Tag Archives: Content marketing

Call to Action vs Call to Benefit

I’m sure that you’ve all heard of a CTA (call to action), but have you heard of a CTB (call to benefit)? Social media is constantly changing and if you want to keep the attention of your audience, you need to be ahead of the game – the CTB is a trend that is being hailed as a more effective way to engage your audience. So, let’s take a look at what it is and why it’s the new ‘in thing’!

Call to action

I’ve been pushing this for what seems like forever with my clients and in my social media and other content creation. A CTA has been the cornerstone of marketing strategies across all platforms because they’re direct and tell your audience exactly what you want them to do next, for example ‘Buy now’ or ‘Click here to XXXXX.’

The problem with these is that they’re becoming phrases or words that are used everywhere by everyone, so much so that they’re becoming ‘wallpaper’ and audiences aren’t taking so much notice of them anymore. A CTA focuses on the action we want our audiences to take without giving them the reason why – unless it’s explained before you use the CTA. It’s thought that they are failing to fully connect with audiences on an emotional level, which is needed to build that ever-important relationship and trust with our customers.

It’s also been found that a CTA feels like a command, so can come across as pushy and impersonal.

Enter the CTB (CALL TO BENEFIT)!     

Call to benefit

The CTB is a shift in how to engage with your audience in a more effective way – not just telling them what to do but showing them the ‘why’ with the words you use.

A CTB emphasises the value and benefits that a customer stands to gain by clicking on the CTB.  It focuses on building trust with your customers by telling them the benefits they’ll gain, and encourages a deeper understanding and engagement with your brand and offer.

Examples of Calls to Benefit vs Calls to Action

  • CTA – Sign up to my newsletter.
  • CTB – Join our community and receive exclusive tips to raise your marketing game.
  • CTA – Follow me for updates.
  • CTB – Stay inspired and informed – follow me to get the latest news and trends.
  • CTA – Buy now.
  • CTB – Own your xxxxx today
  • CTA – Download now
  • CTB – Get my 30-day action plan and set your marketing on fire!
  • CTA – Learn more
  • CTB – Discover the full story
  • CTA – Create account
  • CTB – Personalise your experience

It seems pretty obvious, but it’s about getting into the minds of your customers and brainstorming ideas on how you can put across the benefits to your audience to encourage them to click on a button on your email, website, or social media posts.

Deciding on your CTBs

As with everything marketing, you need to know your target audience to get a CTB absolutely right. You need to understand what they like, their pain points or what inspires them to buy or come to you.

Creating your CTBs goes beyond simply telling your audience what to do – it’s about showing them why it’s worth their time and effort to act on your CTB. They’ll know what they’re doing and why – and EXACTLY what they’re going to get. When people can immediately see the benefit of buying something, they’re more likely to go for it.

The first thing to do is to write down all the current call to actions you use and then, thinking about what it is exactly that you want your audience to do and why, come up with what benefits they’ll get by clicking. Then you can reword your call to actions into something more specific and, hey presto, you’ll have your call to benefit.

It’s all about crafting a more persuasive marketing message. So, instead of a simple call to action, which instructs your audience, use words that will show them the benefits and inspire them, by showing them what they stand to gain.

It seems like a very simple shift from one to the other, but that one small change could have a big impact on your engagement, conversions to sales and an enhanced customer experience. The CTB will form part of your overall marketing strategy.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the thought of a marketing strategy and just don’t know where to start, call me to book a free consultation, and we can have a chat about how I can help you get your marketing on track and attract more engagement and sales.  

Book your free consultation now to get your marketing on track!

What is social media marketing and how does it work?

In this ‘back to basics’ article, I’m looking at social media marketing and how it can work for small businesses.

In a nutshell, social media marketing (SMM) is the use of social media platforms to:

  • build social networks and share information.
  • build your brand.
  • increase your sales.
  • drive website traffic.

It also gives small businesses a way to engage with existing customers and attract new ones.

Social media platforms all have their own data analytic tools that allow you, the business owner, or your marketer, to track the success of your postings and help you identify new ways to engage. As of April 2025, there were 5.31 billion social media identities across the world (DataReportal and Kepios), so SMM has the potential to have incredible reach.  

To ensure your content appeals to your audience, it’s important to post a variety of different posts, including text and image updates, carousels, videos and sharing other content, such as blog posts.

How can I make my SMM work?

To ensure your SMM efforts work and do what they’re supposed to do, it’s important to have the three core processes in place:

Strategy

I know – I hear groans! But the first crucial step to ensure your SMM words is to have a strategy. This is just about defining some goals that you want to achieve with your social media, ensuring you’re on the right platforms for your audience and determining the type of content that will resonate with your target audience. And of course, you need to know who your target audience is.

Your goals might be as simple as driving website traffic or increasing your brand awareness. But knowing these goals means you have something to focus on and aim for.

I’ve written a whole blog post on strategy, so pop over if you want more in-depth information. In the meantime, here’s a brief overview of what your strategy needs to include:

  • Clear goals linked to your business objectives or goals.
  • Know your target audience.
  • Conduct analysis on your competitors – look at their successes and failures.
  • Look at your own successes and failures – where can you improve or do better than your competitors.
  • Create a calendar so you know what you’re going to post and when.
  • Create fabulous, engaging content!
  • Track the performance of your posts and change things as you need to

Content creation and engagement

I’ve talked about this a lot on my social media pages, but creating engaging content is the key to your SMM. Content should be relevant to your business, and to the platform you’re posting on…and of course, to your audience.

Content can include blog posts, infographics, videos, images, and a host of other types of content.

I always recommend the 80/20 rule – 80% of content to be engaging, entertaining, educating, or inspiring. Only the remaining 20% should be focused on sales.

WHY?

I hear you!

If you only concentrate on what you’re selling, people will get bored as they know every time they land on your page, they’re going to be ‘sold to.’ And they won’t find this engaging. If you can find ways to be engaging with selling your products or services, it could work, but you need to be able to make your audience feel valued and that you are pleased they’re on your page, so engagement on sales posts is crucial.

Examples of posts for each category

Engaging – the best way to engage your audience is to have them join in. This might be a post that asks a question or an opinion; or simply a post that encourages people to chat about what you’ve posted.

Entertaining – This could be anything from sharing a funny story or joke to sharing an article you’ve seen and asking what they think. Storytelling comes into this part of your content, so introducing yourself or sharing how you got started, why your business has its name, or talk about a hobby you have. It’s anything that will keep your audience on your page for longer than the quick scroll.

Educating – this is an obvious one, but often one that is overlooked. As a small business owner, you have a wealth of knowledge in your area of expertise. So, share some of it, by creating an online tutorial, a checklist, or a step-by-step guide on something you do. You don’t want to give too much away, but just enough to pique their interest and keep them on your page to read more. A lot of my posts (as a service provider) fall under this category.

Under education would also come posts about your products from a ‘benefits’ point of view. You might have described the features of your product, (what it is, what it looks like and what it’s made from) but focus on the benefits – what does it do for your customer and you can make it sound like they don’t know how they lived without it for so long! Just be careful to be truthful and not rely on AI for your descriptions as they can be hilariously OTT!

Inspiring – Inspiring content covers quite a big area – it might be that you inspire people through motivational posts, wellbeing posts or posts about how to feel better/look better. Quotes are often inspirational so they would come under this category, and storytelling, especially if you have an inspirational story to tell, such as how you overcome all the odds to do XXXXX..

Planning and scheduling

This is very simple – ensure you plan your content, so you know what you’re going to post at least a week ahead. This helps you save time and effort, and you don’t have to react or think of something to post on the spot. Planning also means you can divide your posts into themes – it might be that one week you do a ‘Christmas in July’ week, or a week dedicated to a particular collection you create and the next week, have a different theme.

Once you have your plan and have created a week’s worth of posts/stories, then use a scheduling tool to schedule them to go out. I just use Meta, which I find works well, but there are other host sites out there who will do this too. Once your content is scheduled, you can get on with other tasks in your business.

Engaging with your audience

We all talk about this all the time. When you post content you will get responses, and these must be replied to in a timely manner. This can often trigger conversations that you sometimes take offline, and it may lead to a sale or consultation.

Schedule time to engage with your audience as this is where you can show your personality and have a good old chat. I try to engage this way in the morning for an hour – whenever I can find some time at lunchtime and then again for a couple of hours in the evening.

It’s not just about replying to comments on your content either, you also need to visit other peoples’ accounts and comment on their posts. The only thing I would say is to PLEASE do it in a genuine way – there are too many people just copying and pasting ‘Have a great day’ or ‘Happy Monday’ (or whatever day it is. These comments will not help the algorithm as these short, sharp sentences are noticed, so they may actually be more harmful to your page. I try and reply with a question in the hope I can get that person to engage, but it doesn’t always work.

So, visit and leave genuine comments – read the post properly and answer any questions.

You also need to make time to find new people to follow – this can be very time consuming as you don’t want to just follow anyone – they must be someone you’re genuinely interested in, or who you think may be your target market. 

Paid ads

I’ll admit, I don’t do this. I am lucky in that I find I don’t have to advertise as my business ticks along nicely for what I want it for.

But some businesses do find that paid ads work well for them. Paid ads can amplify your reach an engagement. You can target specific demographics, such as age, location, interests, and behaviours. And it can contribute to driving traffic to your website, boost your engagement and increase your sales. But you need to have a really good strategy and patience to get it exactly right…unless you want to pay a marketer to do it for you, then you’ll have an expert on board. Obviously, this option needs to have a marketing budget, and you’d need to have enough for more than just a one-off ad.

Measurement

The last point in this article about the basics of SMM, is measurement. This is something that so many small businesses don’t think about – or don’t know about.

If you use FB or IG, you can see your insights. This gives you details of your reach, how many people have engaged with a post, who is commenting and how many new followers you have. I wouldn’t get too hung up on the number of followers, but it’s important to look at your engagement. Which posts are the most popular? Have a look at those posts and the comments to find out why – then you can replicate this and get your engagement up with more popular posts.  Similarly, what’s NOT working? Again, see if you can find out why. Then you can either bin that type of post or change it slightly and try again with a different tactic.

Conclusion

Even if you’ve had your business for a while, sometimes a trip to the basics can point out something that you need to do but have simply overlooked due to more pressing issues!

I hope this has helped and if you have any questions or would like help with your social media marketing, just contact me.  

Navigating the pressure of social media – the need for constant engagement

In today’s digital world, social media has become a crucial tool for small businesses as we all strive to reach a wider audience and build our brands. Although social media gives us several benefits, the pressure to maintain that all important presence can be overwhelming. As a small business, you’ll find yourself wearing many different hats and juggling loads of different roles and the pressures of keeping your business in the spotlight on social media is so demanding, it can exacerbate the overwhelm.

Are you feeling the pressure of social media?

Does it make you feel anxious – and then when you do post or show up in a ‘live,’ do you compare yourself to others and think you could do better?

Unsurprisingly – IT IS NORMAL TO FEEL LIKE THIS! We all do!

So, how can you navigate the pressure of social media and help relieve those feelings? Hopefully, this article will help…

The Need for Constant Engagement

One of the main pressures faced is the expectation to constantly engage with your audience. This is very time consuming and at the same time, you’re trying to balance the demands of running a small business with the need to maintain this active, engaging social media presence. At the same time, you’re aware you need to comment on other posts, reply to your comments, post content that will attract attention etc. etc. and it all becomes a bit too much and can lead to unnecessary stress. So, how can you manage this while keeping a healthy balance?

The potential impact of social media

Before looking at some simple strategies to help, it’s important to understand the impact social media can have, so if you have any of these symptoms, you can recognise them.

Psychological – Studies have shown that excessive use of social media can cause feelings of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Constantly comparing yourself to others can affect your self-esteem.

Distraction from real life – social media can become a way to escape from reality rather than engage with it – distracting you from real life responsibilities, relationships, and experiences.

Time consuming – It’s so easy to get lost in social media and hours can pass without you realising it, which can affect other parts of your life.

Strategies to help you manage your social media

Let’s have a look at what you can do to alleviate some of that overwhelm and get things into perspective.

Set boundaries

Set yourself some clear boundaries for using social media. Decide specific times of day when you will check your accounts and stick within those limits. This helps prevent mindless scrolling and helps make sure you stick to your other important tasks – business or personal.

Use technology wisely

Your devices are going to constantly ‘ping’ to let you know you’ve had a new notification – these are so difficult to ignore – after all it might be important! It never is! So, when your social media allotted time is over, switch your devices to silent or even switch them off (you may need to keep your phone on for personal reasons, but other devices can be turned off.

You can use a ‘do not disturb’ mode during work hours or personal time.  

Set Realistic Goals

Some small businesses are so hung up on their results. How many followers, reach and wanting immediate results. But the reality is, not every post will go viral (if any) and not every campaign will give you immediate results.

Define what success looks like for you and your business (ignore all other businesses – they’re not yours!). It might be that success means increasing brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, or boosting sales. Setting realistic, measurable goals and expectations, will help you focus your efforts. It’ll also help to assess your progress with very little stress.

Plan and Schedule Content

Creating and posting content can be time-consuming – and extremely stressful if you just go with the flow and do it when you feel like it, with no plan.

To alleviate the stress around creating and posting content, it’s a good idea to develop a content calendar that shows what you will post and when. This sounds complicated, but it’s not. I’ll share how I do mine. I usually plan and create my content for the whole of the following month.

See the box below – I simply write down the month and all the dates straight down the page, with the day of the week next to them. Then I fill in the days I know what content to create – like my Wordy Wednesday and Tuesday Blog – then look at what posts I can do to link information from my blog, or something from the special days of the month list I produce and post. I also think about personal posts, for example introduction to myself and business, a post about one of my digital products, a general marketing post about something I’ve seen, learnt about or in response to a question I’ve seen in my comments or online.

30 JuneMondayWorld social media day – taken from special days list
1 JulyTuesdayBlog post – insert title
2 JulyWednesdayWordy Wednesday – insert word
3 JulyThursdayPost linked to blog
4 JulyFridayGeneral marketing post/personal/ promotion of digital products/introducing next week’s theme
5 JulySaturdaySaturday shoutout – insert business
6 JulySundaySilly Sunday – joke

This gives me my content plan for the month. I then create my posts one week in advance and schedule them as this saves so much time and effort. I do sometimes go in and tweak posts by adding something I’m going to be doing or something that’s happened to keep it more personal.

I just use Meta to schedule my posts, but you can use other tools such as Later, Buffer or Hootsuite (to name a few) to automate your posts.

This helps avoid the overwhelm of having to react or think of posts on the spur of the moment.  

Make real life interactions a priority!

Spend quality time with your family and friends and take part in community events, or hobbies. Real life interactions with other people are way better than online ones and provide you with meaningful engagement that social media can’t replicate.

Practice mindfulness   

This is just about looking before you leap! Before logging into your social media accounts, ask yourself why you’re doing it and what you hope you achieve. I don’t mean when you’re posting or doing your intentional engagement at your allotted time, but when you just mindlessly go on because you’re bored – being intentional can prevent it from becoming a mindless habit.  

Keep an eye on your feed

Unfollow or mute accounts that don’t add value to your life or those that make you feel negative. Follow accounts that bring joy to your life, or accounts that inspire, educate, or entertain you.

Track your insights or analytics

Keep an eye on the performance of your posts etc. by regularly checking your analytics or insights. I don’t mean every day – I look on average once a week, sometimes less. This gives you exactly what it says on the tin – insights into what your audience likes and their behaviours. You can see what works and what doesn’t and clearly see which posts/stories resonate with your audience. Knowing that you’re on the right track helps alleviate that overwhelm and pressure.  

Look after yourself!

This seems obvious but oh so easy to overlook!

  • By setting boundaries and taking regular breaks throughout the day when you need to will help.
  • Step outside and get some fresh air and make sure you stay hydrated and eat properly. This is so easy to forget when you get absorbed in social media.
  • If you have a marketing budget or can afford it, think about hiring a social media manager to create posts and schedule them for you, or to help with some of the tasks you hate to do. This helps alleviate pressure.

Taking care of yourself is just as important as taking care of your business.

Sometimes, the only way to manage your use of social media and the negative impact it’s having on you, is to step away from it for a while. I’ve seen loads of people do this – even if it’s only for a couple of days or a week or two. Stepping back allows you to breathe, rest and re-evaluate your relationship with social media and how it’s affecting your life.

Conclusion

While social media gives great opportunities for small businesses, it also introduces a host of pressures that can be challenging to manage.

Recognising these pressures and developing strategies to tackle them can help you and your business thrive in a healthier and happier environment.

What are your thoughts on this?

If you need any help with your social media, contact me and we can have a no-obligation chat.

Why is it important to understand your target audience?

You have a small business, you write beautifully crafted content, you engage on social media – but you’re still not selling. Why?

When you have a business, the ultimate decision about whether they are going to buy from you or not lies with your customers or potential customers. You can do as much as you possibly can to persuade people to buy your products or services, but without a strategy that provides personalised experiences for your ideal customer, you’re not likely to make many sales.

When you know who your target audience is and have a comprehensive understanding of who you’re talking to, you can create the right kind of content to attract that target audience. By having your own small business, you are competing with hundreds of other businesses who do the same as you, so having a marketing strategy is imperative to stopping your messages falling on deaf ears!

Why does your target audience matter?

I’d say that knowing your target audience is the most important part of your marketing strategy, for these reasons:

  • If you’re talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one. You don’t want to appeal generally to everyone out there, you need to appeal strongly to a specific group of people who are likely to want to do business with you…people you have a connection with.
  • If you know exactly who your audience are, you know what their pain points, or problems are. You can see their problems from their perspective and what obstacles they need to overcome to solve those problems. Then you can think about how your business can provide those solutions with your products or services.
  • Knowing your audience’s problems, you can work out how to market the solutions you have to their problems. You can show them how the features and benefits of your products/services can help them and why you are best suited to do that.
  • When you are creating content and forming new relationships with potential customers, you need to be able to speak their language. By this, I mean using the same terms and phrases that they use to describe their problems. Then you can build relationships by using that language to show that your business can solve those problems.
  • You target audience can also teach you how you can create better products and services that suit them best. You can use the understanding you have of their problems, along with any feedback

How do you identify your target audience?

Identifying your target market is all about three things: Demographics, Geographics and Psychographics. 

Demographics

  • What is their age and gender?
  • Are they married or living together?
  • Do they have children?
  • What do they do for a living?
  • If you know what they do for a living, what is their rough income?
  • Do they own their own home?


You can usually gain demographic information from your existing customers by simply talking to them. Social media accounts can also give you relevant demographic information. If your customers are on Facebook, for example, you can usually see information like date of birth, relationship status – people seem to love to share about their lives on social media, so you will probably see if they have children or grandchildren, what they do for a living etc.

  • You could also get this information from feedback you get. For example, if you make and produce quality rag dolls, you may have feedback that says, “Love your product, my daughter/grand-daughter loves her doll and hasn’t put it down since she received it.”  This tells you that your customer is a Mum and Grandma and that she likes buying things for her grandchildren.
  • Knowing the demographics of your existing customers makes it easier to tailor your marketing accordingly.
  • If you’re not sure who your target market it, go to Google and research some of your competitors, people who do the same as you, and look at their marketing techniques. Who are they targeting and how? What are the messages they are sending out? What images do they use? What media do they use to advertise? You will then have an idea of what direction you should be aiming for with your business. 

Geographics

This is the simplest – where do your target market live? Are they local to you? Just in a particular region? In the same country, but miles away – nationwide? Or international – in other countries?

Psychographics – why customers buy what they do

If demographics look at who your customers are, psychographics take you a bit further into their lives to find out why they buy the things they do. What motivates them and what makes them tick.

Psychographics include things like:

  • Interests
  • Activities
  • Religious beliefs
  • Attitudes
  • Personality
  • Spending habits
  • Lifestyle choices

If you combine the data you collect on the demographic and psychographics of your customers, you can paint a picture of what your potential buyer (or your buyer persona) will look like and who they are. Let’s have a look at one example …

Buyer persona 

Let’s say you’ve done your research, and this is what you have discovered…

Demographic data

  • Female, aged 40 – 55
  • Married with children
  • Household income around £45,000
  • Stay at home Mum who works part-time

Psychographic data

  • Interested in health and fitness
  • Likes to be eco-friendly
  • Is an active member on Facebook and Pinterest
  • Likes socialising with her small group of friends
  • Loves cooking

This demonstrates the difference between the two sets of data and why it’s important to gain both – you have more insight into what your customers might like. Then you can look at your products to see what would interest this kind of customer.

How do you make this relate to your business…and therefore your marketing? I’ll share some examples…

If you have a crafting business, for example, and your crafting activities were soap making or candle making, you’d know that this customer likes natural ingredients that are environmentally friendly and safe for children, so that could be part of your marketing angle.

If you are in the catering industry, making cakes or preserves, she might be interested in special birthday cakes for her family or in your preserves and pickles that use natural ingredients.

Her children are likely to have birthday parties and her friends are likely to have children of a similar age, so anything you make from a crafting perspective may be of interest – bunting for parties, toys, jewellery, etc. And as she enjoys socialising with her small group of friends, she may be interested in hosting an at-home party to buy your craft products.

Where to find her

Once you have this data, you’ll also know where to find her and this is especially important. She may attend local fitness clubs or gyms; she may visit a local spa; she will enjoy lunches out at restaurants or bars with her group of friends. This is where you could leave your flyers and business cards.

Now you know what your customer looks like and what she’s interested in, you can tailor blogs to suit her, you can make products you know she’ll like, and you can find out if she has any particular problem that your products can solve. 

How do your customers like to buy their products?

These days, I would hazard a guess that most of your customers will want to look at products/services online before they buy. They have such a wide choice that it’s important you make yours stand out. People spend their commute to work, breaks, lunch hour, evenings and weekends online, usually browsing through social media sites or looking for something specific. If you are not on these platforms then your products/services will not be found.

Selling online

Social Media is a great way to promote your products or services and to advertise what you do. But you also must bear in mind that not everyone is on social media. If your target market is in the older age bracket, they may prefer not to be on social media, so you will have to reach them another way.

Even though they don’t do social media, your target audience probably still uses the internet to search for things they want. You could set up an online shop.

A website is a crucial business tool – you can link it to your Social Media sites and vice versa. A website can help you reach a wider audience – it gives you a shop front that is open 24/7 – you can even sell when you are sleeping, and you can sell to anyone in the world!

You can put more information about yourself and your business and products or services that you can on social media and, if you have an online shop, you can point your customers to that site. Whatever you choose to do, there is always a marketing technique to support it. If you have a website, you can also choose to add a blog, which could also be a fabulous tool to write about your individual products or services … just another way to get your name/business out there.

I hope this article has given you the inspiration and information to dig deep into your target audience in more detail. I know that once you have all the relevant information, you’ll stand a much better chance of marketing your products or services in the right way…and get those sales.

Share this post to help other small businesses just like you. And if you would like help in identifying your target audience, you can always have a chat with me – or you can find a very helpful workbook on my website shop, which is a step-by-step guide – https://cindymobeymarketing.com/product/how-to-identify-your-target-audience-workbook/

Marketing your business with little to no budget

When you run your own small business, there is often little money left for a marketing budget, which can make marketing a bit of a challenge. But there are many ways that you can market your business to your target market without spending any money.

Having read a lot recently on social media about small businesses really feeling the pinch at the moment, I thought I’d have a look around to see what free marketing ideas there are out there.

I hope that these help you…

  • Create a free Google Business Profile. This is free to set up and you can add photos and updates with links to your blog posts or social media pages. It’s more of a local tool, so helps your business get found locally pinpointing you on Google Maps, as well as allowing a link to your website.  Your customers can also add reviews to your Google Business Profile.
  • Social media – Most of us have business accounts on Facebook and Instagram, and some of your will also have TikTok accounts, LinkedIn, Pinterest, X or one of the many other sites. Facebook still seems to be the most popular go-to place for people to search businesses. This is a great way to showcase your products and services, engage with your target market and find new communities to join and network with.
    Post regularly and consistently (it doesn’t have to be every day, so long as you are consistent). Share your human side, articles of interest, inspirational quotes, hobbies etc and as always my advice is the 80/20 rule. Share 80% entertaining, engaging, educational or inspirational posts and 20% selling.
  • Use hashtags – yes, these still work, so long as you don’t overdo it. The recommended number of hashtags used to be 30 per post, but these days it is advised to use around five. Use your own personal hashtag is you have one (or set one up) and use a variety of local and more general hashtags. Don’t go for hashtags that have millions of followers, or you won’t be seen – choose a variety between low and high figures. I personally wouldn’t recommend using those with over a million followers.
  • LinkedIn – this is one we often overlook and I’m just as guilty as the next person, but something I am going to try and do more of for the rest of this year. LinkedIn is a huge social media site – most use it to just add network connections, but you can share your blog posts and offers, talk about your business, have a conversation with the connections you make and join relevant forums and contribute to them – and you can share other businesses’ content.
  • Email marketing – this is a great way to get customers and potential customers engaged with your business. It’s a great place to build and maintain relationships. It’s not a new thing, but it is still one of THE MOST reliable ways to achieve new customers and maintain existing ones.
    There are free plans out there on hosting sites, but most want a small monthly subscription, but it is worth it if you use it correctly. When someone signs up to your email, give them an incentive, such as a money off voucher or a free checklist, e-Book etc. It’s a good idea to ensure that your email has an offer that encourages your readers to take the next step – that might be with a special offer you are running, a new product or service you’re promoting or perhaps a webinar or podcast you’re hosting. Your email is your direct link to your customers and potential customers, so ensure that the content is worth reading and that you show them the real value of your business and that you care about them. 
  • Ask your existing customers to refer you to their friends and family – you could also offer an incentive, such as ‘for every three customers that they refer who buy something from you, they will receive a 10% discount off their next order’.
  • Survey your customers – this is a great way to find out more about how your customers feel about the products or services they have bought from you. Ask them what they like best, what they like least etc. This gains you valuable information for future products or services. You can also ask for permission to publish their comments on your website or social media. 
  • Case studies – Use a real example of a problem you’ve solved for a customer, with a quote from them about how wonderful you and your service are. Turn this into a blog post, add it to your email marketing or post about it on your social media pages.
  • Have a website – this is a great place for you to give more details about you and your business. You can add an online shop, a blog, and a sign-up opt-in to your newsletter. Ensure your website is clear and easy to navigate, loads quickly (so keep image sizes small) and that it is engaging and gives plenty of useful information. Ensure that each page has a link to another page on your website to encourage visitors to stay a bit longer – this helps your ranking figures.
  • Write a blog – If you have a website, it’s a no brainer to have a blog. The reason? When you publish your latest blog post on social media, you point people to your blog post (and therefore your website0 where they may be tempted to have a browse. As with any other piece of content, a blog needs to be relevant to your audience and engaging. The good thing about a blog is that you can also repurpose the content to make other pieces of content for social media, email, podcast, webinar, YouTube video – the possibilities are endless!  
  • Free directories – as well as directories that you pay for, there are loads of free directories out there. Search for ones in your local area – this helps you get found more easily.
  • Attend networking events – if there is a regular networking event near you, they are well worth paying the small fee to join. You’ll meet other like-minded businesses and often pick up customers from those businesses over time once they get to know you. You can also join online networking events, which mostly don’t cost anything. If there isn’t a physical local networking event, why not think about starting one at a local café – coffee and networking always goes down well!  
  • Enter a business award competition – there’s nothing better than being able to say that you’ve won an award or a competition. Even if you don’t win but are shortlisted it’s still something to shout about. And either way, you can shout about it on your social media, website, in your newsletter etc.

I hope that this article has given you ideas on how you can promote your small business with little to no money. If you have any other ideas, put them in the comments – I’d love to hear from you!

If you need any help with any of the ideas above, you can always contact me for free 30-minute call.

Why use video for social media content?

Video is becoming increasingly popular on social media. It is a great tool for small businesses to help you highlight your brand, build loyalty with your customers, and attract new customers.

People are on their phones or devices all the time and they love watching videos – you’ve only got to look at how some of the TikTok dances have become a thing to see why. And who remembers the iced bucket challenge that was around a few years ago – it went viral with people from all over the world joining in and posting their own videos.

So why is video so important for small businesses?

Well, primarily, it’s good for your brand as video makes it more visible to a huge number of people. If you make a video using your products/services, it’s a good idea to use a logo watermark, as this will help establish that it’s your brand.

It also draws your audience’s attention. A video can grab attention quickly, compared to wordy text. The only problem is keeping it short, sweet and to the point, as people don’t have a long attention span! But practice makes perfect.

Video tips

So, when you make your video, here are some tips to keep in mind…

  • Ensure that the content is relevant to your target audience and is engaging enough to grab their interest.
  • Include headings and short descriptions, using SEO keywords and phrases so they will be found in a search.
  • Include relevant hashtags and a call to action.
  • Ensure that your video can be shared.
  • Think about using a video on your website or on your landing page for email sign up, so that your potential audience can learn more about you and your products/services in a more engaging way.
  • Try and inject some humour into your video where you can.
  • Show behind the scenes video – this helps your potential customers to see you have a transparent brand – people are generally nosy, so they like to see where and how you work.
  • Having yourself speaking in a video shows you are human, and people can engage with you, the business owner.
  • Videos can be made at any time and anywhere, so if you think of something you want to tell your followers and you’re at a coffee shop, go ahead and do it!
  • Video is low cost and more likely to remain online, available, and searchable for longer than ordinary text posts.

The most efficient types of video content for businesses are demonstrations, live performances, testimonials, ads of events and brand awareness, so it’s a good idea to keep that in mind.

You don’t have to be in the video and speaking if you don’t want to – you can show products or services with a musical background without actually having to appear in person.

Keep an eye on your engagement.

Just like any form of content that you put out, it’s vital to keep an eye on the engagement your video brings. You can see what’s working and what’s not! Then if you decide you want to use video for a paid ad, you’ll know what will work before you shell out any money.

You can see your engagement stats through the insights on all your social media channels, so it’s worth checking this out regularly for all your posts – not just for video.  

Conclusion

Video is a great addition to your social media marketing strategy. It helps your brand recognition and can help you reach audiences you may not reach with text/image only posts.

Just ensure that your video content is relatable and relevant to your target audience and just give it a go and see what happens! I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

Content Marketing Strategy – your way to success!

Do you have a content marketing strategy? A lot of small businesses don’t – and if you are one of those businesses, you are missing out on planning your way to success! Staying ahead of the game is what keeps our audiences engaged and also helps our businesses remain relevant. BUT, it doesn’t mean to you have to keep up with every trend that comes along.  

A content marketing strategy includes all the things you do to attract, engage, and keep your audiences’ attention, by creating and sharing content, such as blog posts, videos, newsletters, podcasts, and social media content. In fact, anything and everything that keeps your business in your audiences’ minds when they decide they want to buy what you offer.

The strategy is about the planning of that content so that it achieves your goals and is aimed at your specific target audience.

Why is the strategy important to your business?

I’ve seen lots of people on social media saying that they want to grow their business and it’s just not happening.

Is this you?

You’re consistently posting on social media, you might have a newsletter, you show your products or services, publish your blogs, pay for ads – and are consistent – but still you’re not getting as much business as you hoped. The reason is likely to be that you don’t have a workable content strategy, or that your goals aren’t realistic.

Content marketing is a long game – it’s not something that you can implement and get results within a few months. That’s why so many big companies have a whole marketing department. They know that they need to have people working on it constantly and over a long period of time to get any return on what they do.

With the right strategy in place, you can:

  • Generate leads
  • Raise your brand awareness
  • Engage your followers and target audience
  • Retain your current customers
  • Position yourself and your business as an expert in your field

You can’t just wing it!

Unfortunately, content strategy isn’t something you can wing! You need to conduct research, know your target audience, know what keywords to use and have a clear idea of your buyer personas.

Most small businesses will know their target audiences, but quite often still post and focus on what they believe to be important or interesting, rather than what their audience and perspective customers need and want. Having a strategy addresses this matter.

It’s not a secret that creating content is time-consuming, but writing short blog posts, or putting up a social media post just because you haven’t done one today – or trying to put out three posts every day, means you’ll probably do something quickly, just to get it out – and this could end up with you losing out in the long run.      

High quality content helps you to rank better in Google, helps you to build trust with your customers and followers, brings you leads and importantly, helps you to convert those leads into customers.

I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for short-term content strategies, as these can produce some instant results, but a long-term strategy will allow you to build a rapport with your audience, provide real value to them and keep your business in the front of their minds long term. Long-term strategies also tend to build bigger audiences and don’t concentrate on the hard sell, which puts a lot of people off.

How do you build a content strategy?

Your content strategy is the foundation of your customers’ journey with you. It helps you have better customer satisfaction and helps you with sales. Think about:

Your audience

Who will be reading your content? Who is your target audience? Do you have more than one?

Create a buyer persona for each of your target audiences – this will help you tailor content specifically for them.

What problems do your products or services solve?

What are the benefits and features of your products/services? What are your customers’ pain points and how do you solve them?

What makes your business unique?

What do you do that is different from your competitors? What makes your products/services better than theirs? It might be that you have years of experience; you might have a distinctive way of speaking to your customers (your tone of voice).

What are your business goals?

This is very important as you need to know what goals you want to achieve, so you can tailor your content to help you achieve those goals.

What kind of content format will you use?

Bear in mind that you need your content to reach your customers, so where do they hang out? This might be social media, a blog, a podcast, a YouTube channel, video content or an email newsletter to name a few. You also need to know what kind of content your audience likes. You can only find this out by trying different things over a period of time and analysing which type gets the most engagement.

Once you know what format you need to use to suit your audience and to reach them where they are, think about your budget and what you can afford to be able to use all these channels effectively – by this, I don’t mean you have to pay for ads – but things like a website or email marketing can come at a cost.

Where will you publish your content?

Linked to the previous point, where you publish your content will depend on where your audience are. This might be your website, or social media. If social media is a big part of your strategy, which sites will be best for you? Which sites do your audience use?

If you target a younger audience, you might want to opt for TikTok and Instagram.

How will you manage your content?

Once you know what channels you’re going to use, you need to think about how you will create and publish all your content. Will you be doing it all yourself?

Have a plan, and plan at least two weeks ahead, so you know what posts are happening and when. For social media, you can batch-create content and schedule it in advance. Blog posts and email can also be planned and written ready for publishing.

If you plan your content around a particular theme each week or month, it makes content creation much easier. If you write a blog, or have a podcast, you can also repurpose that content to make social media posts/videos.

Make sure that your content tells your customer how you can help them solve their problems, use your unique voice, and try and weave in your overall business message.

I try and use the 80/20 rule for my content. 80% entertaining, engaging, educating, or inspiring my audience and only 20% sales posts.

Your strategy also needs to:

  • Ensure your content points your audience to your website or online shop…or somewhere they can get more information
  • Be cost-effective
  • Include an audit of the content you’ve already published. Look at your insights on social media to find out what kind of posts work best you’re your business. And, if you blog/podcast, look at your stats to see which articles/episodes are the most popular. What works and what doesn’t?
  • Does your current content align with your goals, and will it help you achieve it? If not, you may need to look at changing what you do and how you do it.

There are loads of different types of posts you can create to keep your audience interested, and to help you achieve your goals.

Content Marketing is all about reaching your target audience with the kind of content they want to see, in a place where they hang out.

Planning and having a strategy are key and will really help you achieve your goals, reach your audience, build trust and rapport with your followers…and ultimately make those sales.

If you’d like help with your content marketing strategy, I’d love to help and get you moving towards building your audience and growing your business. Contact me via email (cindymobey@outlook.com) to book your free 30-minute consultation – I look forward to chatting to you about your business.

Common small business marketing problems (and how to fix them).

As we blast into 2025, marketing for small businesses becomes ever more challenging. Marketing constantly evolves and technology, algorithms, as well as consumer behaviour changes every year, which brings their own problems to solve.

So, as a small business it’s sometimes hard to keep on top of everything and anticipate what might be the marketing challenges for this year. Sadly, I’m seeing so many businesses going under – most are due to personal reasons, but I’m sure there are some that just don’t know how to get back out there.

Hopefully, this article will shed some light on some of the problems we small businesses face and give you some guidance on how you can stay ahead of the game and use marketing to keep your business afloat this year.   

No marketing strategy

I’m not saying that you do, but it’s often due to small businesses not having a marketing strategy in place. Many small businesses don’t realise that you need to have long-term plans as well as the shorter more tactical goals and plans.

A marketing strategy covers both by outlining your long-term goals and then HOW you’re going to achieve those goals through marketing efforts in the short term, by defining your target audiences, your messaging, content, channels, and metrics.

The problem – without a specific strategy, it’s difficult to determine which channels are best to reach your target audience – to know who they are and where they hang out. And if you don’t measure the success of the things you do put out, such as on social media, you don’t know if what you’re doing is effective. Also, without clear goals, it’s a challenge to know where your business is and if you’re making any progress.

How to fix it – having a good marketing strategy looks at everything, from identifying your target market and having buyer personas, understanding customers’ pain points and motivations, to finding out what channels you can use to best reach them. Setting achievable goals will help you get to where you want your business to be – then you can work on the tactics you need to implement to achieve those goals.

Creating focused content

I know we say this all the time, but good content is what will get you in front of your target audience and grab their attention. But creating good content needs you to have a really good understanding of your audience and how you can address their needs, wants and pain points to engage them and promote conversions to sales.

The problem – if your content doesn’t speak to your audience, then you’ll have low engagement, which will lead to any marketing efforts failing. If your content doesn’t grab attention, people will scroll on by.

How to fix it – Know your audience – create buyer personas so you understand who and what your content needs to reach and do. Make sure that your content solves problems your audience might have and provide them with solutions or actions that will help them, depending on whether you are product-based or service-based.

Your content needs to be purposeful – moving your potential customers on a journey from finding you, to the consideration stage and then finally to buy. This isn’t a short journey! So, create content that:

  • Educates
  • Entertains
  • Engages
  • Inspires

Include good call to actions and continually be thinking about guiding them to the next step. Ensure your content includes relevant keywords that they’ll understand, good descriptions and give easy to find links to your shop, blog, or website so they can find out more.

Always use a wide range of posts – don’t always just do selling posts.   

Connect with your audience.

Linked to the last point, you need to resonate and connect with your audience. If you don’t, you could lose them.

The problem – If you don’t connect with your audience, your marketing efforts will be in vain. If you don’t put out the right messaging, or give the right impression, your reputation could suffer, and you’ll have reduced brand loyalty.

How to fix it – Ensure that you do thorough marketing research and ask your audience for regular feedback (ask for it), so you can better understand what they want, need or like. This helps you understand how your products or services can solve their problems.

Use storytelling and emotive content that grabs attention and builds that all important trust. Listen to feedback and learn from it – even negative feedback can be turned around.

You can also use email newsletters and blogs to connect with your audience, giving them more in-depth information and content, which helps nurture that all important relationship.

By taking all of this into account, you can build lasting relationships, where you understand your audience and they trust you and become loyal customers.  

Social media

The reason that many social media accounts just don’t work is because of inconsistent posting, lack of engagement and failure to give an audience what they want – and the algorithms don’t always help.  

The problem – You’re not growing on social media, or your growth is very slow. This, in turn, limits who your posts reach, and engagement becomes almost non-existent, so you don’t get those sales. Without these things, you miss out on building a strong community and driving traffic to your website, shop, or blog.

How to fix it – You need to have a good social media strategy, which includes regular posting, interactive content, perhaps collaborations with other businesses or influencers. You need to engage with your followers through comments and messages to build relationships. And you need to use insights or analytics to track how you’re doing and adjust accordingly to ensure you’re on track.

  • Have a content calendar, even if it’s just written on a pad or in a word or excel document. Plan your posts ahead, so you know what you’re doing and when – schedule posts to help remain consistent.
  • Engage with your audience through replying to comments and messages. Try to answer comments with a question where you can encourage a conversation or engagement. This gives you a deeper understanding and connection with your audience.
  • Create visually appealing and valuable content that answers questions for your audience, gives them details of what they want or need, and caters to their interests.
  • Collaborate with other businesses, supporting and sharing each other’s posts. If you can get an influencer on board who aligns with what you do, they’ll help you reach a larger audience.
  • Review your social media insights to understand what works and what doesn’t. And act on it accordingly!

People scroll through social media to be entertained or to find a particular business or product. But mainly it’s scrolling until something catches their eye. By including a mix of posts, incorporating humour, storytelling, tutorials etc. you’ll capture attention.

Algorithms  

GROAN! This is probably THE most challenging thing that small businesses face. The algorithms constantly evolve, which can have a huge impact on your engagement and visibility.

The problem – The constantly changing algorithms can prevent people from seeing your posts, your reach can go up and down, engagement can plumet one minute and suddenly surge another. This can have a detrimental effect on your business and your social media efforts can feel ignored.

How to fix it – Try and stay informed on algorithm changes and adapt where you can. Make it your priority to have high-quality, engaging content that encourages interaction. If necessary, book a coaching session with a social media expert so you are up to speed with best practices.

Understand that algorithms are based on the user experience and relevant content, so creating the right kind of content is vital.

You can’t control the algorithms, but you can control the content you put out to ensure that it is valuable, relevant, and engaging for your particular target audience. If you analyse your insights regularly, create valuable content you know your audience likes, you can adapt to the changes and your social media presence will be better.

You’re losing interest in your marketing.

This happens! You just sometimes feel like you can’t be bothered with it all.

The problem – lack of focus in your marketing efforts can leave to a reduced impact and effectiveness of your content, diluted messages, and chaos. Your engagement will fall, and you’ll get less customers and followers will fall away.

How to fix it – Ensure you have clear business goals and marketing objectives that align and support them.

Regularly review and amend your goals to make them more achievable. If a goal seems too big a mountain to climb, break it down into more manageable chunks.  

A marketing strategy will help you remain focused on what matters to your business and gives you direction as to what you need to do to keep your business at the forefront of your target audience’s minds. It also helps you focus on the channels where your target audience hangs out, so you’re not trying to be on loads of different platforms and spreading yourself too thin.

Standing out in the crowd

2025 is going to see more new businesses and products emerging and standing out in the crowd is a big challenge for small businesses.

Ensure you have a unique brand position (USP) that states clearly what makes your product or service different or better than the rest. How are you different from your competitors?

Make sure that you focus on giving an excellent customer experience at every single touch point that your customers have with your business. From website and social media to blog posts and email or messages, ensure that the service you give is second to none, be transparent and consistent and you’ll find customers will be loyal to you and your brand and will recommend you to their friends and family.

Finally, produce high quality, original, engaging content that perfectly highlights you and your business and your expertise.

Conclusion

I’m sure that there are many more marketing problems out there, and marketing is never an easy ride. 2025 is going to continue to bring challenges to small businesses all over the world, but by being proactive and having a robust strategy, you’ll be able to navigate anything that’s thrown at you.

Marketing isn’t just about short-term gains, it’s the marathon, building long-term relationships with customers and having a sustainable plan for your business’s success. Having a strategy in place and with your dedication to your business and creativity when it comes to your content, you can achieve your goals, and your business will be a success. If you’d like help with any of the things I’ve mentioned in this article, feel free to get in touch. I offer a free 30-minute consultation.

Creating problem solving content for product-based businesses

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a lot of people ask about how to create problem solving content. And why would you need to do that, especially if you’re a product-based business? There is a lot of information out there about problem solving for service-based businesses, so this article is for all my product-selling followers! And by writing this and creating social media content around this subject, I’m creating problem solving content!

What is problem solving content and why do you need it?

The first thing I want to say is that you need to address your customers’ problems or pain points, without them feeling you’re giving them the hard sell. This is a real turn-off!

With social media being such a popular medium, it makes sense to have some engaging content that makes them think. Everyone loves to read a story and people love to be able to express their opinions or join in with a debate, so let’s look at how you can address this.

Problem solving content captures your followers’ attention by giving them an answer to a particular question or concern they might have. And provides tangible examples to illustrate your points.

Why do you need it? It helps your customers and potential customers imagine how they can use your product and that it is something they NEED in their life! Being able to picture themselves using your product and the benefits it brings is half the battle to getting a sale.

Understand your audience’s problems.  

I know I bang on about this all the time, but the first step to creating the content is understanding what problems your customers may have. This once again boils down to knowing your target audience and what challenges they face, what they might be interested in and any obstacles they might have (or excuses) for not being interested in what you have to offer.

One of the ways to obtain this information is to ask questions or conduct polls on social media, asking for feedback from your audience. For example, you may have a very popular product – ask WHY your customers like this particular product.

And ask what else they would like to see from you.

Give your audience solutions they understand and can relate to.

Once you understand the problems or worries your audience has, it’s time to think of ways to show them the solution – one they will understand and be able to relate to.

Don’t just tell them how to solve a problem, show them. You can use case studies, examples from reviews or recommendations, or an online tutorial or short video to illustrate how your product can solve a problem. This helps make your content interesting, engaging and gives them ideas as to how your products can be used.

Let me give you a few examples for different kinds of products:

You sell jewellery – it’s always exciting to show images and maybe slide shows of your jewellery, but if you have a customer who has bought something from you for a particular occasion, ask them to send you a photo of themselves wearing your jewellery. You can then use their review with a photo – it packs more punch.

Give ideas as to how a particular piece of jewellery could work. You might sell earring and necklace sets that would be perfect for a bride to wear on her wedding day. Photograph those sets with a wedding inspired background – if you use Canva, there are wedding inspired backgrounds you can use. Then, instead of just focusing on the bride, why not show other sets that may be in different colours that could be gifted to bridesmaids? If you do jewellery with different length chains, you can say that in your content.

If you make your own jewellery, show the process in step-by-step photos or be brave and do a time lapse video, stating that you offer a bespoke service for those special pieces or gifts.  

You make hair accessories – you can use all the same ideas as for jewellery, but also you can include children in your marketing. Children love hair accessories for many different occasions, such as going to school (could you offer scrunchies or hairbands in school colours for example?), or the same with a bit of bling for parties.

When you are advertising your products, show or give ideas as to how they can be used. If you do adult accessories, (as someone with long hair that gets in my way), you could push the angle of headbands/scrunchies are not only stylish and pretty but keep your hair out of your face when you’re gardening or at the gym.

You sell gift items – this is a broad category. You might sell soft toys, handmade items or personalised items, or a host of other things. But the principle is still the same. Give potential customers ideas on how they can be used and what events they could be used for. This could be birthday’s, Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, birth of a baby, christening, wedding – the list is endless. But if you have products that could be adapted to all these special dates, you have a bigger market for your products.

If you have safety features or must have safety certificates for your products, mention this, so people are happy that a product is safe to gift to children for example.

You sell beauty products, personal products, or home cleaning products – there are lots of ways to show and tell that these products solve problems. For skin products or personal products, it could be that it will make your skin glow, help with skin problems, is an effective deodorant, softens your skin after shaving – the list is endless. The key here is to do videos of you using the products or having lots of before and after photos from customers, or photos of customers using your products. Reviews about how it helped solve a particular beauty or personal problem will also give you social proof that your products work and are worth investing in. Tell customers that they don’t contain any nasty chemicals and if they are allergy friendly.

The same applies to cleaning products – are they eco-friendly and don’t contain harsh chemicals?  Do they work? Create videos showing you using the products, for example on a sink – before and after. Use customer reviews to give you social proof.

I could go on with all the different types of business out there, but the principles are the same, no matter what business you are in.

Be honest with your audience.

This goes without saying, but transparency is really important. Be honest about what customers can expect from your products and their solutions. Don’t promise something you can’t deliver or you’re not sure is correct.

Always set realistic expectations.

Engage with your audience.

This is more important than a lot of people realise. Talk to your audience. When they make a comment on your post, always reply to it and if necessary ask questions and engage in a conversation. If someone asks a specific question, answer it or if you think it might be more personal, reply that you will send them a private message – and ensure that you do!

Ask for feedback on your products, your content, your videos and ask if there is anything else your audience would like to see.  

Do you write a blog or have your own newsletter?

If you write a blog, you can use it to go into more detail about a particular product. A post on social media shouldn’t be too long or people won’t read it, but if they read your blog or have signed up to your newsletter, you have a captive audience, who WANT to know more or find out more about you and your business, including your products.

So, if you create a post that you could give a lot more detail about, write a blog post about it and advertise that on your social media account. And if you have a newsletter, include a paragraph every time about one of your products and how it solves a problem. Again, you can advertise this on your social media posts. This not only offers a more in-depth service, but it also directs traffic to your website or blog.  

Final thoughts

You need to know your target audience and what they want. You must understand what kind of problems they have that your products can solve.

If you feel you are struggling with how to create problem solving content for your business, I can help. Sometimes it’s a case of ‘two heads are better than one.’ I offer an hour’s brainstorming session, where we can discuss your business, find out more about your target audience and set a plan in place to create that problem solving content that will speak to your customers and ultimately get more sales. Either message me or drop me an email to make an appointment – cindymobey@outlook.com

Now, put your thinking cap on and get creative!

How to write creative, persuasive content

Do you dream of being able to write creative content that is persuasive and that inspires your readers? It’s not as difficult as you may think and is all about structuring your content so that your article is appealing and irresistible!

There are four forms of content…

  1. Written
  2. Audio
  3. Video
  4. Images

No matter which medium you’re working on, it’s crucial that your content is valuable and useful to your reader…or they simply won’t read it and it won’t resonate with them. Your articles need to help solve a problem or improve their life in some way. This will also help set you up as an expert in your field.  

Create a content strategy

Your content strategy is your why, who and how. Why you are creating it, who is it aimed at and how are you going to get it out there. Businesses use content marketing to build an audience and to either increase their revenue, lower their costs or to get better customers. For me, it’s about engaging with my audience and, almost as a proof point to illustrate that I know what I’m talking about and am experienced in this field.

Publishing content is great, but it also needs to be published consistently. It needs to educate, entertain or inspire your audience. This way you can turn total strangers into followers and then those followers into customers. You do this by building relationships and solving problems.

Know your audience

Once you know what your strategy is, you need to build the content around your audience. What makes them tick? What problems do they have? What do they look like? If you know your audience well and know what they want, you can really deliver.

Now you’re ready to choose which form of content to use. Try and utilise a mixture as this will help keep your audience’s attention.

Written content

This is the most popular and most used way to communicate with your audience. There are lots of different ways to communicate using the written word…

  • Blogging – Blogging is about writing relevant, useful, informative and entertaining copy. A blog is a regular, consistent post. Your audience can follow your blog, and so get informed automatically every time you publish a new one. Anyone can start up a blog about absolutely any subject you can think of! There are cookery blogs, health and fitness, nutrition, fashion, travel, crafting…you name it, and I can guarantee it’s out there.
    A blog post can be as long or as short as you like – you will soon get to know what your audience likes. Use SEO (search engine optimization) to get ranked higher in search engine results and use categories and tags to make your blog easier to find.  See my two articles on SEO for more details on how to do this – SEO part 1 and SEO part 2.  
  • Email – A direct way to communicate with your followers. If you have a ‘subscribe to email’ button on your website, you can regularly keep in touch with your customers and followers. Just be aware not to overdo it and bombard people with emails every day, or use them solely to sell or push your products/services, or you will find lots of ‘unsubscribes’.
  • Newsletters – These used to be hard copy, but most businesses send these out via email nowadays. It is, in effect, an email as in the last point, but this is specifically your newsletter. Again, don’t go mad with the frequency – once a month is great and also more manageable for you too. You can give news on what you’re doing in your business, any new products or services on the horizon or any freebies you might have created. Or, it might be just some interesting information you want to share, or hints and tips. And of course, you can use it to share links to your blog post.  

Audio

Podcasts are very popular and are growing in numbers every day. There are less podcasts out there, than there are blogs, so it is a good one to try for your business. Like blogs, they can be about absolutely anything…someone out there will be interested in what you have to say. It’s also a great way to reach your audience as they can listen to your podcast whilst driving to work, or working out. Your audience don’t necessarily have to set aside a certain amount of time to catch up with your latest message.

Video Marketing

This has been around for a long time now, but it is fast becoming the norm for all sorts of small businesses, as well as the larger corporates. You can ‘go live’ on social media, or record a short message to your customers/followers. It’s versatile, you can say what you like and most importantly, you will reach your audience more quickly. In a few seconds, you can convey a mood, a setting and your message can be received shortly and succinctly in less than a minute. There are lots of ways to use video in your marketing…

  • Live stream – in real time on social media accounts. As it’s recorded ‘live’, it will be a ‘warts and all’ recording, so you won’t be able to edit out any mistakes – but this does add to the excitement and appeal. People see you as you are!
  • Recorded stream – the same as the ‘live’ stream, but you’ve pre-recorded it before you put it out, so you can edit out anything you don’t like and add in anything that might have forgotten with the ‘live’ version.
  • Vlogging – the same as blogging, but using video. This can be longer that the ‘live’ or pre-recorded videos. Your audience love these as they feel they are getting to know you as a person – if you Vlog regularly, they will get used to seeing you and this helps build a relationship and trust. If you decide to Vlog regularly, it will be worth setting up a YouTube channel so you encourage more visitors.
  • Whiteboard videos – these are animated or sketched videos, so the subject matter and scenery is not real.

Images

Using images is also a great form of content marketing. They are usually on your website, on social media or within a blog. Images can be very powerful to help you convey a message and help you create more impact. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and whilst this can be true, I tend to use them more to enhance my messaging.

The only downside is that search engines don’t necessarily recognise images, so a good tip is to make sure you add a caption to your images, known as alt text, wherever it is relevant. If using in a blog, use keywords to help the search engines find the images.    

AND SO, ONTO YOUR ACTUAL CONTENT

Writing your content

Here are a few tips to help you write your content to help make it more persuasive.

  • Write the headline first. Make sure it is compelling and sparks the curiosity of your reader to want to read on.
  • Write your subheadings next. This will help you plan your content and split it into readable chunks for your reader.
  • Add a few captions. Captions catch the readers’ eye, so add a few in for good measure!
  • Opening paragraph – this is what will draw the reader in and help them decide whether they want to, or can be bothered to, read the rest. People spend seconds scanning an article and, if the opening paragraph and headline doesn’t draw them in, you’ll have lost that reader.  
  • Closing paragraph – Depending on what you’re writing about, this is the end of your article/blog or whatever. Use it well; maybe reiterate the most important take-away from your article and have a CTA (call to action) so they know what to do next.  
  • Bullet points – these are easier to remember and, if someone is just scanning your article, these are likely to be read. So, make them stand out, make them full of good hints or tips and great advice. Make them totally fascinating!

Now we know what to include, let’s dig a bit deeper…

Why is a headline so important?

On average, only 20% of people read an article beyond the headline. If your headline doesn’t grab attention then of those 20%, even fewer people will read your content. So what can you do?

  • Give a benefit in your headline. Give your readers an incentive…’how to’ do something or a recipe. Use numbers…’20 ways to …..’
    Let them know that there is something in it for them.
  • Absolutely command attention. Not always easy, but remember you only have a few seconds to hook someone in. Use power words or positive words, such as ‘inspiration’, ‘revelation’ or even things like ‘is your business doomed because…..’
  • Be specific. Make your headline specific to the article – don’t use a generic headline. For example, if you were writing an article about Mental Health, just having the title ‘Mental Health’ isn’t very inspiring and won’t necessarily pull in your audience, but if you have ‘Mental Health – what does this mean?’ or ‘Mental Health – 10 ways to help yourself’, you’re giving specifics and are more likely to get readers.
  • Don’t get cocky. Don’t try to be too clever with a headline, as these are notoriously hard to come up with. And, they can spectacularly fail!
  • Use a proven structure…as talked about in previous points. Being original is great, but you can try too hard!
  • Keep on, keeping on – practice, practice, practice…makes perfect! Take notice of headlines when you’re reading a newspaper or magazine. Look at headlines on billboards and understand how they capture your attention.
  • Action – Know what action you want your readers to take and make sure that is incorporated throughout your article and in your headline.        

Write content your readers will remember

Here are a few tricks to help make your content unforgettable.

  • Emotion – appeal to your reader’s emotions – this makes them care about something and if they care, they will remember.
  • People have short attention spans – use sound bites to grab attention. I’ve heard the term ’60 is the new 40’, referring to the fact that people now live longer…this is a sound bite.
  • Surprise your reader – Say something unexpected – the element of surprise always makes people remember
  • Use solid details. As well as all the trivial stuff, make sure your content has some real concrete solid details and information that help your readers understand your content.
  • Use stories. It could be a case study, or just a little ‘aside’ piece from your personal memory. People love stories, so be a good storyteller.

Using persuasive writing

If you want your readers to buy something, subscribe to your course or newsletter, you need to be persuasive. Here are some of the reasons you can give your readers…

  • Tell them why…why they should buy your product. Keep it simple – use the word ‘because’ – that tells them all they need to know.
  • Expect objections. If you’re on social media, you’ll know that no matter what you post, there is always someone who objects or who doesn’t agree with you. So, when writing copy, anticipate those objections up front and address them!
  • Give an incentive. Most people have endless curiosity. So give incentives to read to the end of your content…. ‘As well as this, you’re going to love…..’, ‘Here is the best bit’…’Here’s the most awesome part…’. You get the picture!
  • Use stats – these give credibility to your content. And quote your source if there are lots of specific stats.
  • Be passionate about what you do. If you love what you do, it will shine through your work.
  • Give the benefits of what you are offering. You might have told readers why to buy your product/service, but also list the benefits – what can it do for them? How can it make their lives easier? How can it save them time and money?
  • Write about a subject you know about. It will be obvious if you are just spewing out information. KNOW what you’re writing about as it will be easier to be more persuasive about it. And bear in mind that the person reading might not know anything about the subject you’re writing about, so keep the ‘beginner’ in mind.
  • Have a clear call to action or call to benefit. Once they’ve read the article, tell them what to do next and remind them why it’s good, and why they should click or subscribe or buy!     

At the end of the day, you know your customers and you know who your ideal customer is. Write for those people. Write as if you’re talking to a friend in a pub over a drink. Use easy to understand language and not jargon.

Entertain your audience, educate them, inspire them – ultimately you will sell to them. But as with most marketing tactics, it’s important to have that all important engagement first.

If you would like help creating your Content Marketing Strategy, but don’t know where to start, contact me via this blogsite, or drop me an email at cindymobey@outlook.com for a free 30 minute consultation to find out how I can help.