How does brand journalism benefit small businesses in comparison to other content marketing methods?
There are a lot of ways to approach digital marketing, both from a strategic and tactical perspective.
After seeing some of those approaches at other agencies, I joined KWSM as a Senior Copywriter in part because of the opportunity to tell compelling stories for clients.
In my experience, brand journalism is powerful because of the value that the right stories can offer prospects and clients, and KWSM has been a leader in brand storytelling for over a decade.
In this blog, we’ll discuss some of the ways brand journalism benefits small businesses in more depth.
Small Business Benefit #1: Efficient Budgets
Small and mid-sized businesses that want to invest in marketing usually come to the table with small to mid-sized budgets. With that in mind, it’s important to make every decision – and every dollar – count.
Putting all of your marketing budget into paid ads, or trying to compete with the established players in your niche, isn’t going to get you the results that you want. If you want to make the most of your marketing budget, it’s better to invest in assets that will continue to pay off over time.
Brand journalism is ideal for creating valuable and “evergreen” content for your target audiences. Assets like explainer videos, blogs, and organic social media posts can increase your credibility and authority in the marketplace.
More importantly, however, the value this content provides will keep bringing traffic to your website and social accounts long after a paid campaign’s budget would have run out.
Further, let’s say you do choose to run paid ads down the road. Your organic content can serve as a proving ground for concepts and engagement. If an organic video post draws a lot of impressions on Instagram, for example, you can use that content as the basis for a paid ad campaign, knowing that it’s more likely to perform well than an untested angle.
Small Business Benefit #2: Consistent Presentation
Another benefit of brand journalism for small businesses is that it creates consistency throughout your marketing.
For example, our agency creates a digital marketing strategy for every new client. We start by establishing an overall brand message and specific messages for each target audience to address their pain points. All of this work happens before we create campaigns. This way, we know that our marketing assets and customer interactions will be consistent on every channel and platform.
Consistent messaging and branding are important for several reasons.
First, committing to the same story across marketing channels and campaigns implies stability within your business. That is a prerequisite for building trust.
Second, reinforcing the same core message and differentiators throughout your marketing will help your brand rise above the noise. Your message will be more likely to stick in your prospects’ minds.
Third, a consistent tone makes your brand more recognizable to audiences over multiple interactions, which is common in a digital marketing sales cycle.
Small Business Benefit #3: Emphasis on Authenticity
Speaking of sales cycles, a large portion of small businesses grow through word-of-mouth and referrals from happy customers. These authentic, one-on-one interactions are impossible to fake and serve as a foundation of trust for a working relationship.
Marketing your business with a brand journalism approach is a great way to retain that authenticity and present your company as “more real” online.
When you provide genuine value in your marketing materials and emphasize your clients’ “happily ever after” with reviews, testimonials, and case studies, prospects who find you will be more likely to engage. And that will be true even if they don’t have any prior knowledge of your business.
“There’s no perfect substitute for being in the same room and shaking someone’s hand when you’re making a purchase or starting a partnership. That said, brand journalism gets awfully close. Marketing campaigns that empathize with your customer and address their pain points create opportunities to establish those connections, especially when they can see how your solution transformed the lives of other buyers for the better.”
Katie Wagner, President & CEO, KWSM: a digital marketing agency
In simple terms, brand journalism benefits small and mid-sized businesses by providing efficient, consistent, and authentic marketing value. And that value pays off over time through organic growth and increased market authority.
Are you interested in finding out how a brand journalism approach to digital marketing can benefit your business? Fill out the form below for the answers you need.
