Developing a strong content strategy is an important part of a marketing plan. As trends change, content marketing has grown to be vital to help increase brand recognition and grow a customer base.
However, while distributing good content is an important part of marketing plans, it can get expensive, depending upon the approach taken.
Digital marketing firm eConsultancy reports 65 percent of companies feel content marketing is too expensive (statistic shared by Kissmetrics.com). The good news is that this does not have to be the case.
How can businesses develop and maintain strong content marketing on a budget? How can agencies promote their clients who have limited resources?
Designate a content lead
While not every marketing budget will allow for a content team, chances are that it is possible to identify someone on staff as a content lead. If the business has hired a firm to represent it, the agency can take on this task.
The job does not have to be large added responsibility. Designating a person who has good writing and editing skills who can ensure content is posted regularly goes a long way at a relatively low cost. Firms can also hire a freelancer to help with content as another option to pursue. Using a managed services provider offers a number of benefits because they actively seek writers who can provide high quality content and are able to work with a variety of budgets.
Encourage employee buy-in
Bringing employees on-board can really enhance a content strategy and it need not cost anything beyond their salaries. Some of the best strategies, small budgets or not, contain content created by people who actively work in the organization. These can be blog posts, social media posts or other ways employees engage online. What better way to promote a business than by letting those who engage with it the most tell the stories?
“There’s no rule that says content can only be created by marketing departments,” says digital marketing strategist SharnKandola.
If employees are actively endorsing their companies through their own lives and online activity, this helps increase both brand recognition and trust.
Post weekly
There is no hard and fast rule that new content has to be published daily.
Companies that are operating on a shoestring budget can scale this down to even just once a week. Agencies can help their clients create an easy to use blog, then help them identify the best day of the week to post new content. Consider blog posts such as:
• Write an informational article about a new product or service the company has launched.
• Share a video that is likely to interest potential customers.
• Summarize news or trends in your industry and add the company’s perspective.
• Post an image related to the company with some descriptive text.
• Share helpful tips about company products.
The important thing is to place focus on the quality. Partner quality with consistency and it becomes a winning combination for a content marketing plan on a small budget.
Repurpose content
Coming up with new content on a regular basis can be tough, but recrafting a piece of content to become something new is low-cost, less time consuming and it can reinforce key messages the company wants to deliver. All of this can contribute to regular publishing and also heighten expertise in any given area. Ideas can include:
• Gather related content elements and create a longer post or an eBook.
• Take an eBook or white paper and make several shorter, more focused posts.
• Highlight points of a blog post, news or informational article and create an infographic.
• Make a slideshow of the best images previously posted.
Get creative and also engage with employees to get their input or ideas. Employees may also be willing to rotate time slots and each take a turn creating. The possibilities of repurposing content are limitless.
Tempesta Media is a managed content provider that makes it easy for agencies to provide their clients with the high quality digital content they need to succeed. Our turnkey, full-service solution costs a fraction of competing solutions and saves customers significant time and administrative overhead.
If you have a content marketing program, or are planning one, download our ebook: 100 mistakes businesses make when starting, optimizing and scaling content marketing programs. Learn from the mistakes of hundreds of other companies. 100 mistakes walks you through common and uncommon challenges that they faced with their content marketing programs.
