How to Build a Small Business Content Marketing Strategy

In this quick guide, we’ll walk through what content marketing is, how it’s changing, and how to build a quality content marketing strategy for your small business.

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” 

It comes down to a business creating marketing assets – content – that provide value and information to a target audience that can be distributed on relevant channels, shared on social media, and ultimately grow the audience over time to drive conversion to sales. 

Content marketing is as an indirect form of advertising that speaks to prospective customers and when done effectively and consistently, guides them along to the buy or reach the conversion stage. 

While print advertising has existed in various forms since the 1600s, content marketing first appeared in the last century and exploded in the digital age. As advertising increased, many people started to view advertisements as being annoying rather than helpful, which is where more subtle and valuable marketing tactics like content marketing originated.  

Other events have impacted the field as well. In the Content Marketing Institute’s 2021 Content Management & Strategy Survey, 57% of respondents indicated their organization has a strong or moderate desire to add new content management technology as it adapts to a post-pandemic world. This trend is expected to continue for both B2B (as workplaces change) and B2C (as customer research shifts more online). 

Creating content without a plan is likely to be “hit or miss” – thus, developing a content marketing strategy is important. According to Statista, a 2021 survey among marketers found that 97% said content marketing was part of their overall marketing strategies (up from 77% in 2019).