Successful content marketing is often all about demonstrating how your organization can solve a particular set of problems for a specific type of customer. If you think about it, the more niche your business, the easier this should be. That’s because the narrower your audience, the more focused you can be on resolving their problems.
For example, a company specializing in selling spares and accessories to the classic automobile market or a boutique skincare brand catering to people with sensitive skin will have a much better idea of who its customers are than a retailer selling a more generic product like flat-pack furniture. This will allow the auto company or the skincare brand to focus on creating content that resonates with their specific audience.
Birds of a Feather Flock Together
Niche business owners have a much better opportunity to build genuine customer relationships. This helps them build trust and maximize the potential of their network.
Even though their customer base might be thinly spread over large geographic areas (potentially globally), there is a good chance the audience will be part of a tightly-knit online community. While these people may have only a limited opportunity to come together in the real world, the internet, particularly social media, provides an incredible resource for sharing ideas and helping find solutions to problems. Search for any niche interest on a social media site like Facebook, and you’ll be sure to find a significant and highly engaged audience.
Becoming the Expert
Every niche community will have a small group of highly influential individuals widely considered thought leaders in their respective fields. These people, including many niche business owners, lead the conversation and are widely respected in their community for their expertise. While many of these thought-leaders will have a specific business interest in their community, they will typically find more success in sharing engaging content rather than actively selling their products or services. As long as these thought leaders prepare an easily navigable route that takes the community from their thought leadership content to a place where they can buy a product or service, the sales will follow, respecting and appreciating their expertise.
Social Influence
You don’t need to be young and beautiful to become a social media influencer. If your message has value and speaks directly to a niche audience, it has the potential to raise your profile considerably.
Many niche business marketers understand this concept. A quick search on a social channel like YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram will reveal thousands of experts sharing their knowledge.
Using the classic automobile spares and accessories seller as an analogy, they might want to promote content that showcases how owners can service, repair, and refurbish their vehicles. While people will land on the content looking for inspiration or advice, they will often leave after buying a product or service that is highlighted and readily available from a shoppable link.
What is the Best Social Network for Your Business?
There’s a straightforward answer to this question. The best social network for your business is the one most widely used by your target audience. For example, if you’re a B2B marketer, LinkedIn will probably be the best place to hang out socially. Instagram or TikTok might be your best place in a highly visual industry, like fashion or food. If you represent a media company, X (Twitter) or Facebook will probably drive more traffic your way. Remember, just because you favor one social network over the other doesn’t mean your customers share your opinion. Do your research and head over to the place where your community likes to get social.
Podcasting
While video is undoubtedly the preferred medium of this social age, it can be challenging to produce. Recording and editing good-quality video content can be laborious and require careful planning. Many marketers also struggle with the idea of speaking on camera. If you are not quite ready for your close-up, audio podcasts are a great way to reach a niche audience.
Podcasting is incredibly accessible, with many podcast platforms offering free hosting packages and distribution to all the major podcast channels, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon.
While your podcasts will always benefit from a half-decent microphone, a simple smartphone has all the tools you need to take your first step into the world of podcasting.
Podcasts are also great places to collaborate with other thought leaders and influencers. They can be quickly recorded using online meeting tools like Zoom or Teams.
Blogging
A well-written, regularly updated blog is the foundation of your content marketing and SEO strategy. A good blog isn’t just a collection of words and pictures. The best blog posts always strive to offer useful, engaging and relevant content. Every piece of content you produce to promote your business (including video and audio) can be incorporated into your blogging strategy. Your blog is also a great place to capture leads by highlighting the opportunity to subscribe to an email newsletter or follow your business on social media.
Email Marketing
While blogging, podcasting, and social media marketing provide niche businesses with an excellent opportunity to be discovered and raise their profile in a community, email marketing is the channel where those relationships are solidified. Unlike those other channels, where selling is often more subtle, email is 100% a place where you can unapologetically promote your products or services. That’s because your email subscribers already trust you and have given you their permission to contact you with commercial messages. Email marketing allows you to directly reach your most engaged audience, making it a powerful tool for driving sales and building customer loyalty.
Content Marketing: The Elephant in the Room
While the aforementioned content marketing strategies are all very accessible to niche business owners, creating all that helpful, engaging and relevant content can be challenging. This problem is elevated when you consider that content marketing success is enhanced when delivered with a steady cadence across all channels. Despite possessing all the relevant expertise and readily available access to a passionate audience, many marketers will need help to meet this constant demand for fresh content.
This is when working with an agency partner like emfluence pays dividends. Our skilled content marketing experts can distil your thought leadership into actionable content and ensure it reaches the right people at the right time.
Learn More
To learn more about how emfluence can help your niche business better target its community and raise its profile as a trusted thought leader, contact us today at expert@emfluence.com.
