8 Low-Cost Content Marketing Ideas For Small Businesses

With the ability to grow brand awareness, establish trust with your target audience, and grow your business’s credibility and authority, content marketing has become a staple in countless marketing strategies all over the world.

The best part? Any type of business, both big and small, can take advantage of content marketing to increase the online discoverability of their brand. Whether the aim is to increase website traffic, grow sales, or increase audience engagement, the objective can be achieved with daily spoonfuls of engaging content.

However, if you’re on a shoe-string budget, high-quality content is going to be difficult to come across. Although there are a few strategies you can implement to get a bang for your buck and maximise the content you’re sharing.

So, without further ado, here are eight low cost content marketing ideas for small business

Firmly Establish Your Marketing Budget

First things first, you should have a clear picture in your mind of how much content you can actually afford to share. Assess your income, evaluate your annual goals, and settle on a realistic and specific content marketing budget for your business. From here, you can start allocating funds while ensuring you don’t spend outside your means.

Ask Yourself: What Type Of Content Works Best For Me?

Now that you have a clear understanding of how much you can afford to spend on your content marketing strategy each month, it's time to figure out what you’re exactly going to be investing in.

Blog posts? Images? Video? Making the decision can be difficult, especially if you’re going in blind. If possible, the best thing to do is to look over some of the content you’ve shared in the past. What has the best reaction and engagement with your followers? What didn’t do so well? Figure out what has worked well in the past and move in this direction.

What if you've never posted any form of content with your audience before? Then it’s time to get creative and start sharing videos, images, articles, podcasts, and everything in-between.

Figure out what your followers are coming to your page to see and go all in. Understandably, this experimental phase is going to take some time through trial and error, although it’ll all be worth it in the long-term.

Start A Blog For Your Brand

If you’ve read any of my other posts, you’ll understand how important I believe blogs are for businesses - every brand should have one!

An active blog cannot only increase your website traffic, but it can also generate new leads, increase search engine optimisation, add value to your social media voice, and provide you with a platform to speak directly with your target audience.

If your business already has a website, take advantage of this space by setting up a blog for your brand. Establish a niche, brainstorm some topics, create your topic schedule, and start writing. Aim to post on your blog as regularly as possible and consistently share these posts on your social media channels. From here, you can analyse the articles to determine what pages are reeling in the most views and you can tailor your future posts to maximise your traffic.

Alternatively, if you’re simply to busy and can’t find the time to post as regularly as you’d like on your blog, then you’d might like to start looking at hiring a freelancer. The cost per post can be very versatile and can vary between $20 to $100 per post depending on the writer. Click here to browse our writing packages, starting at only $60 per post.

If you’re eager to set up a blog but aren’t sure how to go about it, check out one of our older articles: How To Set Up A Blog For Your Brand.

Prioritise Quality Over Quantity

Once you get started with your blog or social media pages it can be very enticing to post as regularly as you can. With successful influencers posting multiple times a day or week, it can be very tempting to do the same. Although the result may not be what you'd expect. You’ll likely end up sharing a large sum of posts that don’t actually offer your viewer any real value, which will overall waste your time and money.

Instead, take your time in this earlier phase of your page’s existence. Create a consistent level of quality content for your audience - content that your followers can gain real value from. Once you start crafting your posts over a few months/ years, your turnaround time will improve, overall establishing a natural quality-quantity relationship for your business.

Work On Your Efficiency

If you’re the sole person responsible for juggling your content creation, you may want to adopt a handful of time management tactics to boost your efficiency to ensure you’re not wasting any time or resources. For example, rather than coming up with one blog topic at a time, creating an outline for that post and then writing, why not come up with 10 or more ideas at once? With a topic library available, the blog writing process becomes much smoother. You can simply select one of the topics and start writing, consequently gaining enough momentum to complete the task quickly.

This is merely one tactic you can adopt to boost your own efficiency - there’s plenty of tools out there to improve your time management skills.

Reach Out To Guest Writers

Did you know that many talented writers are willing to create guest blog posts for free? If your website or social media pages have a solid level of traffic/ engagement, you may be in a good position to connect with talented writers and offer them the opportunity to tap into a completely new audience and promote their talents in exchange for a free blog post.

Whether you want to shake things up on your blog or are pressed for time, you can reach out to a handful of talented bloggers and offer up this opportunity. You’d be surprised by how many writers jump at the chance to increase their exposure, especially if they’re looking for experience.

Collaborate With Influencers

Influencers can be very useful when it comes to growing your audience and increasing brand awareness on social media, therefore partnering with one in your niche may be a worthy investment of your time and resources. Just by offering free goods and services, you can receive exposure on their account in return, overall connecting your brand with a variety of loyal followers and improving your online presence on various platforms. Do your research and connect with a handful of influencers in your niche with good engagement.

Share User Generated Content

Providing the rare opportunity to share free content specifically created for your brand while engaging your audience in the process; user-generated content is a tool that shouldn’t be underestimated. Not to mention, regularly sharing user-generated content can help form a community among your followers, breath more personality into your product, help consumers establish a deeper connection with your brand, and boost your social media engagement. Did I mention it was free?

A great way to start sharing more user-generated content is by starting a photography competition. Ask followers to share unique photos of your products and offer an exciting prize for the winner. You can start sharing the photos that you’re tagged in (providing credit to the creator), while your brand’s discoverability grows.

This is merely one example - there’s plenty of ways you can start increasing user-generated content. Jump online, do some research, and settle on a method that suits your brand and your budget.