User-generated content (UGC) is one of the most potent tools marketers can use to promote their brand.

But what really is user-generated content?

It can be any content, such as videos, reviews, images, text, etc. that people create rather than brands.

As compared to brand-pushed marketing content, UGC is regarded as the most trustworthy, authentic, and reliable form of content. If you see the latest statistics, 92% of customers trust the recommendations and reviews shared by individuals and not advertisements.

You can imagine UGC as a vote of confidence. If you observe the current scenario, any brand's biggest fans can be seen writing reviews, snapping pictures, and publishing blog posts promoting its services and products, many a time without any prompting.

In all, user-generated content is a killer asset, and can completely change the game for your business. In this post, we unearth the benefits of this kind of content and how your business can leverage it for successful growth. Let's begin:

What is User-Generated Content and Why Is it Important?

User-generated content is any content users create and share based on their opinions, feedback, ideas, or experiences. Different social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook are the hub of this kind of content. Also, with comments sections on blogs, the ability to publish content for free with a single click, and digital forums, UGC is at an all-time high.

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Now that we are done with the definition, let's look at why user-generated content is important:

UGC simply boosts your credibility by outsourcing content creation to users.

It is effective content that builds authenticity and trust in your brand, further saving your financial resources and organization time!

Owing to its many benefits, 86% of companies have added UGC to their marketing strategy.

Here's more on why businesses are increasingly focusing on displaying user-generated content on different platforms:

1. A Win-Win Situation for Both You and Your Fans

User-generated content puts your customers front and center, while benefiting your brand as well.

When you use UGC in your marketing, this is what happens:

• You let your fans tell your story.
• You market “with” your audience and not “at” them.
• Your marketing messages come from your customers.
• You spotlight individuals who are helping shape your brand!

2. UGC Indicates That Your Brand Is Open to Conversation

In this day and age, people look for different ways to share their opinions about different brands. When you share UGC on branded social channels or simply use it in your marketing, it can make your audience feel seen and heard. It also shows that you are open to conversation.

3. You Get To Cut Through the Noise

UGC content marketing offers a way to cut through the various ads and promoted content your customers are bombarded with on a daily basis.

UGC is genuine and not salesy. It instantly grabs the attention of your audience and works to engage them because it is created by a member of your target audience only.

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4. UGC Provides Social Proof

Another reason why user-generated content is important is because it provides social proof.

Social proof is the validation you get from your customers about the authenticity, trust, and reliability of your activities and products. In this digital age, a brand needs to have social proof. This is because social proof can influence the buying decisions of a brand's customers.

5. Unlimited Flow of Content

As creating marketing campaigns is a constant process, there will always be a requirement for trendy, authentic content.

UGC helps you receive an unlimited flow of such content from your users.

It eliminates the need to spend money on constant idea generation and content creation!

Types of User-Generated Content

UGC comes in many formats and styles. Let’s take a look at the different types of user-generated content:

• Videos
• Testimonials
• Images
• Social media content (e.g., a Tweet about your brand)
• Blog posts
• Live streams
• Product reviews (learn how to get customer reviews)
• YouTube content

Top User-Generated Content Examples

Irrespective of their size, brands use UGC to boost social engagement, expand their reach, drive awareness, increase conversions, and cost effectively scale their business.

Here are some of the best user-generated content examples out there:

1. LuluLemon

LuluLemon is a Canadian athleisure brand offering leggings and yoga clothing to its customers. To increase their reach on social media platforms, they asked their followers to share the photos in which they are wearing LuluLemon's garments. They also had to use this hashtag:

#thesweatlife

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This benefited the brand in two ways:

• It got tonnes of easily searchable UGC content for repurposing.
• Sharing content from brand ambassadors increased its reach across social media.

2. GoPro

GoPro is a popular video equipment company that uses UGC for its YouTube channel.

If you check their top three videos, they are actually filmed by customers. These videos had 400 million views in total (as of December 2021).

The best thing is this content didn't cost the brand anything.

3. La Croix

La Croix is a sparkling water brand that also uses a hashtag (#LiveLaCroix), similar to the strategy that LuluLemon used. The hashtag helps the brand mine for UGC on their social media networks.

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The best thing about the brand is that it shares content produced by anyone and not just brand loyalists with higher follower counts. This makes their UGC super relatable to their followers.

User-Generated Content Tips

It's now time we discuss some important user-generated content tips. Let's begin:

1. Requesting Permission Is Mandatory

Always ask for your customer's consent before using or republishing their content. It keeps you out of hot waters regarding copyright concerns.

Asking for consent is also important because a lot of times individuals can use your branded hashtags without even knowing that you have tied them to a UGC campaign.

2. Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

Ensure you give proper credit to the original creator when you share UGC on your social media networks. What we mean is, directly tag them in the post and indicate if you are using their visuals and/or words.

Note: You may also want to share UGC across social media networks. For instance, you may want to share a picture from Instagram on your Facebook page. In this case, you can always ask the original creator how they want to be credited on the other platform.

Why is giving credit so important anyway?

Giving credit not only recognizes the work of content creators but also encourages them to use and post more about your brand.

3. Provide Clear Guidelines

If you observe the current scenario, only some businesses provide clear guidelines on the kind of UGC they want followers to create and share. UGC creators want to share their content, but they also want to know exactly what to do when it comes to UGC.

Don't be afraid to share specific requirements and tell the creators what kind of content fits your needs.

Tip: To determine the kind of content you should feature, ensure you follow these two steps:

• Sit with your social media strategy document to look for ways user-generated content aligns with your current marketing goals.
• Use this information to create a statement that tells users what type of content you will most likely feature.

Share your UGC task at places you know individuals will interact with your brand, such as your website, your social channel bios, your product packaging, or in other UGC social media posts.

4. Make UGC Entertaining

UGC should be entertaining for your followers. Sometimes it doesn't have to be product-related at all!

For instance, one of the best UGC trends you can see out there is:

Brands reposting their follower's tweets on their Instagram feed.

How to Get More UGC for Your Brand?

Apart from creating a unique hashtag, here are some ideas on how to get more UGC for your brand:

• Ask for feedback from users.
• Launch a contest on Instagram.
• Create a compelling challenge that pushes users creatively or physically. For instance, a fitness content creator can design a multi-day fitness challenge in which users can participate and share their progress on social media.

The Bottom Line

From helping you increase your reach to providing social proof, it's easy to see why user-generated content is important for brands in this digital age. It is a complete game-changer for businesses because it increases user engagement, which in turn boosts conversions and revenue.

All in all, UGC is a secret ingredient for successful marketing, and brands and marketers should definitely leverage it in their marketing activities. Just ensure you follow important user-generated content tips like always asking the customer's consent before you republish or use their content.

Do you want people to take a specific action after they find and consume your content?

The action is the thing you want them to do next. For instance, it could be making a purchase, reading another blog post, or downloading something.

If your answer is yes, you require a call-to-action (CTA) to convince them to take that action.

Essentially, a CTA is a piece of content intended to prompt users to carry out a particular action. It can be a line of text, a button, or an image. It usually takes the form of a directive or instruction and uses action verbs like “register”, “buy”, “follow”, “sign up”, etc.

You need to create a precise and effective CTA if you want customers to take a specific action when they land on your website.

Want to know more about what is a call-to-action, its importance, and how to craft the perfect CTA? Keep reading.

What Do Calls-To-Action Mean?

Put simply, a CTA is a marketing term referring to a prompt on a site that asks users to carry out an action. For example, you can ask them to download a demo, sign up for a newsletter, or purchase a product.

A CTA can appear in different places on a website, such as:

• Checkout pages or purchase pages
• Side panels
• Ads
• Pop-ups and slide-in content
• End-of-page for landing pages or articles
• Persistent headers

You can see a CTA as a hyperlink text or a clickable button. When potential customers click on it, they move a step closer to conversion.

Now, let’s discuss the types of CTAs.

The CTA types you will find on any professional website include:

• Newsletter subscription CTAs
• Social sharing
• Purchase CTAs
• In-line content upgrades
• Learn more
• Contact form submissions

Common Call-To-Action Examples

You may have seen or clicked on CTA buttons such as:

1. Buy now
2. Sign up today
3. Learn more
4. Download template now
5. Get 25% off your first order
6. Add to cart
7. Follow us on Instagram
8. Schedule a free consultation
9. Add to wishlist
10. Get your free ebook
11. Register for free webinar
12. Share on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn
13. Try a 15-day free trial!

You can also view CTAs as hyperlink texts in action phrases like:

Wish to know more? Read our post on XYZ!

Here are some top CTA examples ‌you can use in 2022:

1. Take a peek

Use “take a peek” on your CTA button when you want to give a tour of your platform. Using it can be a great substitute to “Learn more” as well. Here’s how thryv.com have used it:

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2. Try It

You can consider replacing “Sign Up” with “Try it” on your CTA button (if the context fits).

Here’s an example:

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3. Sure

“Sure” is a great way to replace the “yes” CTA button. Check out this image:

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4. I’m In

You can also use “I’m In” on your CTA button if it fits the context. Here’s a great example of a fact-based, amusing CTA that incorporates it:

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Why is a CTA Important?

Strategic CTAs effectively assist your visitors through the buying journey. They affect your conversion rates in a direct manner. A compelling and powerful CTA will grab the visitor’s attention, pique their interest, and encourage them to take action.

Let’s take a look at the importance of CTAs in closer detail:

1. The Next Step Becomes Easy and Obvious: When you make the next step easy and obvious with the help of a CTA, people are more likely to continue through your sales funnel and convert.
2. CTAs Encourage Interactions With Your Website: Let’s understand this point with the help of an example. If you add a CTA at the end of a blog post to provide links to the readers to read more information on a subject, you can convince them to stay on your site. This way, they interact more with your site. As a result of these interactions, they start to familiarize with your business and develop trust in your brand.
3. Visitors Don’t Have to Struggle: A CTA is an important aspect of the pages of your site. CTA links or buttons double up as signposts, signaling visitors about the next step they need to take. This way, they never have to struggle to find the route to sign up for a service or purchase a product.
4. CTAs Eliminate Decision Fatigue: Simple instructions or directive statements tell your clients what to do next and where to go, making the user journey simpler and time-efficient.

How to Write a CTA?

There’s not one defined formula to follow when it comes to writing the perfect CTA.

Here’s an example formula for crafting a CTA:

problem + solution + action

Take a look at this image that implements this formula:

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Listen Up: Consider these two key things when you write a CTA:

1. It should be impactful and catch your audience’s attention
2. It should convince your audience to take the required action

How to Create an Effective CTA?

Today, people expect to see a CTA in a prominent position on your landing page and website. Even if you place it correctly, you need to craft an outstanding CTA to convert your potential customers. Without a clear and effective CTA, site visitors may click away after feeling overwhelmed or confused.

To get your CTA right, you can take the help of some proven techniques. Here is a list of steps you can follow to create a tantalizing call-to-action:

1. Go for an Eye-Catching Design

Your CTA image or button should stand out from the design of your landing page. It needs to make a solid impact. Create it in a way that it pops out, combining brand colors and fonts that match your style.

Here are some helpful pointers on creating a powerful CTA button design:

• Size

Your site visitor is more likely to notice and click on a large CTA button. However, don’t create an oversized button as it may create a feeling of pressure on the visitor.

• Color

You can make your CTA buttons more noticeable with the help of color as well. Colors can cause a shift in emotions and mood, so use them accordingly. Here’s a complete list of color meanings for your ready reference:

• White: Clean, calm, and simple.
• Red: Confidence, power, and youth.
• Green: Peace, health, and growth.
• Orange: Friendly, energetic, and warm.
• Purple: Luxurious, wise, and creative.
• Yellow: Happiness, warmth, and optimism.
• Black: Reliable, experienced, and sophisticated.
• Blue: Security, trust, and stability.

Note: Bold colors such as red, black, and orange can instantly grab attention.

• Shape

The shape of your CTA button also plays a key role in making it noticeable to the site visitors. Refer to these shape meanings when you decide to design your CTA button:

• Rectangles and Squares: discipline, courage, reliability, strength, and security.
• Triangles: risk, excitement, danger, stability, and balance.
• Circles, Ellipses, and Ovals: eternity, magic, and universe.
• Abstract Shapes: uniqueness and elaborate.

Conventionally, CTA buttons are given the shape of horizontal rectangles, giving them the appeal of clickable buttons.

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Listen Up: We suggest you design your CTAs with rounded corners as they draw attention to the copy.

2. Create an Actionable Copy

Channel your inner copywriter and craft an action-focused copy.

Ensure you strike a balance between clear, simple instruction and jargon-free, compelling copy.

Also, don’t forget to use action words such as “start”, “register”, “download”, etc. in your copy.

Listen Up: You can always take inspiration from major brand websites to get creative while crafting your copy.

3. Make It Sound Urgent

You can also add a sense of urgency to your CTA to keep your visitors focused on the action you want them to take. Are there only a few items left in the stock? Is it a limited offer? Adding the element of urgency will let the visitors know that they need to take an action at that point in time instead of putting it off for a later stage.

4. Keep Your CTA Short in Length

For a CTA to fit into a button format, it needs to be short in length. A longer length of CTA can fail to grab attention in such a format. We recommend you keep the words to five or even less.

5. Tell Your Customers What They Should Expect

No one wants to get tricked or deceived into clicking on something that offers no value to them. Ensure you craft a copy that clearly communicates to your customers what they should expect if they click the CTA. We recommend you create an informative CTA that explains the benefits of clicking on it. For instance, you can tell your customers if they will be taken to a new page to complete an order or will they be signed to a newsletter.

Tip: If you incorporate target-audience-specific language in your CTA, you get to increase the conversion potential.

Bonus tip: You can consider using SEMrush’s Keyword Gap tool to search for keywords to use in your CTA. This will help you craft some unique CTAs (that your competition isn’t using) and assist you in your SEO ranking.

6. Ensure a Smooth and Logical Flow

It’s crucial that you align your CTAs with specific stages in the buyer’s journey so that you can make relevant offers. Let’s understand this with the help of an example. Promoting a full-year premier delivery subscription to a new visitor will be futile as it will be too early in their buying journey.

Call-To-Action Strategy

You can always use some effective CTA strategies to increase inquiries and customer data capture, which will in turn help you increase your sales. Here are some of these strategies:

1. Include More Than One CTA

The most common way you see a CTA appear is in a sentence, placed at the end of a blog, email, or website. However, you must incorporate more than one CTA in your blog to prompt the reader about what they should do next.

2. Don’t Go Overboard

While we recommend that you have more than one CTA in your marketing material, you must know how much is too much. Don’t include too many CTAs and overwhelm the readers. They may find you insincere or simply desperate if you go overboard with CTAs.

3. Placement Is Important

A difficult-to-find or hidden CTA doesn’t benefit both you or your audience. Ensure your page layout is such that your potential customer can easily find a CTA.

Here’s what you can keep in mind while deciding the placement of your CTA:

A simple offer that doesn’t need a lot of thinking to make a buying decision can use a CTA that’s placed above the fold. But if you think your readers need to digest all the information they have got and then make a decision, you should place the CTA at the end.

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4. Prioritize Your CTAs

It’s important to note that not every CTA of yours will carry the same priority. For instance, a CTA prompting a customer to “buy now” will be of greater priority as compared to the one that offers a white paper to read. Ensure the CTAs with the most priority are the easiest to locate.

5. Conduct A/B Testing

A/B testing compares two versions of a CTA to check which one performs better. The performance is checked based on real-time data and statistics.

Why do this kind of testing?

This is because it will let you know if you have the right message, placement, and design.

Now, when you create A/B test versions, ensure you change only a single detail so that you know what impacted the results.

Here’s an example of A/B test variations:

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Wrapping It Up

Used in marketing campaigns, a call-to-action is a written directive that encourages visitors to take the desired action. From eliminating the decision fatigue of your site visitors to increasing the number of interactions with your website, the importance of using CTAs cannot be emphasized enough. A persuasive CTA can help you gain subscribers, shares, likes, and customers. If you follow the tips and strategies we have discussed above, you will be able to create a CTA that's powerful enough to encourage your site visitors to take the desired action.

Content marketing has truly reached its peak, and brands can no longer attract and engage customers with only content in their campaigns. Customers are looking for more in terms of value addition, which has given rise to branded content in marketing. However, branded content is not as new as you might think. It has been around since the late 1940s, but has become more mainstream recently. If your business hasn't jumped on the branded content bandwagon yet, it is high time to do so.

Read on to know more about branded content and incorporating it into your business.

What Is Branded Content?

Before we move on to how and when to use branded content, it is critical to understand what it means. Many people confuse branded content with adding logos and images of their brand to showcase their content. However, branded content goes far beyond that. Branded content is about sharing your company's value and vision with your customers through your content.

Branded content is not simply about generating sales or revenue, but eliciting an emotional response from your customers so that they feel connected to your brand.

How Is Branded Content Different From Content Marketing?

Content marketing is using your content to achieve your marketing goals. It is created with the audience as the focus in mind. However, branded content is more about showcasing what your brand stands for to attract people who share similar ethics and values.

Branded content usually generates relatively quick and effective actions from the customer, whereas content marketing produces more gradual results.

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Why Does Your Business Need Branded Content?

If your content marketing strategies are doing well, you may wonder why you even need branded content. There are several advantages to introducing branded content to your marketing roster. The major ones include:

1. It Helps Build an Emotional Connection

Humans are emotional beings who listen to their emotions more than anything else. By creating branded content that speaks to people's emotions, you can build a solid and lasting connection with people and turn them into loyal customers. It is seen that users who feel an emotional connection to a brand spend 2x more on that brand than those who don't. Therefore, it can significantly impact your business if you build that emotional connection with your audience.

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2. It Acts as a Reminder

In this age where competition is remarkably stiff, leaving your mark is one of the most challenging things to do. Market monopoly is not something brands achieve easily, so you have to rely on standing out from the crowd to be memorable to your audience. Branded content has 59% more recall than other digital ads. It leaves an imprint on people's minds that makes you unforgettable long after a specific ad campaign is over.

3. It Helps Improve Your Branding

Today, almost everything is digital and competition is cut-throat. Hence, the customer must be aware enough of your brand so that they pick you over your competitors in a flash. Branded content helps you frame your brand identity and makes your business recognizable to people quickly. Studies show that people support brands that take a stand for social causes.

4. It Creates Engagement and Loyalty

If you are tired of making posts after posts and running campaigns after campaigns with no real attention from people, it is time to switch to branded content. 27.5% of millennials block ads, and your audience often won't even see your ad. However, branded content is created in such a way that it pushes the consumers to give a response. People are more likely to support a brand after consuming its branded content through purchases, social media promotions, and other forums.

5. It Can Go Viral

In this age of digitization, becoming ‘viral’ is one of the easiest ways to capture market and audience attention. Branded content can easily make your brand go viral on social media platforms and snowball your popularity in a short amount of time.

6. Promotes Traffic and Leads

Getting traffic and leads for your website from various sources is critical to achieving business goals. They help you generate sales and revenue for your business. Branded content, although not created to generate leads and traffic, can produce enough curiosity among people to visit your website and even convert to your customers.

How to Create Branded Content for Your Business?

There's no one-size-fits-all rule when it comes to creating branded content, as no two businesses are alike. It is all about connecting with your audience at an emotional level. However, there are some specific tips you can implement to create the perfect branded content. These are:

1. Create Meaningful Content

When talking about branded content, quality will always overrule quantity. You need to focus on creating content that touches the minds of your audience so they remember you for a long time. That can only happen when you incorporate emotions, values, and knowledge into the content, no matter the format. Taking a social stance over an issue is one of the most common ways brands try to create branded content.

Here are some must-haves to create meaningful branded content:

• A unique and original concept.
• An emotional facet that connects with the audience.
• A gripping story.
• A big NO to sales pitches.
• A focus on current social and cultural issues.
• A drive to engage the audience.

2. Choose Your Platforms Correctly

Your platform also plays a vital role in establishing your brand identity. Creating excellent content isn't enough to reach your audience. You also need to find them at the right place to send your message. Be strategic about choosing your platform and ensure you have the right audience group on your chosen forum.

3. Have a Definitive Tone and Voice

When creating branded content, it is essential to set the tone of your content, as it will reflect your brand values. You need to follow a consistent style in all of your branded content, so be careful about what you want to depict and ensure that the message you're conveying is clear.

4. Have a Deeper Understanding of Your Target Audience

For your branded content strategies to work, you need a deeper understanding of your target audience's psyche. Consider their opinions on various social and intellectual issues and find out what would resonate with them the most to capture their attention.

5. Ensure the Content Has Visibility

Creating a single video or blog post on your website may not gather enough attention to achieve the desired results. You must build your branded content frequency across various platforms to ensure it receives ample visibility.

6. Diversify Your Content

Although your brand values and ideologies remain the same, giving your audience similar content will reduce its impact. You must find diversified and unique ways to send your message to your audience. Think out of the box and create innovative ideas for your content.

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7. Look Out for Your Competitors

Your competitors play a vital role in the effectiveness of your branding strategies. You must ensure that your branded content is different and better than your competition's. If all of your competitors are saying the same thing, you won't be able to capture the attention of your audience. Studying your competitors' branded content helps you determine what to do and what not to do.

8. Monitor and Measure Your Content

Like every other marketing strategy, having measurement mechanisms in place is also critical for branded content strategy. You need to determine the effectiveness of your branded content campaigns. For this, you can utilize various social media listening and other digital tools to monitor your progress.

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How to Create Branded Content for Different Platforms?

Branded Content on Instagram

Instagram is the choice of platform for many brands to showcase branded content, and not without good reasons. It is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms, with over 1 billion monthly users!

Branded content on Instagram is often created with the help of social media influencers. These influencers have many millions of followers who place a certain amount of trust in them.

By collaborating with these influencers, you can post videos of them using your products/services to capture the attention of their follower base. The influencer can tag your brand in their posts and share links to your products/website to promote your brand.

A great example of branded content on Instagram is the #meetanowner campaign run by the high-end automobile brand Subaru. For the campaign, Subaru found a few existing customers who had an influence on Instagram and asked them to post pictures with their Subaru vehicle and hashtags of the brand. The campaign was intended to show people that Subaru vehicles are designed for adventures and are reliable partners to take on your thrilling off-road travels. The fact that the people who owned the vehicle championed it made the claims much more reliable and realistic among adventure seekers.

Branded Content on Facebook

Right behind Instagram is another social media platform that rules the branded content forum. Facebook is one of the most influential social media platforms, with over 2.934 billion active users globally.

Creating branded content on Facebook is different from Instagram. Facebook requires you to get permission to become a sponsor or creator of branded content. The influencer who uses your content or products and tags your brand must also announce their partnership with the brand before they post your branded content.

We can see one of the best examples of using Facebook for creating branded content with Nike, one of the most popular sports brands in the world. If you check out the Nike Facebook page, you’ll ‌see that there is a great balance of product launches, scientific research around their products, charitable events that they are a part of, and sports personalities who wear their brand as they cross milestones in their career. Their page shows ‌they are reliable and way ahead of time than their competitors with the efforts they put into each product, all without even directly promoting any product through over-the-top sales pitches.

Wrapping up

Branded content is one of the most prominent ways to leave a mark on your customers in today's times. It shows the customer who you are and what you believe in, creating bonds far deeper than a high-quality product shoot or an engaging sales pitch could ever do.

You can get started with simple yet effective forms of branded content “ such as videos and banner ads “ before building up toward other forms of content gradually.

Ultimately, it is all about what you want your customers to believe about you.

Whether you are a small business, startup, or a multi-national corporation, branded content is effective for all.

A robust digital marketing strategy requires several components - from social media to email to search engines and much more. While each competent is equally important to advertise your business online, content is unarguably the most important part of these efforts.

Are you a small business owner wishing to increase your audience and boost your brand recognition? If yes, then you must try content marketing.

Content marketing involves the creation and dissemination of online materials such as blogs, videos, infographics, whitepapers, and social media posts with the purpose of stimulating interest in the services or products of a business. It helps grow traffic to your website.

In this blog, we will discuss why small business owners should build a powerful content marketing strategy and how to craft one.

The Importance of Content Marketing For Small Business

Content marketing enables you to create and share timely and useful content. It allows you to build loyalty and respect among consumers and become a thought leader in your industry.

You may wonder how. Content marketing offers your audience something that has value, developing trust among your prospects and customers.

Another way content marketing aids you is by recognizing the pain points of your customers. It also helps build a customer base you can engage with for the purpose of driving sales.

Additionally, another benefit of content marketing includes the evergreen content you produce. For instance, a blog post that talks about the history of your industry. Such an asset will not become outdated.

Businesses today have recognized the importance of content marketing. As per the latest marketing stats for 2022, 70% of marketers are active investors in content marketing.

All in all, with the help of content marketing, you gain a competitive advantage over your competitors who are not using content marketing. You also get a chance to grow your brand awareness and establish and maintain a successful brand identity.

Content Marketing For A Small Business: 7 Tips For Success

Let's discuss the tips every business owner should follow to build a successful content marketing strategy for their small business.

1) Start a Blog

Companies that consistently write blogs get 67% more leads per month on average.

Blogging is a free way of marketing your capabilities and services. So, if you want to know how to market a small business, blogging is a route that you can opt for. It also helps you become an industry expert.

Blogs help in different ways, such as:

• Boost your SEO rankings
• Drive traffic to your website
• Provide increased value to your consumers
• Add to your brand’s exposure
• Get leads and increase the likelihood of conversion

2) Stay Active on Social Platforms Your Audience Uses

You may have a social media presence if you are actively involved in selling a service or a product. However, simply being present on social channels is not enough. You are required to stay active on all the social media channels your audience spends their time on.

Now you may wonder how to select the right social media channels for your business. For this, you are required to identify your target audience. On social media platforms, you are speaking to a set of consumers who have specific interests and not everyone. After you learn about the individuals you are speaking to, figure out how to reach them.

Tip: To check where your audience is active, you can do the following:

• Use existing consumer data to determine where your audience hangs out online.
• Check out the social profiles of your competitors to know where their most active users are.

3) Deliver Content as per the Stage of Your Customer Within the Marketing Funnel

To reach the conversion phase, individuals go through a process called the marketing funnel. From learning about your business to conversion, this funnel includes everything. These are the four steps most marketing funnels have:

• Attention: Consumer views your social media post, ads, or learns about you via word-of-mouth
• Interest: Consumer is interested and wants to learn more
• Desire: Consumer is at a stage where they want to convert
• Action: Consumer takes action (for e.g.- subscribing to your email newsletter or purchasing your product)

To align this process with your creation, ensure you provide relevant content to the target customers present at the different stages of the funnel. For instance, an in-depth asset can overburden a potential customer who is currently at the attention stage of the funnel.

4) Conduct Keyword Research to Find Great Topics

An important step is to optimize your blog for SEO. You must conduct keyword research as a part of SEO. Keyword research is a crucial part of content marketing because:

• It helps identify trending topics individuals are interested to know more about.
• It helps improve your search engine rankings.

Watch this video to know how to do SEO keyword research -

Note: The keyword strategy for your business is the most critical part that determines your ranking on the Google Search Engine Result Page (SERP). However, you must also know that SEO-friendly websites rank higher on the SERPs, too. If you do not have an SEO-friendly website, it is time to build one for your business.

If you need an SEO-friendly, professional, niche-based website, you should know that it takes many days to build one. We recommend that you use DashClicks' Sites tool that helps you make an SEO-friendly, custom-branded agency website in just a few seconds.

5) Create a Content Calendar

Monthly content calendars include blog posts, emails, social posts, and any other content you wish to produce in that particular month. It helps you stay organized. Also, with the help of a content schedule, your readers get comfortable as it increases familiarity and trust for your business.

A content calendar is important because:

• It ensures that every content-related task is actually taking place
• It makes it convenient to collaborate with outside partners as well as your team
• It provides you a big picture of the upcoming stuff

Let’s discuss the steps that help you create your own content calendar:

• Decide the types of content you wish to publish, such as case studies, landing pages, e-books, opinion pieces, blog posts, etc.
• Discuss with your customer service and sales team to know the most asked questions by your potential customers. Then sit and brainstorm with your marketing team to determine different content strategies and more topics that you need to cover.
• Use the SEMRush Content Audit tool to analyze the current pages on your website and check what you should update, remove, or rewrite. Use this tool to analyze your competitors as well.
• Choose social media channels by checking the platforms your target audience uses. For instance, Facebook typically works great for B2C audiences.
• Before a type of content reaches production, define every step of the content process. Then, decide on a publishing schedule as per your content auditing and analytics data.
• Schedule evergreen content and publish them at a time when there are content delays.
• Don’t forget to add guest content to your content calendar.

6) Bring Your Reviews to Life

You may be surprised to know that 91% of people in the age group of 18-34 trust reviews published online as much as personal recommendations.

Also, a majority of consumers (58%) would pay more or travel farther to support a business that has positive reviews.

What's even more important is that 83% of consumers only trust relevant and recent reviews.

With these stats, you can definitely see the power of reviews. They help in driving a business, especially one that is both local and small.

Keeping this information in mind, we recommend you bring your reviews to life via social posts and testimonials that you can post on your website and blog.

Testimonials are considered one of the most effective content marketing tactics. Let's discuss how you can convert your blog post readers into buyers with the help of customer testimonials:

• Use screenshots of your client’s statements and place them within your blog posts.
• Use these statements as quotes in your blog posts.

Tip: To know how to get reviews and leverage them in your content marketing, read this blog.

7) Find a Unique Angle

Your competitors can indeed provide you with a lot of topic ideas, but avoid producing content that is too similar to the content created by others. The goal of content marketing is to provide information that is useful and adds value to your customers, not something that is already available to them on the web.

If you find a great idea, do not replicate it with tiny alterations. What you can do instead is to see it as a starting point and search for ways to incorporate your own unique angle. Doing so will only help you provide interesting content to your readers.

Bonus Tips:

• Start an email newsletter to let your readers know about an upcoming event, a new product, industry-related news, and much more.
• See what is resonating with your audience and create a variety of content types. Think about content repurposing as well.

How to Craft a Small Business Marketing Strategy?

Let's discuss what you need to do to craft a marketing strategy for your small business:

1. Build Your Buyer Personas and Fine - Tune Them

Create buyer personas to better understand your audience and their respective pain points. When you determine who is buying your products, you get to know the kind of content they need and when.

2. Solve a Problem

Consumers look for information that provides a solution to their problems. Identify the content assets that can fulfill the unique needs of your buyers. Do this after you have identified buyer personas.

3. Set Business Goals

Set business goals that align with the strategy. The principle of SMART goals makes your benchmarks attainable and reasonable, so do use the principle during this time.

4. Determine Distribution Channels

When it is time to share your content, determine which content piece is right for which channel. This is because not every content piece does well on every channel. Hence, to achieve success and reach, this step is important.

Check the image below to see how the three distribution channels - owned media channels, paid media channels, and earned media channels - overlap and the way in which you can combine them:

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Also, take a note of how you can distribute different content types:

• Distribute your interview content or podcasts through Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts.
• Distribute your infographic content through your blog and Pinterest.
• Distribute success stories and case studies through a dedicated website page.
• You can distribute your video content through YouTube.

Conclusion

Even though you run a small business, there is a high chance that you have huge competition. To grow your audience and help your business stand out, you require a content marketing strategy that will help you showcase your value to your current and future consumers.

When you build your buyer personas, you take a step forward towards building a winning content marketing strategy. After you do so, ensure you create content centered around your buyers' pain points and the stage they are at within the marketing funnel. Stay active on social platforms your audience uses and bring your reviews to life through testimonials and social posts.

Bottom line: Try implementing most of the above-mentioned tips for your business.

Now, it is our turn to ask you a question. Which of the above-mentioned tips do you think will be the most beneficial for your business?

This is no news that content is the most fruitful way of gaining organic traffic by providing customers solutions to their search queries. However, designing an SEO strategy that caters to both the search bots and the consumers' needs is equally important. SEO content strategy is essential for every business, even though most marketers believe if they have well-written and helpful content, they do not require an SEO content strategy.

Most companies focus on either extremely keyword-forward SEO or entirely ignore SEO to provide useful information to their consumers in the name of content marketing. However, this is precisely where most content strategies fail to impress search algorithms/bots and viewers. Creating content that brings humans and search bots together is an extremely crucial task that marketers should successfully carry out to generate expected results.

All this is achievable with thorough audience research and quantitative search data. Striking the right balance between SEO and content strategy is one way you can connect every piece of content to your consumers.

Why Do You Need to Bring SEO and Content Strategy Together?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is necessary for your website and brand visibility because, at the end of the day, what you need from beautifully put-out content is results in the form of conversions and traffic. And without SEO, all these efforts will go in vain because no one can find you when they search for products similar to yours on a search engine. Hence, the ultimate goals of needing SEO for your website content are relevancy and a higher rank in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

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If you don’t want to believe the words, here is data showing how SEO is essential for digital marketing to satisfy search bots-

• Organic searches are the primary source of business for B2B businesses, and Google alone counts over 2 trillion searches per year.
• According to a study conducted by SEMRush, 78% of marketers who believe they have a well-developed content strategy were highly successful in 2021.
• According to a study, 89% of marketers investing in SEO and content marketing rely on SEO as their most-effective content distribution channel.
• Another study also revealed that most internet users only click on the results available on the first page of searches and don’t even navigate to the second page. Moreover, the first page linked in the searches takes the trophy home with over 25% more clicks.

What we can conclude from the data above is that SEO and content strategy work the best when they go hand in hand to produce results that give investors ROIs. Other conclusions made from the above studies are-

#1- Organic searches are the primary means to grow businesses, especially B2B.

#2- More and more companies are showing interest in SEO and content strategy since a high percentage are investing in it.

#3- Companies investing in content marketing need to analyze their results to see the efficacy of their approach.

What Is an SEO Content Strategy and Why Do You Need It?

First and foremost, you need to understand what an SEO content strategy is. It is planning for your valuable content that addresses a few key questions, including –

• Who is searching for you or services similar to yours?
• What are their pain points?
• How can you provide solutions to their pain points?
• How will you conduct the required analysis of your progress?

Understanding the Basic Elements of an SEO Content Strategy

An excellent and implementable SEO content strategy is one that includes all the bases that can provide customers with solutions to their pain points and businesses with good results. To better understand the process, here are the basic elements of an SEO content strategy that you should design for your business.

Element #1 – Understanding Your Target Audience

While it may seem too much on the face, the targeted viewers are often overlooked when preparing an SEO strategy. This is because SEO primarily wants to impress the search bots to get your website a better ranking in the SERPs. However, the entire process can be quickly streamlined if you focus on your customers by understanding them better. It makes the task of SEO easier since search bots look for valuable information, something your target audience will also be looking for. Some ways you can get to know your target audience better are –

A. Designing a Customer Persona: If you already have a customer persona, great! But if you do not have one, you definitely need it. Customer personas are basically the essential character descriptions of your targeted audience. You can follow any format for creating these but remember to include crucial details like name, age, gender, location, job title, interests, personal preferences, and other information related to your products and services that can affect sales.

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B. Using Google Analytics: Google has multiple tools you can employ to help in your SEO and content strategy. One such tool is Google Analytics which can help you efficiently reach your goals. You can better understand your viewer by using the demographic and interest data in Google Analytics. Under the demographics section, you will find crucial information about your viewers' age, gender, and traffic and conversion data categorized according to the other information. At the same time, the interests tab will provide details regarding the various interests and preferences your prospective clients lean towards.

‍C. Analyzing the Sites Your Customers Are Interested In: The best way to make an impact on your clients is by getting their attention. And the most straightforward way to do that is by finding something they are interested in. You can find similarities in your audience niches by visiting the websites that are most popular amongst them. Creating the base of your advertising and promotional strategies with these interests in mind will perfectly mesmerize them into learning more about your business.

D. Using Surveys: Another method you can use to understand your customers better is by taking their surveys and knowing why they are interested in your products and services. You can accomplish this with multiple online tools that are becoming pretty popular today to analyze your viewer responses and feedback in real-time, like Google Forms and SurveyMonkey.

Element #2 – Needs of Your Prospects

Knowing the interests of your users is critical to providing them with better products and services. But how do you know what they exactly need from you? You can get this information by discussing such details with your customer service and internal subject matters team. The marketing team usually does not know much about the reviews of the customers, and this is where your customer service and internal subject matters teams come in. These are the best departments to provide you with information about your existing and potential customers as they frequently interact with them. They know how your customers feel about your products and services and can give you a better insight into this information.

Understanding why your customers like or dislike your products and services is essential to improve on them. Think of it like this – if you remove the existing pain points of your consumers that they may have with your products or that of your competitors, you will gain an upper hand by finding a solution. You can begin with the following questions-

• Who are your target customers?
• Why are your customers using your products and services, and how are you solving their concerns?
• Why do your customers face that problem in the first place?
• How are your customers using your products to solve their pain points?
• Why do your customers think your product can solve their problems?
• When do your customers purchase your products and services?

Element #3 – Aligning the Keywords, Topics, and Content With Your Sales Funnel

Users don’t directly search for the entire problem at once on a search engine. They use keywords that can target their pain point and provide them with quick solutions. Once you understand your prospect, you will also understand which keywords work the best for them and how you can direct them toward your website. When you have your keywords, you can develop topics and content similar to the interests of your consumers.

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With that done, you can then write content that aligns with your sales funnel to get the desired results. You can complete this by –

A. Understanding the Search Intent of Your Customers: As mentioned before, customers use the search engine to find solutions to their queries. The query may be finding a site they already know, getting information, or purchasing items. These goals are called search intent and are of three types; navigational, informational, and transactional.

B. Conducting Smart Keyword Research: Generally, organizations conduct their keyword research by finding keywords mostly searched by people related to the products or services they sell and sticking with the ones with the highest search volume. However, an effective and more straightforward way to do this would be to use tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush, which will find relevant keywords for you according to the primary and secondary keywords related to your business.

C. Prioritizing Topics: Prioritizing keywords and aligning them with your sales funnel is essential since most viewers do not exactly follow the expected sales funnel flow. You can do this by using keywords most relevant to your products or services, solving the pain points of your consumers, and adding keywords that are most searched by your targeted customers.

Element #4 – Your Goals and Measurement Processes

Every business has a set of goals they want to achieve no matter which industry they belong to. These goals may be higher rankings, more traffic, better conversions, etc. Once you establish your goals, you can then evaluate the success of your SEO content strategy. You can use tools like Google Search Console to check your rankings in the SERPs and Google Analytics to check your overall progress using the strategies employed.

In Conclusion

SEO and content strategies are dynamic and develop all the time as customer expectations from a business keep changing. However, the above blog should give you the evergreen basics of SEO content strategies that will keep the search bots and your consumers happy with your brand.

There's a powerful marketing strategy you've yet to utilize effectively.

The best part of this technique is that it's absolutely free.

Using customer reviews in marketing is a powerful method of swaying an audience. While skeptics may hesitate to believe your words, they have little reason to disregard third-party opinions.

First, we will talk about how you can get customer reviews at no cost. Then, we'll show you the best ways to use that content for satisfying results.

How to Get Customer Reviews?

Obtaining honest reviews from customers is a simple task.

However, the exact process will vary depending on the method you intend to use to gather data. We recommend that every business take advantage of every review and testimonial channel that the internet offers.

Let's start with arguably the most important platform.

1. Google My Business

Every business is eligible to create a Google Business Profile.

A Google Business Profile allows business owners to control their online presence and any data about business operations.

Your profile will allow you to:

• Add business photos
• Establish NAP information (Name, Address, Phone Number)
• List your website
• List business hours
• Post status updates
• Collect and respond to customer reviews

Google's study purports that 60% of customers utilize a GMB profile found in search results to contact a business.

This is because a business with a complete GMB profile appears more legitimate than results without one. Additionally, the accessibility of information makes choosing one of these results, particularly from the local 3-pack, a no-brainer.

Furthermore, those featured brands show off their customer reviews with ease. These require a star rating, at a minimum, while also often featuring direct statements from the user.

Any brand can get customer reviews from its Google Business Profile. To create or claim one, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Google Business Profile Manager here.
2. Search for your business. Even if you’ve yet to use this tool, it’s possible that a profile already exists.
   If your business appears, look for the link that reads Claim this business. Click this. Then, skip to step 5.
   If your business does not appear click on Add your business to Google.
3. Enter your business name exactly as it’s registered. Then, select the most appropriate industry category.
4. Add the necessary information to complete your business profile.
5. You will now need to verify business ownership with Google.

In some scenarios, Google may choose to validate your business instantly. In all other cases, you will need to provide a verification code sent to your phone or email address.

Just like that, you now have your own GMB profile! Any time a user searches for your brand or uses related keywords, they can find your profile and leave a review.

To gather more customer reviews, you want your profile to show up in rankings. To achieve better rankings, be sure to optimize your profile frequently. Ensure that you fill out information for all categories and that it is consistent with other descriptions of your business online.

2. Get Your Brand on Social Media Platforms

Social media is an excellent way to get customer reviews. Although, the method will differ from the process described above.

The only social media platform that provides aggregated reviews like GMB is Facebook. There, like Google, you can create a separate page and profile for your business. This allows you to distinguish your profile from the business entity.

To create a Facebook business profile, you'll first need to create a personal profile. You can do so here.

Then, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your account. At the top of the page, click on Pages.
2. Click Create New Page.
3. Follow the step-by-step prompts to create and categorize your business page.

You can similarly use this page for your GMB profile. You can upload business photos, add business information, and post regular updates.

Customers will then be able to post reviews and comment on your updates freely.

Though other platforms may not allow for a similar experience, audience interaction remains invaluable. These next ideas apply to platforms like Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, etc.

Users will still be able to search for businesses on these social media platforms. While they cannot find obvious star ratings or a dedicated review section, follower comments are still visible.

These comments effectively act as reviews and testimonials. You may also ask your followers directly to share their experiences, positive or negative, in any given thread.

3. Sign Up for Local Directory Listings

Though listings sites may not be as powerful as they once were, they still offer legitimate SEO value.

Examples of local directories are Yelp, Yellow Book, and Foursquare. These sites categorize local businesses by industry to help local customers make connections.

These platforms function similarly to Google My Business or Facebook. You'll need to create a new profile or claim an existing one for your business. You'll then need to verify yourself as the owner.

After claiming or creating the profile, proceed to optimize the page with up-to-date business details. Then, users can readily find your company and leave reviews about their experiences.

Keep in mind that certain industries also have niche platforms available to them. For example, restaurants can sign up for services like UberEats, which lists your full offerings along with qualified customer reviews.

Be sure to run a quick search and investigate which directories apply to your brand. These sites are generally free and offer potential benefits to your overall SEO strategy.

4. Business Rating Sites

Business rating sites are not unlike directory listings. However, these tend to be primarily focused on consumer education and holding businesses accountable.

Examples of the sites we're referring to would include the Better Business Bureau or Trustpilot.

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Because these organizations take business ratings seriously, maintaining high review scores there may prove valuable for your success. They carry trust with consumers simply due to their brand power alone.

You can create your profile for free on sites like the BBB. While you're at it, you can also apply to get your company accredited by the BBB itself.

5. eCommerce Reviews

This tip applies specifically to brands that sell products or services online.

If you sell your products through a third-party distributor like Amazon, Overstock, or eBay, a customer review feature is available by default. Those platform owners want customers to understand the quality and trustworthiness of their sellers upfront.

If you choose to build your eCommerce site through Shopify or Weebly, you should enable customer reviews for each listing. After all, as much as 90% of customers search for reviews first before buying. Listing reviews right next to the product not only helps you collect more of them but may help to drive sales overall.

6. Direct Customer Surveys

Our final tip may seem obvious, but it's often underutilized.

If your brand is looking for new reviews, ask for them.

Too often companies focus purely on the data collection aspect. However, talking with your customers or prospects about their experience is an excellent way to show that you care and are listening.

One strategy is to utilize email marketing to fetch reviews from existing customers. Not only will it benefit you, but it can be an effective way to re-engage customers and keep them thinking about your brand.

If you're having a tough time getting cooperation, consider presenting a limited-time offer. This could be exclusive discounts or vouchers they can obtain in exchange for leaving a customer review.

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Using Customer Reviews in Content Marketing

Now that you've amassed a healthy number of customer reviews, it's time to put them to use.

Customer reviews serve as a persuasive marketing tool. These reviews can offer and help with:

• Social proof that your products or services are quality
• Relatable stories to help customers identify use cases
• Attracting new followers
• Generating new, compelling content
• Opportunities to show you care (particularly when responding to negative reviews)

Customer reviews can offer these benefits by simply existing on any of the aforementioned platforms. However, you can leverage them for even greater effect when leveraging the following strategies.

1. Feature Customer Reviews on Your Website

Your website is like a dynamic business card.

It's the core way that new and existing customers learn about who you are, what you offer, and how you can help them. Website content serves to educate, while also calling your audience to take action toward a purchase.

Customer reviews can help with that act of persuasion.

Consumers are savvier than ever. They're well aware that every brand is going to speak to their believed strengths and how they're better than the competitor. While that's all well and good, letting your customers do that work is more effective.

It's up to you how you choose to present reviews throughout your site. You can choose to have a dedicated section for them. However, we recommend interspersing them throughout the content to drive home key selling points.

For example, if a paragraph is speaking about a specific service, it features a related review. That testimonial serves as the exclamation point and can push prospects to take the next step.

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2. Leverage Customer Reviews in Paid Campaigns

This functions effectively the same as using them on your main website.

However, you’ll want to dial in on reviews that primarily speak to the campaign offer or promotion. These then offer the same powerful social proof as to the ones on your business profiles.

Once you have the review in hand, the creative possibilities are endless. You can utilize the review within the ad itself or disperse them throughout the landing page.

Specifically, try to create video content out of your reviews. If you can, ask clients to shoot a quick view of their experience. Almost everyone carries a smartphone with recording capabilities, and a basic video is all you need. In many cases, a “budget” video may appear more authentic and trustworthy than something that’s produced.

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3. Utilize User-Generated Content

User-generated content is any text, pictures, or videos created by your audience rather than your team.

Thanks to platforms like social media, the everyday individual has more of a voice. They might use that voice to express loyalty or passion for the brands they love. If you're doing your job well, you may find yourself receiving UGC periodically.

You can also incentivize your audience to create UGC.

For example, some brands may choose to promote giveaways. The giveaway itself promotes attention and brings in new leads simply because you're giving back to the community with free goods.

However, rather than just asking for names and numbers, task your followers with content creation.

You can start with something as simple as asking for real customer stories. These are like reviews, but give your followers a greater opportunity to elaborate about themselves and how your company impacted their lives.

Alternatively, you can prompt followers with a creative prompt. A great example of this is Coca-Cola's #ShareaCoke campaign. They added names to all of their bottles and asked users to show themselves sharing a coke with someone in their lives. This resulted in a massive influx of user photos posing with the drink.

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Even though those photos don't have text, the photo tells the entire story. That's the power your brand can have with UGC.

4. Use Customer Feedback to Guide Future Content

This final tip focuses less on presenting reviews to others. Instead, you'll be reading the testimonial for feedback. This applies to both positive and negative reviews.

Look carefully at what your audience is saying. Identifying negative patterns is particularly important as it indicates a problem worth addressing.

Let's look at our own company, DashClicks, for inspiration. While most of our clients fully understand the tools we offer, others may need more direction.

Rather than ignoring and alienating potential customers, we created a video series showing off various use cases for each software. Not only does this allow us to get ahead of potential concerns, but it also helps us create legitimately worthwhile content for our audience.

Look to your reviews and customer experiences for similar inspiration. Then, plan out new and compelling content that speaks directly to what your audience needs.

Get Customer Reviews to Work for You

Customer reviews are a requirement for businesses to survive.

In a world where the internet gives access to so many options, audiences need proof that your brand is worth the cash. Few things are more persuasive than the opinion of an outside party.

Remember, customer reviews offer:

• Social proof that your brand offers quality
• Insight into how others use your products or services
• Emotional connection from hearing audience stories
• A final push to convince prospects to become buyers

You can leverage these benefits in several ways. Primarily, you want to always seek out ways to disperse relevant reviews into your existing content. Let it serve as the punctuation on any selling points.

If you need more customer reviews, make sure that your brand is listed on the available listing sites online. That also includes social media platforms, business review sites, and more. Finally, ask for specific stories from your customers when possible.

As your brand grows, you'll find that more customer reviews will appear organically. Be sure to stay on top of these reviews, respond to your audience, and become a business that puts the customer experience first.