Content Marketing Increasing Sales for Small Business, by Brian Newmark

Sales, This is one buzzword that works for all sort of business. For both online and offline, if you have sales your business is doing great. Bigger brands don’t have to worry about sales as much due to their vast size. They have enough funds to do some insane ad campaign and dive plenty of sales.

However, for the small business, especially if you are online, sales do not necessarily come that easily. You can get traffic or subscribers but they might not convert into a sale. Once that happen the promotions or other expenses you did will put you in a crisis state. Here in this article we will discuss a seven step path to use content marketing to increase sales for small business.

Step 1 – Analyze your business and your target audience.

This is the first step of content marketing. You must know about your target audience. Analyze your business, check the trends and research your competition. See what kind of content goes viral in your niche and what sort of content is appreciated by your target audience. Compile a report and make a list of possible content types that can help you get started with content marketing.

Step 2 – Build your Content

Once you know the details of the content that is going to work for your business, it is time for you to get started.

If you prefer to give away the content in instalments, try making a series out of it.

Usually, there is a different audience base for different content types. For example, there is youtube for video content, Infographics directories for infographics, ebook distribution sites for ebooks and slideshow sites for slides. You can provide the same content in various formats to reach all of these targets.

Make a way for the consumers of this content to signup. Make this signup process as smooth as possible. At this point, the ones that signup are already your fan. Make sure to keep them happy and they will never leave you in a hurry.

Step 3 – Promote your content

Even if your content is really the best one, it won’t have any effect if it is consumed by none. When step 2 is completed and you are confident enough that you’re content is perfect, it is time to promote it.

Note: content marketing works best at a budget. There is a cost if you want paid social promotions or PPC or any other

form of paid marketing. However, with a limited or no budget, it still can be done. It will be difficult to do the initial push and depending on the overall quality of your content, it will fail or become popular.

If you do have a budget, try the paid promotions available at Stumble upon, Facebook, Linkedin and Pinterest. All these social sites have a paid option of promotion. Next, you can contact some influencers who are popular on social media or writes for a popular website. If they push your content, it will be read by a lot of people. There are many other forms of promotion like email marketing, adwords and other PPC platforms or even outreach.

Step 4 – Check your returns

Once your promotions are done, you will start to see the benefits coming your way. It is time to analyze and see what worked and what did not. Do more of the things that worked and stop doing things that did not have as much of an impact.

Step 5 – Plan your pitches

At this point, everything is ready and you already have your target audience on your email list, on your social media following and on your blog’s subscriber lists. Start planning on your pitches and your future content. You need to make use of the audience that you now command and at the same time keep feeding them great content so that they don’t leave you. It is a continuous process that requires a balance. Keep the pitching to a minimum and enjoy the excitement of your ever growing fan base.

Step 6 – Keep delivering your quality content

Content is what makes your content marketing a success. It is content in which your audience is interested and not your business. You need to build and meet this demand of ever growing need of quality content. Social media, blogs, emails etc. everything runs smoothly because of content. To keep you’re following busy and interested, you will have to deliver the same content consistently from time to time.

Step 7 – Rinse and Repeat

You got your success.

Now it is time to re-do the entire process again and again. Check what has worked for you and what hasn’t. Keep doing more of what has worked. Do a fresh campaign of content marketing and follow each of these steps carefully to gain maximum benefits.

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