As a small business owner, you may face a few obstacles due to your organization’s size. However, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that content marketing has now created a level playing field for entrepreneurs — offering a chance to grow without worrying about money.
Content marketing is the long-term solution that you should be looking at. It’s an easy fix towards gaining market share. And you boost sales by establishing your brand and generating a loyal clientele.
It’s easy to get lost in your business and what it needs. But it’s also important for you to know that consumers’ wants have shifted. They can no longer be persuaded by clichés such as, “good price, great value.” Customers want satisfaction from their purchases. Content marketing gives the customer exactly that.
But, what is the optimum amount of content? And what are the guidelines of this content?
An efficient way to handle your content is through Curata’s Content Marketing Pyramid. The pyramid is a strategic framework that enables you to execute your own content marketing campaign. It optimizes the audience, reuse, and consumption of content without you having to worry about it.
What the Pyramid Does for Your Business
The pyramid helps you establish a content marketing strategy aligned with your company’s objectives. It improves your focus by setting out clear objectives in an organized strategy. Which results in the production of great quality content in a consistent and timely fashion.
Customers respond to the outflow of quality content, which then leads to an increase in sales for your company.
Think of the content pyramid as the content manager for your business. It creates and documents all content that passes through and centralizes all your marketing efforts; coordinating them and eliminating any sort of duplication of content. That sounds like a great manager.
According to NewsCred, the average consumer reads up to 11.4 pieces of content before deciding to buy. The content pyramid takes all measures to make sure your content is seen by as many viewers as possible. And it does this by smartly manipulating the content piece for various formats, platforms, distribution, and promotional channels.
Types of Content
At the very base of the pyramid you have the promotional micro-content, with derivative assets in the middle and core content at the top. This is the most valued asset. Think of it as the CEO of all content.
Although these pieces involve immense research and are thought leadership pieces, they are also the cherry on top of your content cake.
Print books, guides, white papers, and eBooks are all examples of core content. The idea behind it is for your company to give potential customers valuable information which allows a relationship of trust to form. As your audience’s appreciation and loyalty for you grows, so do your sales.
The promotional micro-content does as its name suggests. This content aims to create buzz and awareness for you. At this level, you can start conversations about your content on various platforms including social media. I encourage you to engage with your audience.
Remember that the idea is to show your customers that they are a valuable part of your company as well. And they are.
The derivative assets are broken down into three blocks. These can vary in formats, from blog posts, slide shares, and infographics, to contributed content.
Don’t ever be shy to market yourself and your brand in front of your friends. As a leader and a business owner, networking is very important for your job and this is where contributed content comes into play.
Guest blogging on other forums is a foolproof way to promote your content. You attract audiences from other sites towards your own. The further your content spreads, the more people will visit your website, and a percentage of those will turn into sales.
Building Your Content Marketing Strategy from Scratch
The first thing you will need to do, if you decide to implement the content marketing pyramid, is appoint a leader, responsible for developing a strategy. Curata forecasted that only 42% of all companies are equipped with a content marketing lead that could get the job done. Choose wisely.
As head of your company, you should make sure to bring on support and feedback from key departments. Your people may have excellent input to give – or useless input. But if you never ask, you’ll never know.
An important thing that most managers forget is to set small achievable tasks. The pyramid breaks down your strategy for you into a four-part workflow cycle: strategy, distribution, production and analytics. These are then further broken down into even smaller tasks that your project lead can delegate to those most fit.
The pyramid optimizes your content so that the greatest outcome can be reached. It tracks the content produced through points and a scoring card. The highest points, 500, are for core content pieces and promotional content is marked at one.
Employees at small businesses end up wasting 23% of their time engaged in manual work. At this rate, there is no more time left to waste – invest in resources that help you reap substantial rewards.
Your Return on Investment
A solid content marketing strategy pays off in the long term – be patient, dear owner. It will continually generate traffic, sending visitors directly into your business’ pipeline. This means that the return on your investment can be huge. The content pyramid ensures you create great content, consistently. And that can be difficult. Heard of writer’s block?
Think of your content as a wheel and your content marketing strategy as the push helping it move forward. A sound strategy helps the wheel keep turning and excellent content strengthens the wheel. For you, that means continuous traffic and pipeline activity in marketing and sales.
With the content marketing pyramid, you make consistently good content. Your customers trust you and are satisfied with you, and best of all – they keep coming back.