Five Tips for Content Marketing with a Small Budget

Online Content Marketing with a Small Budget

Content marketing will always have a vital role to play in the world of SEO and internet marketing. Now more than ever, the challenge is ensuring quality over quantity, which can be especially challenging when your business is on the smaller side, a startup or even an established company with a modest budget for content marketing. A small budget doesn’t necessarily mean you are forced to skimp on quality, however – here are five tips to ensure that your online content marketing strategy remains competitive.

1. A Company Blog. A strong company blog is an absolute necessity, not only to help your website with SEO, but also to keep your clients (both old and new) well-informed, and to feed to your social pages to keep them updated on a regular basis. When deciding what to keep and what to toss from your current content marketing plan, always make room for a blog, and contributors to update it. How often is “regular”? At least once a week, and preferably more. Don’t fall into the trap of starting a blog and letting it fall by the wayside due to lack of regular updates. Successful content marketing and good SEO link building depends on fresh content.

When plotting the direction of your blog, think outside the box– fresh, new ideas can often be found by looking at the content your company is already producing. Repurposing existing content and ideas isn’t lazy writing; it often provides a brand new approach to concepts that can prove to be innovative. Repurposing content can also mean turning a successful blog post into a video or a list-type post. Get creative and don’t hesitate to expose your content to a brand new audience- you never know where new leads might come from!

2. Decide Where to Outsource. Even with individuals who can effectively manage your company content, including regularly updating the blog and website articles, it’s important to identify where you might need extra help. If you have three good writers and a part-time graphic designer, investing in a freelance graphic artist to add extra “oomph” to your content marketing strategy might be a wise move. This is also something to consider if the team lacks a specific skill set- it’s better to outsource than to do something poorly.

Get in touch with a good freelance writer or designer, who is able to provide a semi-regular stream of content, depending on how much wiggle room is in your budget. Agencies typically charge a bit higher rate, so try to aim for finding a freelance professional.

3. Look to Your Clients. Often one of the strongest sources of inspiration comes from within the company – in this case, your existing client base. Learn your customer’s stories and turn them into fresh content for your company blog and social pages. Their success stories could motivate newclients to turn to your company for your expertise.

Another cool trick – take a series of the most common questions your company receives and turn them into FAQ format. If you end up with fifteen or twenty Q&A’s, divide them into several different blog posts and publish them over a one or two week period. Don’t forget to take this list and publish it to your site menu as well, if your website doesn’t already have a Q&A section in place.

4. Make it Visual. Content doesn’t necessarily just mean articles and blog posts – keep things interesting by adding a strong visual presence to your company website. Relevant images are always a good idea, and are perfect for your company Facebook and Instagram accounts as well.

This doesn’t have to be expensive at all. If you have a charismatic individual within the company who would do well in front of the camera, make a video series! These videos could address frequently asked questions, company updates, and even messages from the CEO. Videos get tons of web traffic, and don’t have to be incredibly high-tech – with the right information and a compelling speaker, your video could even go viral.

5. Make a Goal. Last but certainly not least (in fact, this should be done and redone at the start of every quarter) is to set realistic goals for your content marketing strategy. Set a measurement framework, a budget, establish a specific team for writing, designing, social media management and link building, and stick to it.

Compelling content gives your customers what they want, and keeps your business healthy. It builds loyalty with your existing customer base and hopefully brings you lots of new ones as well. For these reasons alone, it is vitally important to establish a content marketing strategy – and it can easily be done within the boundaries of a small budget.