Competing against larger, more well-known brands is a difficult hurdle for many small businesses to overcome. And while every industry has its own David and Goliath, there’s no reason why the smaller underdogs can’t have their own share of the sales pie.

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Having the proper tools and knowing how to use them properly can have an impact on how a small business competes and sometimes surpass its bigger competitors.

Creating a thoughtful content marketing strategy is one of the ways that small business owners can surpass their own Goliaths.

Here are 5 ways that will get you started.

1. Know What Your Audience Wants

This may seem like a mystery to some, but if you have access to your website’s analytics or you check the analytics on your social media accounts, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, this can be a goldmine in helping to create content that is helpful to your audience. This also means that you’re not spinning your wheels and posting content that is totally off the mark.

In fact, data, whether we like it or not, can drive positive change to your business and in turn, support its growth.

Analytics is particularly important for e-commerce businesses as it can measure user behavior (it can, for example, show you the product pages on your site that a user goes to most frequently). It can also help with inventory management and taking the guesswork out of pricing.

Google Analytics is the most popular — and free — tool that you can use to monitor such things and to determine users’ intent.

If you don’t how to install it, here is a useful guide from Blog Tyrant.

If you have a Facebook page, you might also want to add a Facebook pixel to your website. The pixel is a piece of code that Facebook provides to give you insight into your Facebook audience and how they interact with your website. It is also a good estimator of your website traffic.

To learn how to install the pixel on your website, visit Facebook.

2. Create Content with a Problem in Mind

Don’t create content willy-nilly. Think about a problem that your customers frequently experience and why they would come to you to solve it.

The reason that most people go to Google is that they are looking for solutions to something that they know very little about. That’s why you need to be several steps ahead of the game and why content created on a regular basis is so important.

If you’re at a loss to come up with appropriate topics for blog posts or any other type of content, consider going to Answer the Public for help.

Addressing the pain points of your customers/audience and then delivering the appropriate solutions will be a gamechanger for your business. But remember, you need to do this on a regular basis.

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3. Promote Your Work

There’s no point in creating content if you don’t promote it the right way. In addition to sharing content on your social media channels, it’s important that what you create is properly optimized for SEO.

Local SEO is important if most of your customer base is in your local area. Creating a Google My Business page is just one way to attract a new audience.

But it doesn’t end there. The promotion of your content should also be integrated into your email marketing. Try creating a free product first to get your customers interested in your brand. Then, have several other products in the works that you can sell to them later.

4. Make it Easy to Share Your Content

There’s no point in putting content on your website if it’s not shareable. Remember to add social media buttons either at the beginning or end of each post.

If you have a WordPress site, the buttons can be added with a couple of different plugins.

Check out Neil Patel’s top sharing plugins.

5. Experiment with Different Ways of Creating Content

There’s more to creating content than publishing blog posts.

Are you on LinkedIn? And if so, do you have a company page?

A business page can establish the voice of your business and create a solid brand presence for you on this popular social media platform.

You should get into the habit of regularly posting content.

LinkedIn itself recommends posting once a day, but I recommend starting out about three times a week to be consistent and in order to see some kind of additional engagement on your page.

If you’re not shy about getting in front of the camera, why not do a Facebook or Instagram live video or even record a video with useful content and post later?

Have you tried any of the above content marketing strategies? Let me know in the comments below.