Small businesses are not new to the possibility of free-falling into a “fail zone” sooner than they had even begun. It becomes more complicated as the business paradigm tilts towards the digital space, causing the rigid ones to be the first to bite the dust. This is where content marketing comes in.
While some of these business owners know how significant the role of content marketing is to their chances of success, the challenge has always been how to go about it. What if these business owners realized the possibilities they could unlock by being relevant with their content marketing?
Journeying into Relevance
While failure is not what any small business owner would wish for when they venture into any industry with their product, not every small business makes it long enough to stay in business.
According to Forbes, only about 50% of small businesses survive beyond their fifth year. Their inevitable end is not because their product is not needed but because they cannot sell the brand beyond the product.
On the flip side, content marketing is one potent tool at the disposal of small businesses to fill that void, as it enables small business owners and entrepreneurs to sell their brands beyond the product.
The survival of these businesses depends on their ability to be relevant, establish relationships and build on them by producing content channeled toward a targeted audience or market. Although content marketing is a form of marketing that requires a longer period to come together, it will yield the desired results when done correctly.
How Small Businesses Can Stay Relevant
Small businesses play a huge role in every economy as they drive any nation’s development. These businesses fuel innovation and inventions, creating jobs and putting food on tables. With small businesses representing 90% of businesses and over 50% of employment globally, their survival is paramount.
Change is inevitable and constant. To beat the dreaded failure trap, small business owners must be updated with trends, technologies, and shifting customer behaviors. Adopting content marketing becomes a necessity as it allows your business to engage with your target audience.
Engagement for small businesses comes from the value your target audience gets from consuming your content. The more valuable your content, the higher your chances of creating trust within your audience, ultimately culminating in credibility and relevance.
Attaining that feat of consistent relevance won’t happen overnight, but it can be achieved over time.
Below are some ways small businesses can stay relevant with their content marketing.
1. Know your target audience and how to speak their language
The road to relevance begins with knowing who your target audience is, where they meet and what language they speak. Every business is targeted at solving problems for its intended clients or customers.
Unless you happen to own Google or Facebook, everyone can’t be your target audience. If you don’t know your target audience, your chances of relevance with your content marketing become bleak. Begin with knowing who they are and what pain points make your product resonates with them.
CRM tools and Google Analytics are a goldmine as they make it seamless to categorize your audience by age, demography, language, challenges, spending power, etc. When these key factors are identified, knowing which platforms they use the most becomes easy, increasing your chances of communicating effectively with them.
This is a critical phase of the process, as every platform has a peculiar language for its users to communicate. Not identifying it makes it difficult to zero in on your objective of being relevant to your content.
How Twitter users communicate is not the same as that of users on LinkedIn or Reddit. Identifying the language of your users helps you narrow down the best social media options to make the most of your content marketing.
2. Stay up and keep up with trends
Small businesses don’t stand a chance compared to their bigger counterparts because of their huge financial pockets. However, that doesn’t mean they should duck and run.
Content marketing provides that edge for small businesses to stake a claim for a share of the market. With a content marketing strategy, you can stay up to date with the latest industry trends and keep up with them.
Staying up with trends in your industry provides an opportunity to stay in the know and share insights with your target audience. Small businesses can make it possible to establish trust with your customers, clients, and even potential customers.
Trends allow you to listen to your target audience, know what they are talking about, and what they would love to see in similar products in your industry. Acting on these insights makes you more relevant and gives you a competitive edge.
3. Strategically adjust to changes in your industry
Not being flexible to change is one of the quickest ways small businesses can go out of business. Small business owners who can’t adjust to change often pay the price the hard way.
In the heat of the pandemic, over 22% of small businesses permanently closed their doors in February 2021. Many of these small businesses didn’t have what it takes to adapt to the pandemic or the new normal that has sprung out of it.
Equip your brand and content marketing strategy to be flexible to change, so you don’t get left behind. Leverage one of the many tech-driven tools for small businesses, such as social media, scheduling tools, sales funnels, invoicing tools, and so on, to drive your business.
Only relevant businesses can make it out of the difficult times in their industry and remain relevant to their customers. For example, food delivery became more prominent during the pandemic. Restaurant owners leveraging food delivery systems were on demand, on-boarded new customers, and even made more sales.
4. Know your competition
Competition is one of the major drivers of relevance in any industry for small businesses, and yours is no exception.
The goal of every business is to be unique. This is why it is important to know what your competition is doing differently. Having an insight into what other brands in your industry are doing to stay relevant allows you to discover new techniques and strategies to improve your content marketing.
When you see things through the eyes of your competition and how their customers respond to their content on social media or other platforms, it enables you to listen to what your customers are yearning to see in the industry. Learn from their complaints and expectations, and use the information to improve your product.
With the information gathered, you put yourself in a better position to be relevant to your target audience by leveraging your strategy with the new insights from your competition at your disposal.
5. Avail yourself for collaborations within and outside your industry
Collaborations have rapidly become one of the goldmines of present-day business. In an era where technology has changed the face of today’s business, selling your relevance to a wider audience is a strategic move to adopt.
Collaboration within or outside your industry is a tool worth exploring as it allows you access to resources, innovations, exposure, and new possibilities. Small businesses can use this opportunity to access new markets, establish new relationships with potential partners, and develop innovative ideas to improve their business.
Collaborations within your industry can be leveraged in different ways, such as attending online webinars, offline conferences, seminars, and workshops. Forming alliances with other key players to share resources becomes a possibility.
Doing this can help small businesses become more competitive and gain insight into the latest trends and technologies that can be applied to their own operations.
4 Reasons Why Relevance is Important in the Success of Small Business Content Marketing
Entrepreneurs and small business owners know too well to take chances in a space where success is not guaranteed. Making the most of what they have to stay in business becomes necessary.
While content marketing may be king, not effectively wielding it will affect your chances of relevance to your target audience. Below are four reasons why relevance in your content marketing is important for your small business:
1. It creates a connection with your customers
Relevance is one of the beauties of content marketing. It creates an emotional connection with your customers and target audience, highlighting the key benefits of your business. This helps small businesses increase leads and establish online visibility to build loyalty and long-term relationships with their customer base.
2. Content marketing improves SEO
Search engine optimization has improved how businesses maximize their content marketing. By targeting relevant keywords in your content, you increase your chances of improving your website’s search engine rankings. In turn, it will drive more website traffic and increase the potential for more conversions.
3. Content marketing drives and boosts engagement
Relevant content helps to drive engagement and encourage customers to take action. It promotes interactions such as leaving comments, sharing or downloading resources, and signing up for newsletters or promotions. The more frequent this becomes, the more relevant you become to your target audience.
4. It builds trust
Consistently producing relevant content helps build trust with customers. Customers are most likely to do business with brands they trust. You sure want to be that brand.
By delivering relevant content regularly, you show that your business is an authority in the industry and a reliable source of information. This can help attract and retain new customers.
Content marketing is your friend
Making every moment count is one of the best things to happen to small businesses in an ever-dynamic business space. Riding on the shoulders of relevance with your content marketing is a great way to tilt your business toward your target audience.
With consistency in your content marketing, you can connect with your target audience emotionally. This opens the door to engaging with them. You can then use the information they provide to improve your product and content marketing strategies.
Small businesses may not have all it takes to match their bigger counterparts, but with continued relevance, they can reach the heights they want.
At Instantly Relevant, we delight in helping you make the most of your content marketing journey by listening to what your audience is talking about and maximizing the most of it to make your brand an industry expert. Get in touch today!