Why Small Businesses Don’t Pursue Content Marketing

The ben­e­fits of con­tent mar­ket­ing are well-estab­lished. If any­thing, they have only been vin­di­cat­ed and solid­i­fied in recent years, with more and more mar­ket­ing firms dou­bling down on con­tent and study after study con­firm­ing con­tent marketing’s mettle.

Those benefits—increased brand vis­i­bil­i­ty and author­i­ty, more con­sumer trust, qual­i­fied leads, thought leadership—would seem like no-brain­ers for small busi­ness own­ers, but actu­al­ly, some small com­pa­nies remain resis­tant to con­tent mar­ket­ing. There are a few rea­sons why.

Reasons Against Content Marketing

A Lack of Strategy

One rea­son why small busi­ness own­ers shy away from mak­ing a con­tent invest­ment is that they just aren’t sure what they want to do with it—draw traf­fic to their web­site? Increase their brand pres­tige? Edu­cate leads? Remar­ket to pre­vi­ous cus­tomers? To make con­tent mar­ket­ing work, you need to know what you’re try­ing to accom­plish, some­thing you can deter­mine through talk­ing over the pos­si­bil­i­ties with a firm like Gram­mar Chic.

A Lack of Time

Some small busi­ness own­ers, know­ing full well that con­tent mar­ket­ing is an ongo­ing process, are wor­ried about time com­mit­ments. That’s not real­ly an argu­ment against con­tent mar­ket­ing, though; rather, it’s an argu­ment for bring­ing in a con­tent devel­op­ment team. This will require a bit of a time com­mit­ment on the front end, as you work to get the con­tent devel­op­ers up to speed on your brand, but over time it can real­ly be an effi­cient way to work.

Brand Concerns

If your com­pa­ny is a funer­al home, an account­ing office, or an auto­mo­tive F&I provider, you might think that what you do just isn’t sexy enough for con­tent marketing—but actu­al­ly, all brands can ben­e­fit from cul­ti­vat­ing trust and dis­play­ing thought lead­er­ship, and all com­pa­nies can find a con­tent angle that works for them.

Industry Red Tape

High­ly reg­u­lat­ed indus­tries, such as finan­cial plan­ning firms and law prac­tices, will impose some rules about what you can and can­not say in con­tent mar­ket­ing. This can be frus­trat­ing, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to write con­tent that is valu­able to your consumers.

Lack of Talent

You may not be a writer, plain and simple—and that’s okay! There are oth­er ways for you to cre­ate con­tent. Plus, you can always out­source the writ­ing to a firm like Gram­mar Chic, where writ­ing is what we do all day, every day.

Insufficient Data

Estab­lish­ing a con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy will give you a data-backed base­line which you can then use to prove ROI. For your first month or two, you won’t have that kind of data, but real­ly the only way to get it is to start putting up some content.

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