Small business owners can face many pitfalls when writing content for their marketing campaigns. Search engine algorithms update, audience behaviors change, and it’s critical to be sensitive and responsive to them for the business’s benefit.
Most managers deal with three problems in content writing and promotion. The good news is that proven strategies can help overcome those crises and take your content marketing campaigns to a new level.
The below content marketing tips reveal the nature of each content crisis and provide recovery strategies for dealing with them in small business marketing.
Problem #1: Low Traffic Yet Acceptable Conversion
You get some organic traffic from content, and yet, it’s not enough for business growth. The strategy here will depend on the phase of your marketing campaign.
If this content writing campaign is new, audience attraction tactics can help increase traffic and conversion. But if it has been in a state of stagnation for a long time, thorough revision is a must.
These user engagement tactics can help:
Share buttons and active SMM
The 2021 Social Media Marketing Industry report mentions that increased traffic among the top benefits of social media efforts for 79% of marketers, and 88% admit that social media help them generate exposure and leads.
Given that, social buttons can become your instrument of increasing content reach and shareability. They also help you analyze what content type better works for each social media channel.
The above report also defines the top two platforms for small business content marketing campaigns: Facebook and Instagram. LinkedIn and Twitter lose ground but are worth considering if your target audience communicates there actively.
So, adding Facebook and LinkedIn social buttons to your website’s content and making your visual content Instagram compatible can encourage shares and attract more traffic.
The audience analysis
Understanding how search engines and the target audience see your content, you’ll be able to revise it for better traffic and conversion.
Use analytics tools to track visitors and analyze their behavior. You’ll see what to revise to drive more traffic. Google Analytics is the number one instrument here, but KissMetrics, Zapbi, or RankWatch can help too.
Consider both quantitative (shares, likes, reposts) and qualitative metrics. Learn what users think of your content: ask questions, reply to comments, and involve influencers in dialogue. Social media listening tools like Klout, Brand24, or Social Mention can help automate the process.
Instruments like BuzzSumo or Feedly allow evaluating the competitor blog sites and understanding what content types and topics get the highest level of involvement. Consider them when creating content for your website, and automate content recommendations based on user interests.
Problem #2: Good Traffic But No Conversion
The second problem of content writing for small business marketing is that assets can get high traffic but no conversions. The audience clicks and reads your content but somehow decides to pass: No comments, shares, CTA clicks, or downloads are present.
To change that, make sure that content fulfills two criteria:
It meets user search intent
Ensure your content is relevant to what users search online and answers their queries. It also should have straightforward navigation, be optimized for mobile search and readability, and provide added value to the audience.
Follow all the rules of writing articles for marketing to prevent dwell time and bounce rate growth. Otherwise, people will visit your website, see that it’s not what they were looking for, and leave it.
It sells your small business
Build your content marketing strategy so that every content piece would complement your small business niche. Website visitors should understand what you sell and what you want them to do after reading your content.
Use clear calls to action in content writing. Try to see it from your readers’ eyes to understand if it’s relevant and convincing enough to encourage clicks or sales.
Using registration forms at your website, ensure they’re short, well-designed, and easy to complete. It will motivate visitors to sign up.
Problem #3: No Traffic and No Conversion
This one is the worst scenario bringing all content marketing endeavors to naught. The most common reasons for such situation:
- No content alignment to customer goals
- No particular value proposition
- Content pages overload with too many options
- No social proof that your small business is trustworthy
- Neglecting customer pain points
If that’s the case, come back to the first stage of your content lifecycle and try to answer the whom-what-why questions. Test and analyze everything to improve the content: Instruments like Hotjar, Google Analytics, VWO, and UserTesting can help.
To resolve the problem, you may need to revise all the content plans or adjust the marketing communications strategy to the needs of your target audience.
Conclusion
Every small business marketing project involved with content writing will face problems now and then. Understanding the nature and reasons behind all possible pitfalls can help you decide on the best solution for your content marketing strategy’s success.