Content Marketing – creating and sharing relevant content that adds value to your target audience. With the ultimate objective of attracting and acquiring new customers and generating leads and sales. Content can transpire in a variety of forms such as blogs, social media, videos, newsletters, white papers and so on.

Every small business should have a content strategy for these important reasons:

Brand awareness

By distributing valuable content consistently, you are being seen by your target market frequently and will become familiar to them and top of mind when they need your product or service. Content marketing helps to establish and build your brand identity in a market place full of clutter.

Building trust

Content marketing helps to showcase your business as a trusted expert in the industry. With most people using the web to search and discovery they will look at your content and feel confident in your expertise and trust what you say you can deliver.

Thought leadership

By utilising the talent and experience from inside your business and sharing your knowledge and ideas with your community you can be seen as an influencer and a thought leader. Positioning you and your business as a trusted, experienced and knowledgeable industry leader – putting you as the first port of call when someone needs what your offer.

Market and promote your business

Content marketing is a valuable way to market your business and offering while not being too ‘salesy’ in your approach. It showcases why people should engage with your business over your competitors and allows you to humanise your brand.

Sharing content brings people to your door

Creating a steady stream of valuable content drives people to your website, where you’re offering is marketed 24/7. Content marketing is also a big influencer on your search rankings, helping you be seen on major search engines.

Keeps your website fresh

It’s easy to build a website and forget about it leaving you with a stale, stagnant site. Your website should be a moving beast that is constantly updated. Content marketing is one way to help you keep fresh new information on your website portraying you as professional and knowledgeable in your field.

You may think that content marketing seems like a ‘nice to have’ rather than an essential element to your marketing plan. Yes, online marketing tactics like social media and pay-per-click advertising appear more rewarding with instant results, however content marketing is extremely powerful when done right that will pay dividends in the future.

It’s about looking at the big picture…

Every business should have a website, no matter how big or small you are. In this digital age, more and more people research, discover and purchase on the world-wide-web. If you’re not online, you ARE missing out on potential business.

These days a website doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. In fact, a simple yet effective website can cost as little as a couple of grand.

Below are just a few reasons why your business should have a website.

Credibility.

Potential customers will look for you online and if they can’t find you, you will lose business credibility. In 2017, customers EXPECT you to have an online presence.

Value add.

Having a business website isn’t just about selling your products and services, it’s about providing something that your competitors are not.

Narrative control.

With reviews, social media and other online channels sometimes you can’t always control what is said about your business. Your website presents as opportunity for you to have complete control over the narrative. Tell your story, sell your unique selling proposition, and drive lead generation.

Reach.

The world is online; by having a website it gives you a tool to reach your customers and reach new customers across different markets.

Always open.

By having an online presence, it means you can be open 24/7 and selling your offering even when you’re not physically available.

Your competitors are.

Consumers typically start their purchasing journey with research and recommendations – with a lot of this carried out online. If you’re not online you’re simply giving your prospects reason to buy from another brand or business.

You’ll be on Google.

Google is the most used search engine and gone are the days of people looking in the yellow pages. By having a website and a strong SEO strategy you too will show up in Google under those important keywords.

Online showcase.

It's a place to show off all of your products and services. You can do this through enticing copy, eye-catching imagery, informative videos, case studies and testimonials.

If you’re interested in selling more, growing your customer base, your brand and your business then you NEED to be online with a simple but effective website.

Media consumption as we know it has changed. In 2013 for the first time, digital surpassed TV as the most dominant medium. This means diminishing returns for traditional media and getting prime time in front of your target audience is easier and more cost effective than ever. No longer do you need Coca-Cola’s big advertising budget to create maximum impact and cut through to your audience.

Social media has finally levelled the playing field.

Every business can be on social media for free and have access to a highly-engaged audience at a much lower price point. By having a social presence, it allows you to have an open dialogue with your target audience and customers. It makes your business more human and relatable building real relationships, increasing your brand awareness, relevancy and loyalty.

Today, 78% of millennials (aged 17-40) now discover new products and brands on social media with the primary way this happens through their family and friends sharing, tagging or interacting with a product or service. Millennials are an important group because they are one the largest generations in history and are entering their prime spending years.

Social media has a wealth of customer information and insights in real time. Through the many millions of daily social interactions and engagements, you can gather relevant customer data and use that information to ensure you make smart business decisions.

Social Advertising is a highly targeted, extremely cost effective medium to promote your business and distribute content. There are powerful targeting options when advertising such as demographics, interests, behaviours, connections, and you can geo-target based on locations. You can also target “lookalikes” to your current customer base – extending your reach to a valuable group. All of this done, in real time and with highly measurable outcomes.

As a rule of thumb, you can advertise to around one thousand people for as little as US$10 – blowing traditional mediums out of the water.

If you’re not yet convinced, another bonus of having a social presence is increased website traffic and search ranking. The world wide web is where most go to search and discover and by making your business and product/service more front of mind it will drive customers and leads directly to you.

All of this may seem overwhelming; and this is where I can help. For as little as $195 per week I can help manage your social media, from content planning and creation, design, building your online community, through to monitoring and analysis – leaving you to focus on what you do best, delivering to your customers.

What are your business objectives?

Where do you want it to be in 1 year, 5 years?

How are you going to achieve your business and revenue goals?

The answers to these questions are all detailed in a well-structured Marketing Plan.

Below are the 5 key components you need to cover.

1. Analyse your business marketing and environment

By analysing the market your business sits in, it helps determine who will purchase your product/service and why. It will also help identify demographic and psychographic attributes of the key person you need to target. This is where you carry out SWOT analysis, research the current economic climate in your industry and look at your competitors - what are they doing well and where are they lacking.

2. Set your marketing goals and objectives

What do you want to achieve?

With information about your target market and your competitors, you can better outline your marketing objectives and goals.

Try to make your goals more qualitative, realistic and consistent with your business mission; and make your objectives more quantitative, measurable and time-specific.

3. Define marketing strategies

Here, define your target markets and their purchasing characteristics. Identify the marketing mix 4 P’s (product, price, promotion and place) as they relate to your product or service.

4. Implement the marketing program

Define your marketing budget, outline what you need to do internally to meet your goals and objectives and create a marketing calendar of specific actions that will serve as a guideline for implementation.

5. Evaluate

Don’t forget to evaluate your marketing plan; this is important as it explains what’s working and what’s not. It also ensures that the marketing plan is being implemented correctly and completely. An effective marketing plan is one regularly reviewed.

What makes your business more unique and valuable than your competitors?

Most businesses these days when asked, “what’s your unique selling point?” either can’t answer or can but are not communicating it to the most important people…their customers.

In this highly competitive world, every business should have a USP; this is what makes you memorable from your competitors, makes you unique, and makes you stand out in the crowd. Whatever it is you need to do it consistently, deliver on your promises and do it well.

A USP answers the question; “how does your business benefit your customers better than anyone else?” By communicating this answer clearly to your target market it will dramatically improve your businesses position in the market and as long as it is seen as a valuable differentiator then sales will almost certainly increase.

A successful USP can also be incorporated into your business tagline and your marketing material clearly communicating to your customers why they should come to you over your competitors.

So what’s your USP?

Email marketing is a very popular and powerful marketing tool for lead generation, engagement and conversions. This form of marketing allows businesses to reach customers and prospects efficiently and affordably.

Welcome to Email Marketing 101…enjoy…

1. What are your goals and objectives?

2. Divide your database into segments You should divide your database into different segments that are relevant to your offering. For example; geographic, psychographic, demographic, product/service based, existing customers, new customers, lost leads etc. This way you can send each segment a different message and offer based on their needs and wants. This ensures maximum cut through and ROI for your eDM campaigns.

3. Designing your email Your email needs a strong enticing subject line, a relevant headline, plenty of white space to ensure a clutter free layout, an eye catching image, an offer in the top 1/3 of the email, provoking copy with a call-to-action, click throughs to your website, and social media links.

4. Testing You should regularly split-test your email and change only one element such as the subject line to compare response rates to help you determine what your recipients do and do not respond to.

5. Email Marketing Plan You should have a regular schedule of when emails are sent out. They should not be too frequent as to annoy your recipients but regular enough to stay front of mind. Best email practices state that on a Tuesday/Wednesday at around 9am is the best time to send an email – this will depend on your target demographic however.

6. Analyse and Monitor Arguably the most important aspect. It is necessary to measure your open rates, bounce backs, conversions, click throughs, and duration the email is open so you can measure your ROI from your marketing efforts.

7. Follow up Research suggests that following up on an email offer can lift conversion rates and build brand awareness and recognition is ones mind.