Small Business Ideas

Marketing Ideas for Business

Sorry, I’m a sucker for lists. Especially lists that you can print out and tape up to your wall — things that inspire you to do more with the resources you have. Here’s a list of 31 ideas and thoughts, which I believe will make an immediate impact on your content marketing, even if you only execute a few.

1. Find one or multiple partners and launch a content marketing project together.
2. Consider that less content could mean more impact.
3. Find at least three thought leaders in your organization and build them into your content plan.
4. Define your most valuable audience and consider a targeted print publication.
5. Develop a series of stories for your industry, on an aspect that has never been covered before.
6. Make sure that every content landing page you develop this year has only one call to action.
7. Stop one content initiative this year.
8. Start working on a book for your business. Yes, a real, printed book.
9. Update your social media influencer list before the end of the year.
10. Compile a substantial piece of influencer content (i.e., an eBook of influencer insights).
11. Get at least five employees who are not part of marketing involved in your weekly content plan.
12. Sit down with every salesperson and ask them what their customers’ biggest pain points are.
13. Develop a list of the top 100 questions coming from your customer base.
14. Commission a piece of art from a local artist to use in your next content piece.
15. Target one traditional marketing initiative that can be enhanced with content marketing.
16. Develop a content marketing metrics plan for your CEO or supervisor. It should include only those metrics that will make the case for company business objectives.
17. Stop doing the same old press releases, and present them as engaging stories.
18. Find a way to work with the leading trade magazine in your niche on a joint content effort.
19. Commission a piece of research that is important to your customers.
20. Commit to smarter usage of images in your content.
21. Do an audit of all your blog posts and determine which types of titles lead to the right reader behaviors.
22. If you have the budget, start identifying media companies in your industry that may be ripe for acquisition.
23. Make sure your content is easy to read on both smartphones and tablets.
24. Set up an editorial leader in each of your silos and plan to meet at least once per week.
25. Develop a customer event that doesn’t talk about your projects, but rather educates them on where the industry is going.
26. Create a piece of content this year that would be completely unexpected and see what happens.
27. Send a videographer and journalist to the next industry event and cover it.
28. Whatever you do this year, make sure you are telling a different story than everyone else in your industry — not just the same story told incrementally better.

For more ideas, check out Joe Pulizzi’s third book, Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less. Marketo is pleased to feature on our Sales and Marketing Book Club for the month of November — follow the link to read a sample chapter.