As part of a small business, you probably don’t have the funds to implement an elaborate and costly marketing campaign. More than likely, you’re struggling to stretch out the budget you currently have. While it might be useful to have a large budget for implementing a content marketing strategy, it is certainly not necessary. Here are multiple tips you can utilize to produce content on a budget!
1. Work more efficiently
If you’re the one spending most of your time on a content marketing strategy, you can stretch your budget further by simply using your time more wisely and efficiently. In doing this, you can then generate more content for your strategy. One important way to work more efficiently is by working on one task for as much time as possible. More often than not, we waste a lot of time switching between various tasks because there’s just so much that we have to do. However, sticking with one task for a longer period of time is more efficient because you don’t spend as much transition time between tasks and you build momentum more quickly.
2. Beat out the competition
Companies with large content marketing budgets often beat out the small guy because they’re able to spend more time and resources on generating their blog posts. However, what these companies usually do is spend their big budgets on attracting an audience by using common keywords in their posts. What you can do to beat out the competition is utilize very specific keywords within your posts. You’ll be regarded as #1 in searches for words that your target audience is looking for and over time, your traffic will increasingly begin to grow.
3. Repurpose old content
One of the most common and easiest tactics for producing content on a budget is by simply repurposing content you already have. This tip is great because it requires practically no money spent – it only requires the creativity in your head to think of unique ways to repurpose that content. The beauty about repurposing old content is that all of the research and hard work has already been done.
4. Choose quality and consistency
There are many popular blogs that post 4 or 5 times a week and consistently generate great content with a larger budget. What makes these blogs successful isn’t that they post a large quantity of posts each week. Rather, what makes these blogs successful is that they consistently post quality content. When focusing on your own blog, don’t worry as much about posting a large quantity of posts every week. Rather, focus first on creating quality content that your audience will love and posting that content consistently each week, even if it’s only once a week.
5. Share your own stories
A large amount of time you spend on generating content is spent on research for that piece of content. To save time and money on research, you can generate content from your own stories and experience. Share the lessons you’ve learned from a certain marketing tactic, the experience you had at a recent networking event, or the struggles you’ve experienced being an entrepreneur. This will not only save you time in the end, but it will also show your audience that you want to be transparent about your personal experiences with them.
6. Encourage guest posts
What’s better than content you don’t even have to create yourself? Guest posts are a great way to receive free content without having to go through the effort of creating that content yourself. As a marketer, you probably already have a large network of colleagues who would love to write a guest post for your blog. Your colleagues also probably have an even larger network of writers who would jump at the opportunity to post on your blog.
Generating excellent content and building your audience doesn’t have to come at a price. Instead, implementing a successful content marketing strategy can happen even if you don’t have a large budget to spend. Like these tips on producing content on a budget? Comment below to share some of your own tips!