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The State of Small Business Content Marketing in 2014

BoostSuite asked thousands of small business owners and marketers about their content marketing strategies earlier this year. What we found is that most have been doing basic content marketing, but overall the process is still disjointed and ineffective.

Small businesses are blogging, using social media and email marketing, but everything they say and do is based on gut feeling. They’re also working by themselves instead of leveraging the help of their co-marketing partners. That’s no way to effectively market a business!

This means small businesses can achieve exceptional results by using data-driven marketing tools where they can find and work with marketing partners who will help them grow their audiences and generate more customers.

Does your content marketing strategy sound anything like this?

The State of Small Business Content Marketing 2014

Here are some of the most interesting facts we learned about small businesses and their content marketing strategies:

Content marketing is web-based. Web content (mainly blog posts) reigns supreme with 89% of small businesses publishing weekly.
Content marketing is time-consuming. Over half of small businesses spend more than two hours creating each piece of web content. That’s 5% of the workweek dedicated to just web content.
Content marketing is random. Gut feel guides strategy, not data. 86% of small businesses don’t use data to make smarter decisions when it comes to their content marketing.
Email marketing is underutilized. Small businesses need to spend more time promoting their content with email newsletters as only 65% are even sending one at all. That’s a huge audience building opportunity being completely neglected by 35% of small businesses.
Content differs based on the channel. 81% of small businesses create different content for web vs. social vs. email. There’s no reason to do this. A small business’s voice and messaging should remain consistent across all channels for optimal results.
Small businesses aren’t working with anyone else. 74% have never worked with a partner. This means that the valuable process of building relevant backlinks is being completely ignored by 3/4 of small businesses.
Solo-marketing doesn’t work any more. Do-it-together is the new Do-it-yourself. Those small businesses working with partners see more results because they’re getting their content in front of larger, engaged audiences and generating more backlinks, building their authority.
There’s a huge opportunity to use data to get better marketing results. Working smarter is always better than working harder when you’re a small business. You’ll save time and generate more customers too.

This article was originally published by BoostSuite

Published: May 26, 2014
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Ryan Kettler

Ryan Kettler is Director of Communications for BoostSuite. Ryan is a sports fanatic, devoted runner, avid golfer, beer connoisseur, Internet marketing zealot and live music enthusiast. When he’s not helping BoostSuite customers he can be found running 5ks, sampling IPAs, and cheering on his North Carolina State Wolfpack. BoostSuite is a web marketing optimization product for small business owners. Unlike current products that bewilder and discourage small business owners, BoostSuite allows novice web marketers to build more website traffic and convert more online visitors into customers and leads for their businesses. BoostSuite is free and takes only one minute to set up, is easy to learn, and can be used by anyone.