What is the best way
to market your business?

OK, you know marketing is important to your success and, no doubt, you’d like to see more customers, more clients, more sales and of course, bigger profits.

But like most businesses you’ve got a few obstacles in your way

• You have a limited budget and resources – so you need low cost marketing strategies
• You’ve already got enough on your plate – so new marketing ideas need to be easy to implement
• Your marketing has to work online and offline
• You need tangible results and a measurable return on investment

Probably most annoying of all is the fact that the marketing ideas that you are using just aren’t giving you the returns you want.

So what’s the answer? Whatever it is it has to tick all the boxes AND give you a real competitive advantage. It has to get you off the marketing merry-go-round.

Why content marketing fits the bill – and how trial and error helped us figure that out

It might sound obvious but most people don’t really like marketing. It gets in the way of their favorite TV shows and clutters up their daily paper. Content marketing is about creating compelling content (in any format) that people actually want to see, read or listen to because it solves a problem or makes them smarter. Done well it can set your business apart as a trusted resource in your marketplace.

The problem is, most marketing is based on getting in people’s way long enough for them to notice you – interruption marketing. Not the best way to start a relationship no matter how good your offer.

In our days as a more traditional marketing consultancy, we worked with every kind of small business you can think of – from estate agents to freelancers and restaurants to retailers.

The one thing they all had in common was the fact that the traditional ways of marketing their businesses simply weren’t working as well as they used to. The ads in the local papers weren’t generating as many enquiries, the leaflet campaign cost more than it brought in and the Yellow Pages just wasn’t cutting it anymore.

So, we looked at alternatives. We introduced referral programs, helped design websites, tweaked advertising to make it more responsive, did everything we could to create ‘buzz’ and even pounded the pavement to help sell.

And it worked. Sales went up and the amount of wasted expenditure went down.

The problem was maintaining it.

As good as our efforts were, they didn’t deliver any lasting advantage. We needed a strategy that would let us do all the things good marketing should – connect with customers, build relationships, differentiate the business and position our clients as industry leaders.

The more we looked at it, the more we realized that the ideas that worked well all had one thing in common – content.

So we decided to focus on
helping businesses create great content

Creating great content was the one idea that could attract and keep customers, build word-of-mouth, position businesses and differentiate brands.

It was also what was needed to continue feeding the marketing efforts that worked. PR campaigns needed a good story. Advertising needed a call to action. Referral programs needed an incentive. Websites needed SEO. Direct mail needed a hook.

Content delivered across the board.

Even better, content marketing could work on any scale, didn’t require a huge budget and was a strategy that built over time – the more you put in the more you got out. And just in case we needed one, the rise of content rich media like blogging, social media and everything else online was the clincher.

Content it was – not in isolation but at the core of good small business marketing.

So that’s why content has become the focus of what we do (that and a background in copywriting which didn’t hurt). We create content for clients and help them develop content assets.

This blog is our content on content – discussing strategies, tips, examples and best practice. Our goal is help businesses produce the kind of great content that delivers tangible, practical results. Really Practical Marketing at its best.

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