7 Steps Small Business Owners Can Take to Improve Their Marketing Content
Are you putting a lot of time into writing and editing marketing content for your website or blog, only to see little payoff for your efforts? Many small business owners face this same challenge. It’s frustrating when the time you spend preparing blog posts, ebooks, and reports doesn’t bring the results you expected — especially when you could use that time for other important tasks. If you’re not quite ready to hire someone to help with your content, don’t worry. This post will take you through seven practical steps you can use to improve your content marketing, connect with your audience, and make your words work harder for your business.
1. Know Your Audience Inside and Out
As a small business owner, your greatest advantage is your close connection with your customers. You likely know their names, what they love about your business, and even the challenges they face. Use that personal insight to create content that speaks directly to them.
Start by developing a buyer persona. A buyer persona is a clear profile of your ideal client. This includes gender, occupation, age, location, income, family status, interests, personality, pain points, and what motivates them. Typically, your persona is given a name and a picture to help you visualize your ideal client.
If you don’t have frequent interactions with clients, you can use surveys or social media polls to gather valuable insights. Also consider consulting with your sales or customer service representatives, who frequently interact with your audience and can provide valuable information to develop your persona.
If you serve different groups of clients, consider creating a persona for each segment. For example, for a restaurant supply business, you may have multiple segments that you sell to (restaurants, bakeries, caterers, resellers, etc.). For each segment, create a new persona. Once you have made your persona(s), you’re ready to write your marketing content.
Whenever you are writing copy for your projects, write for your audience, not for yourself. Use the words, tone, and style that resonate with them. Whether your tone is friendly or formal, meeting your audience “where they are” builds trust and makes them feel understood.
2. Focus on Benefits, Not Just Features
People don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.
- Theodore Levitt
When creating content, don’t just describe the features of your product or service. Focus on the benefits — the solutions your product provides. Here’s a good way to find the benefits:
Write down a feature.
Ask yourself, “So what?”
Keep asking until you reach the real value to your customer.
For example, let’s say that you’re searching for a new laptop computer, and you’ve been frustrated by how much your old laptop keeps freezing up when you play video games. When you first start searching, you may find one with a 4.0 GHz processing speed. This is a feature. Does it mean anything to you? Unless you’ve been searching for a long time or you’re heavily into gaming, you may have no idea whether you need 4.0 GHz or not.
So, let’s turn this feature into a benefit: The processing speed in this laptop creates a smooth gaming experience for even the most demanding new releases. Do you see the difference?
By focusing on the benefits, you are providing a solution for your client’s problems. Early in the buying process, the benefits will draw your client’s attention. However, late in the purchasing process, a potential buyer may want to learn about the features. For example, early in the process of buying an inkjet printer, I want to know if it’s reliable, easy to use, and affordable. If a printer meets my preliminary search criteria, I will then want to know some of the features, such as how many pages per minute it prints and compatibility with my laptop.
While features play a crucial role in the decision-making process, your first task is to get your target market’s attention with the product benefits.
3. Keep It Simple and Clear
In a world full of distractions, clarity is key. Clear, straightforward content cuts through the noise, respects your reader’s time, and builds trust. How many times have you been reading an article or a book, and found yourself rereading the same sentence? It’s frustrating for the reader, and it increases the likelihood that they will lose interest and move on to something easier to understand.
Here are a few tips to keep your writing simple and engaging:
Keep your audience in mind - Use familiar terms and avoid industry jargon unless it’s necessary. If you are writing for a group of doctors, it would be acceptable to use some industry-specific medical terms and a professional tone. If, however, you are writing an email for patients, you should use terms that the public (specifically, your persona) is familiar with. For example, doctors would likely be familiar with the term otitis media; however, the public would recognize it by its more commonly used term: ear infection.
Minimize use of the passive voice - A sentence is written in the passive voice when the subject becomes the receiver of the action (rather than the doer). For example, The book was read by Maria. Notice how this passive construction puts the focus on the book rather than Maria (the actual subject of the sentence). You may see the passive voice used to deflect blame, such as in the sentence, Mistakes were made. By whom?
A quick fix for passive constructions is to put the subject toward the beginning of your sentence (before the verb).
Keep sentences and paragraphs short - A long sentence occasionally adds variety. However, back-to-back long sentences make the reader work hard to understand them. Likewise, long paragraphs look visually dense and can deter readers from even starting. A great example of long sentences and long paragraphs are legal disclaimers, which are not exactly enticing reading for most of us.
4. Add a Personal Touch to Your Marketing Content
The hot topic at a recent marketing conference I attended was AI and its effect on marketing going into the new year. Marketing experts suggested that with the internet flooded with bland (and sometimes factually incorrect) AI-generated content, authenticity matters more than ever. One simple way to stand out? Share personal stories and real-life experiences. People love stories because they’re relatable and memorable.
We’ve been telling each other stories for thousands of years (far longer than we’ve been writing stories). Our brains light up and synchronize when we hear a story. While we may not remember all the facts or information you shared, we will remember what happened in your story.
The narratives you use don’t have to be grand, life-altering stories; you could use short stories or anecdotes drawn from everyday experiences. For instance, you could share a recent experience with a customer:
What problem were they facing?
How did you help solve it?
Or think about small moments that carry a message. Maybe you ran a 5K and noticed that the sprinters who started fast were walking by the end. You could connect this to a lesson about slow and steady persistence — a value that resonates with your audience.
Your stories don’t have to be long or extraordinary — they just need to feel genuine. Using a warm, friendly tone will help your audience feel like they’re chatting with a trusted friend.
5. Use a Call to Action That Inspires
Every blog post, eBook, or report you write should include a call to action — the next step for your reader to take. An effective call to action is an undervalued part of marketing writing. You can create a phenomenal blog post, but if you don’t have a call to action, you risk losing your audience.
Every piece of written content should have a specific goal that fits with your overall marketing strategy. Content is created to help move consumers along in the buying journey from awareness to purchase. If you mentioned in a blog post that you created a guide to help a consumer compare products, and the goal of this post is to get that person to download the guide, don’t assume that they will know to search for it on your website. Add a call to action (CTA) to your blog that says, “Download your free guide now”.
How to craft a good CTA
A well-crafted CTA has several qualities:
Specific: Use concise language to remove any ambiguity about what you would like your audience to do.
Action-oriented: Rather than using “click here,” use strong verbs that convey action, such as Learn, Discover, Join, etc.
Relevant: Your CTA needs to be aligned with the content and the audience’s needs.
Urgent: To create a sense of urgency, consider using words, such as “now” or “today”.
Visible: Make your CTA stand out with design elements. Contrasting colors, buttons, and strategic placement are all effective techniques to get your CTA noticed.
If you’re having trouble creating an effective CTA, here is an easy formula to follow:
Your CTA = an action word + benefit + sense of urgency
For example, learn + how to find a financial planner + today
With a well-crafted CTA, you create a better user experience, encourage engagement with your content, and increase the number of conversions for your site. In addition, users will know what to expect and stay on your site. Don’t let your CTA be an afterthought; create ones that will get results.
6. Optimize your content with SEO
You have likely heard a lot about SEO or “optimizing” your content. SEO (search engine optimization) does exactly what the name suggests — it makes your content easier for search engines to find. This is an important step because after investing a significant amount of time and energy to create quality content, we want that content to rank high (for example, in the top 10 sites listed) in search engine results.
Here are some easy ways to optimize your content:
Select keywords and keyword phrases: To do this, you need to know how your customers search for your products or services. You can use some free sites, such as Moz Keyword Explorer to find out which keywords would work best for your product. Most of the time, keyword phrases are better than a single keyword (which is usually too broad).
For example, if someone is searching for a dog bed for their Great Dane, a search for “dog beds” would yield results that are too broad. However, a search for “best dog beds for a Great Dane” would be far more productive. Keyword phrases like this are referred to as long-tail keywords. Using long-tail keywords will frequently attract better-quality leads.
Use keywords naturally throughout your content: In the early days of SEO, people would “stuff” keywords into their content just to boost rankings. However, this resulted in a terrible experience for readers as the repetitive use of keywords created awkward wording. Instead, put keywords (or their synonyms) in places where they fit well. People can tell when it’s forced.
Use titles and subtitles: Titles and subtitles are used to create a hierarchy in your content. You are letting the reader know what’s most important with the bolded and larger words (make sure to use heading tags, such as H1, H2, H3, etc.). Search engines are rather fond of websites that try to create a better user experience. Add your keywords to the titles and subtitles to further boost the optimization of your content.
Optimize the alt text for images: The main purpose of alt text is to assist individuals with visual impairments who use devices called screen readers to read online content aloud. Alt text also displays when an image fails to load properly. Search engines use this information to better understand what the page content is about, so make sure to add your keywords into your alt text.
7. Repurpose Your Content Across Multiple Platforms
You can get more leverage out of your content by reformatting it for different platforms. Not only does this save time for you, but it also helps you reach a wider audience and boosts your SEO rankings with fresh content.
Here are some creative ways to repurpose your content:
Turn a blog post into a series of social media posts
Use customer success stories and testimonials in email campaigns
Create an infographic from a report
Record a short video summary for your more popular blogs
Use several related blog posts to create an ebook or guide
Using these techniques is an easy way to extend the life of your marketing content and help you reach more people.
In this post, we’ve shared many actionable steps that small business owners can take to make their marketing content more effective. When you create website content using the steps included in this blog, you’ll find and create meaningful connections with better-qualified leads. These simple techniques will improve the visibility of your website and help your small business grow.
Are you having trouble creating marketing content that connects with your audience? I can edit and improve your marketing content, so that it will resonate with your ideal client. Connect with me and let’s discuss your challenges.