The key formula for finding content marketing success on a shoestring budget is to implement small moves first, assess your results and use any increase in sales to also increase your marketing budget.

Most business owners who now have a larger budget for creating & marketing content actually started out with a small budget and build it up.  The truth is, content marketing doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated in order to be successful.

Below, we’ll cover three different content strategies that can be generated on a shoestring budget, then built upon.

No Budget:

Build Organic Content

Find experts in your chosen field. Sign up for their webinars, emails, social media pages and any other source you can find then learn from them.  They’ll provide you with all the content you need.

Take this information and turn it into blog or social media posts of your own.  Just be sure to put it in your own words.  Never engage in copyright infringement.  Afterall, the thing that sets you/your brand apart from the rest is YOUR voice. 

A small budget of range $500 to $10,000:

Recruit Authors with Experience

Once you are sure that content marketing is working and you’ve been able to generate a bit of revenue, you can spend that extra revenue to hire experts to generate even more content for you, much more than you’d be able to do on your own. Content related to your product or service can be created with the help of freelance writers as well.   In fact, freelance writers are a great source for content once you’ve increased your budget.  They do a great deal of research and generally don’t charge an arm and a leg for it.

Medium Budget of around $10,000 to $30,000:

Find a Data Research Organization

In the budget range of $10,000 to $30,000, you can now use larger organizations engaged in industry research. Just make sure to choose an organization that researches audiences similar to your customer’s profile. These organizations will have access to data gained directly from customers like yours and will be able to provide data or content that they’ll find compelling.

Another great function of this type of organization is that they have access to the most effective data gathering techniques such as surveys & polls.

You can use their information as a guide but you should also have the option to choose the survey structure and the particular questions used.

In structuring your final content retrieval product, you’ll have the right layout, narrative, and method for presenting your data/content. 

This will enable you to:

• • Create helpful content for the target audience that you would not be able to do by yourself. 
  • Publish research that your audience perceives as valuable.

Very often the most elegant and creative solutions emerge from limitations and restrictions. This is particularly true for content marketers that have a limited budget. This gradual process actually gives you greater insight into the desires, wants and needs of your customers/clients.  This kind of oversight leads to greater personalization and, therefore, greater success. You have to look at your content marketing closely. Ultimately, you end up engaging your customers in a very personal way, a way they remember and that’s when the real magic happens.