7  Low-Cost Content Marketing Tactics To Boost Your Business

by | May 12, 2022 | Marketing Techniques | 0 comments

Yet despite the cost difference, both campaigns managed to convert a very large customer base. In fact, the Pikachu teaser teased out over 22 million views in just 3 days! 

Amazing isn’t it? This proves that to be effective, marketing campaigns don’t really need to be pricey. You can run a really effective promotion campaign on a shoestring budget and still create massive waves in your target group. 

In this post, we’ll discuss what steps you can implement to run budget-friendly marketing campaigns to boost your business. 

  1. Localize your SEO to supercharge search 

SEO is integral to the success of any content marketing campaign. But SEO will be useful, only when you use it smartly, to target the right customers. Localization of SEO can help you gain visibility amongst your primary target customers. Some of the ways you can localize SEO are: 

  • Use words in the local language, in your content. Work with local linguists to ensure quality translations. This will also facilitate traffic from voice search. 
  • Study the trends, local news and conversations taking place in your target market and create content mindfully. 
  • Add breadcrumbs to your website.
  • Build a database of source language related keywords. 
  • Track keyword analytics to see which ones get the most hits and which ones don’t. Use related keywords to help drive more traffic to your site. 
  • Create links that take the prospect to the geographically correct landing pages. 
  • Make on-site search easier for users. 
  • Optimize your campaigns for different search engines (not all countries support Google). 
  • Write meta data for every content you create. You can use the free Meta Tag Analyzer tool to check the quality of your meta data. 

Tools like RankWatch can allow you to implement all of the above tips with ease. Their SEO stack boasts of impressive features from keyword research to backlink analysis to competitor site audit. Find smart ways to best your competitors in the SEO game with RankWatch. 

  1. Re-purposing content to increase reach through multi-channel distribution

One of the biggest challenges that prevent businesses from running successful campaigns, is the lack of quality content to post. Some brands resort to cross-posting the same message across social media channels when they don’t have much to post. 

This is fine – if it happens occasionally. But do it too often and your audience who follow you on all or most of these channels may find you too boring. They may even stop following your account. 

One way to avoid this problem is to repurpose your old posts in fresh ways. Think old wine in a new bottle. To repurpose content, you can: 

  • Turn videos into blog posts. 
  • Use an infographic maker to transform your blog into an infographic. 
  • Change the infographics into multiple social media posts.
  • Combine social media posts to form an article, product description or website copy. 
  • Transform articles into podcasts with transcripts.  
  • Bring your case studies together to create a whitepaper.  
  • Turn infographics into static images or PPT slides. 
  • Convert your podcasts into blogposts. 
  • Combine social media posts to build the framework for a pillar post. 

…etc. 

Content creation and repurposing still requires some work and having a solid content creation tool and planning tool to assist can make all the difference. I use Narrato Workspace to organize my content work and collaborate with other content creators, and it saves me a ton of time. Narrato replaces Google Drive/Dropbox, Google Docs and Sheets, Trello/Notion, Grammarly and several other content tools I was heavily reliant on. The best part – it’s Free! 

  1. Hyper-targeted landing pages 

Your landing pages are the very first point of contact between your brands and your prospective customers. How you represent yourself to your prospects can determine the type of relationship you’ll have with them. 

Did you know that having around 10-12 landing pages – where each is customized to a specific prospect persona – can increase your leads by 55%? This is what Hubspot found in a study. They also learned that a personalized CTA on a landing page can have a 202% higher conversion rate compared to a generic CTA. Suffice to say that hyper-targeted landing pages can be hugely beneficial to your affiliate marketing campaigns. 

A few ways to create targeted landing pages are: 

  • Use geographically-tagged keywords (for example, instead of “Grade 10 math textbooks”, use “Grade 10 math textbooks in New York” or “New York Grade 10 math”.) 
  • Write meta that is localized to both the geography and the product listing. 
  • Avoid generic headlines – let people know what the page is about through your headers. 
  • When creating forms for your landing page, customize them to the purpose of the landing page (for example, a welcome landing page should connect the person’s name & email ID to initiate further conversation. But, a landing page designed to encourage product trial, can use forms that try to gather information about the prospect’s pain points and needs.) 
  • Use visual elements that the visitor can connect to and is preferably either from their culture or points to an aspirational lifestyle. 
  • Include trust elements on your page, such as your LinkedIn handle, any internet security badges, prizes won by your company etc.
  • Use the right marketing attribution models to analyze what drives success to each landing page and course correct. 

A tool like Landingi can be one of the options you can consider to implement the above steps. With their expansive template database and rich features, you’ll be able to create stellar landing pages that can make your competitors absolutely forgettable. 

  1. Build content pipelines that improve audience experience 

(Source: Influencer Marketing Hub Review) 

Content pipelines are essential to help you create the right content at the right time. Plus, it allows you to create content your prospects actually want to see, ensuring your work yields generous results. 

Some ways to develop robust content pipelines are: 

  • Define and create your ideal customer avatar. Use it to describe their strengths, pain points and needs.
  • Identify the type of content your customer avatar would like to consume. What medium would they like (written, video or audio)? Which platforms are they most-likely to peruse for content? How often will then consume what you post? 
  • Create content on topics that can be implemented by the prospects and which can add true value to their life. 
  • Focus on showing how your product/service can make their life better. 
  • Automate your social media posting to ensure your content is published at a time when most of your target audience is online. 

Social Oomph is one tool that can give you the flexibility and features you need to easily and quickly run your content pipelines. Schedule your posts in bulk for publishing on diverse platforms. Auto-destruction of old posts keeps your feed fresh, engaging audiences every time. 

  1. Up your hashtag game on social media 

Hashtags have become such an integral part of our marketing campaigns on social media. But just using the hashtag doesn’t help. For your tags to be really effective in drawing prospects to your post, you need to use specific tags for the relevant posts. That way, the chances of your post being found by the right person are high. Take the tag #innovation for example. It is one of the most popular tags for posts for LinkedIn B2B sales posts. 

Similarly, brand marketers can use a few other ways to get their hashtags right: 

  • Create hashtags for specific platforms, instead of being generic. For example, while #giveaway is very effective for photographs across channels, #instagiveaway packs a punch if you’re running a contest specifically on Instagram.  
  • Add locations into the hashtags, for example, #newyorkfashion, #parisbookshop to drive local searches to your post.
  • Be acquainted with channel policies before using hashtags. For example, using #pushups or #newyearsday in more than one post in a 24-hours time span on Instagram, can get you shadowbanned. 
  • Always use a branded hashtag to encourage users to engage with you. Branded hashtags typically have either the company name in the tag or a tag line or event that the company has created. For example, #OreoHorrorStories by Oreo, #ShareACoke by Coca-Cola and #WorthSaying by L’Oréal Paris. 
  • Include your primary keyword or product description in the hashtag, to SEO optimize it. For example, if you sell beeswax candles, you can use #yellowbeeswaxcandle or #couplebeeswaxcandles etc. They are more-likely to get picked up in search results.

When using hashtags, make sure you track the conversation around the tags you want to use. You don’t want to do what DiGiorno Pizza did and use a hashtag that is not only completely irrelevant to your brand, but also deals with a sensitive subject. It can make you look frivolous. 

A tool like Hashtracking can be very helpful here, since it allows you to find relevant hashtags to your business and also track the conversation people are having when using this tag. 

  1. Send emailers that are customized to the prospect’s engagement stage 

Emails are super powerful. For example, did you know that cart abandonment emails have on average an open rate of 42.17%? This can significantly increase your chances of converting prospects. But it isn’t just cart abandonment that emails can help with. They can allow you to connect with your prospects at various levels of the sales cycle and customize your messaging to encourage those at different stages to complete the action you desire. This could be something as simple as subscribing to your YouTube channel or actually buying your product. 

So, how do you ace the art of email marketing? Well, you can implement a few of these tips mentioned here: 

  • Use email templates that have colours which stimulate sales. Studies show that gold and purple are great to market luxury products, while dark green and baby blue are great for products that signify health and stability. Black can work great to add mystique to your marketing email, while red can be used to signify urgency. 
  • Include urgency and scarcity in your subject line. For example, use these – “Offer valid only till December 31st” or “Stocks dwindling – get yours fast” or “This edition will not be printed again”. This will encourage people to purchase your products for fear of missing out. 
  • Share numbers in your subject line to increase the authenticity of your claims. For example, “Our keyword analytics tool helped our client reduce expenses by 15%.” 
  • Use the recipient’s name in the subject line, such as “John, here’s an offer you won’t find elsewhere”. 
  • Include your CTAs above the fold, before the body of your email. 
  • Surround your CTA button with whitespace so it’s the element that drags the readers’ eyes. 
  • Don’t send every emailer you write, to every contact in your database. Use your CRM tool to segment your recipients based on their customer purchase stage and send only relevant communication. 

A tool like Benchmark Email can really help you mindfully plan and implement your email marketing campaigns. It’s numerous customizable templates and robust email marketing features will give you the tools you need to ensure your emailers reach the right person and facilitate the intended response. 

  1. Drive your content campaigns around seasonal holidays 

One of the most important ways to boost your business with content, is to customize it for seasons. Holidays, festivals, special occasions and notable days in history can all be used to promote different product categories all year round. 

A few simple and cost effective ways to do season content marketing are –

  • Mark all the holidays, special occasions and important historical/political days of the year, in advance. 
  • Study about the cultural and in-practice trends around the season, so you make your campaign factually accurate. 
  • Be inclusive in your seasonal marketing. Show how your products or services are for everyone. 
  • Use the right hashtags – for example, #blackfridaysale, #christmasgiftlist #valentinesdaytreat and so on. 
  • Identify less-know facts about the day (as celebrated in the past) and run daily campaigns. For example, if the day was celebrated as Sweater Day in your city 50 years ago, consider using #[cityname]sweaterday to promote your woolen goods store on that day. 
  • Start creating blogposts that showcase how your products can be used for the upcoming holiday. For example, telling people how they can repurpose their old clothes to stitch Halloween costumes, using the knitting kits you sell. 
  • Create content on how to responsibly recycle holiday packaging and other materials after the holiday. 

You should always keep track of the performance of your campaigns leading up to the holiday season, so you can tweak it to increase visibility and positive sentiment. Here, tools like Qunitly and Hotjar can help. 

With Quintly, you’ll be able to track the performance and sentiment around your social media posts. And with Hotjar, you will get heatmaps that will help you analyze how engaged site visitors were when they followed your social media posts onto your website. You can identify interest drop-off points and modify your content, to keep visitors hooked until they reach the end of the page. 

Wrapping up 

Content marketing can be inexpensive and easy to do. By trying out the tips i’ve provided here, you’ll see that your marketing campaigns are not only super effective but very pocket-friendly too. So, go ahead and give these a try today. Let me know how you fare. 

About the author: Nisha Prakash is a senior content writer who specializes in content marketing, copywriting, content management and social media management. She loves to read books, visit museums and watch documentaries in her free time. You can find Nisha’s bookstagram account @talesandtexts.