4 Affordable Ways Small Marketing Teams Can Create World-Class Content
As a small marketing team hoping to achieve big goals with your content, it takes a very focused and ... [+] disciplined approach in order to consistently bring new customers to your website.
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When trying to grow your business, few activities are more important than marketing. At the same time, few tasks often seem more challenging than marketing, especially if you’re on either a small or single-person team that’s responsible for creating all of your marketing-related content.
The idea of coming up with an editorial calendar or social media campaign that’s on par with what major brands (and million-dollar marketing budgets) create can be intimidating, to say the least.
The good news is that you don’t need a large budget or a big team in order to create marketing content that’ll grow your audience and exposure. By leveraging smart marketing tactics and taking advantage of affordable resources that’ll help you create standout content, even a one-person team can get the job done today.
1. Focus On Your Target Audience And Key Platforms
Advertising agencies with big budgets have the resources to target almost every platform imaginable where their customers spend time—from stalwarts like Facebook and Instagram to newer social platforms like TikTok.
As a small marketing team, you don’t have that luxury. You only have so much time and money, which means you’ll need to direct your attention to just one or two social platforms. Of course, the right platform to go all in on could vary widely based on your industry and where your target audience spends their time online.
For example, a study from HubSpot found that for B2B brands, LinkedIn’s lead generation rate was a whopping 277% higher than that of Facebook and Twitter. On the other hand, B2C brands targeting younger audiences are often best served by focusing on Snapchat and Instagram—picked as the favorite networks by 41% and 35% of teens, respectively, according to Statista.
It may also be beneficial to look at which platforms are currently generating relevant traffic and leads for your site today, in order to determine where you should invest more of your marketing budget. Based on your research, you might benefit from targeting a more niche platform, rather than a more popular one where costs and competition will both be higher.
2. Stay On Track With An Organized Content Calendar
According to studies conducted by the Content Marketing Institute, 53% of the most effective marketers have a documented content marketing strategy, while 40% of the least effective marketers report having no strategy in place at all.
Determining which article ideas you need to write about in order to attract the right visitors and deciding when they should be published, is key for lasting marketing success. Documenting your strategy and then keeping everything organized with a content calendar are essential steps to keeping your marketing efforts on track.
Your content calendar should cover important categories such as focus keywords, content type, target publishing date and any external assets you’ll also need created (like custom images, videos or software). Putting everything into context with a streamlined calendar will make it easier to keep your big-picture marketing on track, while still leaving some room to talk about breaking industry news or react to other last-minute demands.
3. Make Your Job Easier With Content Creation Tools
As a small team, you may not have the budget to hire a professional photographer or videographer in order to help create your content. If it’s just you, your computer and your smartphone, you might worry about your ability to create compelling content—particularly for a visually-driven social platform.
The good news is that there are plenty of low-cost resources to help you create stunning visual content. For example, the social media story making tool, StoryBoost, provides over 1,000 templates that can be used to create visually appealing Instagram Stories. Their themes are even complemented by filters, animations and text options that can enhance your photos and videos beyond the capabilities of your smartphone.
Another popular tool in the design arsenal of many small marketing teams is Stripo, which helps simplify the design process for email marketing campaigns. Their drag and drop email tool allows you to quickly create mobile-friendly templates that provide a professional, visually appealing look. This makes it easier to spread the word about your latest product or promotion in a way that’ll actually resonate with those on your mailing list.
With the right kinds of marketing tools, you don’t have to be a design expert or shell out for hiring a graphic designer every time you publish new content. You can make professional-grade content yourself without breaking the bank.
4. Embrace The Power Of Automation
There are only so many hours in the day—and for many startups, a small marketing team often has to take on other responsibilities as well. But, you don’t want the quality of your content to suffer because you spend so much time working on mundane marketing tasks. The more you can automate, the better.
Scheduling social media posts in advance by using tools like Buffer or HootSuite will ensure that you won’t need to worry about logging in to post content every day (or on weekends). You can even set your account to automatically share new blog content from your website as it gets published. Similarly, many email marketing tools and web platforms allow you to schedule the timing for emails and articles.
Beyond that, a recent survey from eMarketer found that 56% of managers in the United States and United Kingdom reported bad data resulting in lost sales opportunities. If you work in a B2B company that captures emails and nurtures leads, having an automated platform for gathering and organizing your customer data will be essential for increasing future conversions.
Utilizing a customer resource management (CRM) platform will keep data properly organized so you can prioritize leads and guide them through the buyer’s journey.
Being on a small marketing team may seem intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be.
Implementing best practices like crafting evergreen blog content, writing strong calls to action and focusing on valuable keywords all still apply when it comes to building your audience.
If you can incorporate these additional elements into your marketing mix, you’ll be even better equipped to do your marketing in an efficient way that delivers measurable results.
Planning Your Partner Program Strategy: The Handbook for Success
If you brand is taking on aggressive growth strategies, expanding into new markets, while still trying to remain lean, planning your partner program strategy is a top priority. In fact, a study1 revealed that 1 out of 3 high-growth companies rated partnership marketing as the most impactful marketing technique. ROI on partner marketing initiatives outperformed marketing channels like paid advertising, email marketing, and trade-shows, to name a few.
The trend is undeniable – especially for business-to-business (B2B) organizations. Instead of purchasing large booths (which come with large price tags), B2B marketers are putting more resources than before into digital marketing initiatives. According to Demand Gen, 8 out of 10 of the most effective demand generation channels for B2B marketers are digital, with the top 3 stated as email, search, and website.
The Value of B2B Partner Marketing
Now more than ever, it’s important to be where your audience is and for the majority of B2B brands – that’s online. In fact, 9 out of 10 buyers say online content has a moderate to major effect on purchasing decisions.
And that’s not all.
With 67% of the buyer’s journey now done digitally – think content, social, influencer, and partner marketing – understanding the value of online marketing is a must. More so, only 2% of cold calls result in an appointment.2 So instead of focusing on outbound efforts, marketers are looking at how to build relationships, while leveraging inbound marketing tools.
What does this mean for organizations looking at the future of customer relationships?
Forrester predicts that B2B marketers will:
– Put the customer at the core of their purpose– Redefine its charter to better engage the new business consumer– Optimize engagement with artificial intelligence (AI)– Prioritize operational excellence
In the B2B marketing world, partner marketing plays a crucial role in acquiring new business. Engaging and building positive brand relationships with prospects via channel partners, value-added resellers, and agencies produces immediate results similar to customer referrals.
And since 91% of customers say they’d give referrals, but only 11% of salespeople ask for them, partner marketing can position your business for the same effects, but without the giant chasm that exists between providing referrals and asking for them. Which is why having a channel partner program in place is becoming an important piece of the overall customer acquisition plan.
Leveraging technology is critical when it comes to developing your business partner program. It’s crucial to adopt best practices and update outdated business processes by leveraging automated partner programs. Here’s how to get started:
Prioritize increasing the quality rather than the quantity of your partners in your program.
Utilize the Portal Registration Page: The portal registration page allows you to collect additional information from your partners such as their company website and other useful details. Once they enroll via the registration form, partners will automatically be logged into the portal for easy sharing.
Auto-Enroll Partners: For relationships you’ve established with existing partners, auto-enroll them into your program to make participation turnkey.
Kickoff the Program: Don’t just hope that partners will find your program. Announce your program launch through dedicated emails to start seeing results quickly.
Build a Program Overview Landing Page: Provide partners with a comprehensive overview of the program by having a dedicated page to point them to.
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Step 2: It’s All About Engagement
Keep your program top-of-mind with partners, influencers, resellers, and more by proactively engaging with them often, and will valuable assets.
Implement a Direct Entry Form: Partners tend to have a more personal relationships with your brand and are likely to have contacts they want to recommend for individualized follow-up. A Direct Entry Form allows partners to enter contact information of a referee into a form that lives in your portal.
Encourage Employee Promotion: Provide employees that have high touch points with your partners with copy or a graphic that they can use in their email signature to promote the program.
Create an Educational Guide or Video: Send a toolkit with all of the details to new partners in a welcome email and include a link on your program overview landing page. Include information on what and where to share, how to utilize the portal, recommendations for seeing success and more.
Send Dedicated Emails: Encourage engagement by providing useful program information in dedicated emails. These emails can offer suggestions for seeing success or even highlight top performers.
Build a Community: Create a place where your partners can share best practices, advice, and feedback with one another. A private Facebook group is a great place for partners and affiliates to share with each other and your brand can tap into the conversation. This commentary can help you deliver a better partner affiliate program experience.
Step 3: The Incentive Matters
Ensure you’re offering the right incentive at the right time by understanding what matters to your partners.
Utilize a Revenue Share: Most partner programs offer a commission that is a percentage of the total purchase. Monetary commissions, such as PayPal, are most successful.
Offer a Dual Incentive: Rewarding both the partner and the referee can provide a substantial lift.
Implement Limited-Time Rewards: Boost participation by offering partners exclusive rewards in addition to their base commission. For example, you could award conference tickets based on top performance during a specific month.
Across industries, establishing a trust-based relationship from first interaction is extremely important. Online or in-person, today’s buyer is more likely to turn to partners, peer-to-peer referrals, brand connoisseurs, and industry leaders when considering various product offerings.
In fact, B2B buyers are typically 57% of the way to a buying decision before actively engaging with sales. This underscores the importance for marketing to pave the path at every step of the journey for consumers to learn about and engage with your brand.
When carried out at a strategic level, partnership marketing can be expansive and deliver its full potential. More so, when companies focus on delivering a world-class experience they reap the benefits of building long-term relationships, such as better engagement amongst partners, total transparency and visibility, as well as increased engagement.
And by automating the tedious tasks that go along with creating long-lasting relationships – like form submissions, lead tracking, and payments – your marketing team can start scaling a channel that really drives long-term growth.
How Can a Partner Marketing Solution Help My Brand?
When carried out at a strategic level, partnership marketing can be expansive and deliver its full potential. More so, when companies focus on delivering a world-class experience they reap the benefits of building long-term relationships, such as:
Better engagement amongst partners
Total transparency and visibility
Increased engagement
And by automating the tedious tasks that go along with creating long-lasting relationships – like form submissions, lead tracking, and payments – your marketing team can start scaling a channel that really drives long-term growth.
A partner marketing platform is undoubtedly the fastest way to provide robust programs, fully-automated tools tailored specifically to partner needs while fostering a rewarding partner experience.
Author: Amity Kapadia
Amity Kapadia is Director of Content Marketing at Ambassador, a SaaS referral platform that empowers marketing teams to increase revenue by leveraging the power of word-of-mouth, referrals, and recommendations. Ambassador drives revenue for B2B businesses and consumer brands, including Spotify, SAP, SunPower and HP.… View full profile ›
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