A common misconception among business people is that content marketing comes for free. While it really does cost 62% less than traditional marketing, you still need to invest in this field.
What you can do, however, is to make a plan for a minimum-budget content marketing.
Although some three-quarters of marketers are increasing investments in content marketing, there are still around 25% of those who cannot afford it.
If you belong to the latter group, you should make a strategy for low-budget digital activities. In this article, we will explain to you how to develop content marketing with a minimum budget.
10 Tips for a Low-Budget Content Creation
There are many ways to run a low-cost marketing campaign but we decided to choose the 10 best models. Let’s check them out:
1. Make a plan
Since you cannot afford an entire marketing team, you need to plan your timing carefully. Create a schedule of activities and follow the planned framework of announcements.
All you need to do is to ask yourself: what is it that I want to do and when should I do it? In that regard, we suggest you use a free online tool like Google Calendar.
It’s not easy to manage content creation all by yourself but this scheduling tool will help you to arrange all tasks easily. You can set alarms and notifications to remind you of the planned duties, events, blog posts, etc.
2. Create a blog
Blogging is one of the most efficient methods to create digital content and it’s also the cheapest.
Since you run the business and possess a broad knowledge in your field of work, it should be easy for you to write blog posts.
If you want to do it without an increase in marketing costs, simply add a blog page to the existing company website.
Bear in mind that the most successful blogs nowadays are much longer than usual. On average, top ranked posts have more than 2,000 words.
This means that you need to write a thorough article using only the most relevant data. Therefore, you should pay attention to the quality of your posts instead of the quantity.
3. Publish business reports
The official business report makes a valuable source of content creation. Your company probably creates a number of monthly or quarterly reports and all you have to do is to adapt it for digital promotion.
Of course, you can remove the sensitive financial information. Your audience will appreciate the first-hand insights in concrete business operations. Simply post it as the whitepaper and you will most likely generate a lot of leads.
4. Publish company presentations
Whenever you make an official company presentation, it gives you the opportunity to publish it online. No matter if it’s the industry analysis or the presentation of your business, you can use it to create digital content.
The principle is also very simple: remove the sensitive data from the presentation and allow your audience to get a professional analysis of the business. If created well, this type of content can boost your credibility and influence.
5. Conduct a survey
Another free and easy way to engage your followers is to conduct an interesting survey. It’s a zero-budget activity that can generate a lot of new leads.
Choose a trendy topic and ask your audience a set of questions about this issue. When they answer your questions, you will ask for their email before revealing the results.
Survey Monkey is a free platform that helps you to create such opinion polls.
And there is the extra tip here – if you analyze answers from all followers, you can use it to create a report with your own comments, which is another valuable type of marketing content.
6. Use free graphic design tools
Online content is getting more visual these days, which means that you should use free graphic design tools for the minimum-budget content marketing.
You don’t have to be an expert to use the tool such as Canva, for instance. It allows you to make simple but SEO rich images using only a few easy steps.
Canva is very intuitive and it won’t give you a headache while creating visual content.
7. Invest in online advertising
A lot of people think that online content can generate thousands of leads organically, so they don’t invest into content promotion.
However, the fact is that you’ll hardly ever make a wide base of followers without any sponsored posts. This method is relatively cheap and it will suit your shoestring budget.
For instance, paying only $5 for a Facebook post can get you hundreds of new followers. At the same time, it will give you enough potential to expand the fan base naturally with each new post you publish.
8. Hire a freelancer
With all those regular everyday tasks, it’s hard to operate both the business and the marketing campaign. That’s the reason to consider hiring a freelancer.
For example, you can find a solid blog author who will write you a decent post for up to $50. Of course, if you want an expert article, it will cost you much more.
But with only a few instructions from your side, rest assured that one of the freelancers from platforms like Upwork will get the job done smoothly.
9. Mind the quality
We said it before but we will repeat it: pay attention to the quality of your content. Avoid producing low-level posts that bring no value to your followers.
It’s much better to publish one blog post per week and make it look excellent than to publish one post each day and chase away your audience.
10. Analyze your content marketing
If you want to run a sustainable marketing campaign, you need to detect your advantages and your weak spots. That’s the only way to improve and keep attracting new followers.
Using Google Analytics, you can analyze the website traffic but also keep an eye on all social network accounts free of charge.
Extra Tips on How to Use the Budget
The minimum-budget content marketing is still better than its no-budget version. But you need to be clever about it and conduct an analysis prior to taking any concrete steps.
There are two things that you should take into account here:
1. Spend money on things you don’t do well:
There are only a few all-around marketers out there and rest assured that even those guys have their own areas of specialization and expertise.
It’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to do everything on your own, so you should save some portion of the budget to outsource certain tasks. A quick hint – graphic design or video recordings could be some of those tasks.
2. Spend money on time-consuming activities:
Even if you are an expert in blogging or graphic design, chances are you just won’t have enough time to dedicate completely to these aspects of content creation.
In such circumstances, you should hire someone to do it according to your instructions.
Conclusion
People often say that less is more. In case of content marketing, this means that less budget demands better planning and more creativity.
Using our 10 tips, you can implement the minimum-budget content marketing campaign and still generate enough followers, leads, and conversions.
Which one of these models do you plan to utilize?
Does your company need a single channel of promotion or all of these tools?
Let us know in comments and we can discuss valuable ideas even further.
About the Author
Amelia White is a passionate writer who focuses on content marketing. She also loves researching new inbound advertising techniques and how these can be utilized to strengthen content strategies. You can find her on nsw-writers.
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