50-important-customer-exp_b_8295772.html
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/business-blogging-in-2015#sm.0001lh8oqumd4fpywc82fgt87s3bk
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