4 Creative Content Marketing Strategies for Those on a Budget

We get it: Your content marketing budget is a far cry from what you want it to be. We’ve all been there (and some of us remain there!).
It can be tough to compete with the big guys who have tons of money to throw at their content marketing team.
Meanwhile, you’re struggling to make ends meet, build a bigger subscriber or customer base, and generate more sales.
But the truth is, no matter what kind of budget constraints you have, there are ways to effectively market your brand to your target audience and see positive results.
In fact, we have 4 creative marketing strategies people on any size budget can take advantage of to drive more traffic, increase sign-ups, and of course, secure more sales.
So, let’s take a look!

1. Be Responsive

Okay, this may not seem all that “creative,” but being responsive to your audience doesn’t cost a thing and can do wonders for your brand.
Your customers are bound to have questions, comments, and concerns about what you’re selling.
After all, a lot of your content probably directs people down your sales funnel or to your email list.
But the thing is, people want to trust you before they hand over their email addresses, let alone their hard-earned cash.
There are many ways you can keep in touch with those that are engaging with your content and thinking about converting:

• Respond to all blog and social media comments to let people know you’re reading what they’re writing and care about what they have to say
• Have a live chat service on your website
• Browse popular chat forums like Quora and interact with like-minded people

And lastly, have a prominent contact form on your site that people can fill out if their questions aren’t urgent.
You can use a simple contact form builder like WPForms if you have a WordPress website.

Or, you can use an email service provider, such as MailChimp, to create contact forms and place them on your site for people to use.

If you make an effort to connect with those are engaging with your content, you’ll build deeper, longer lasting connections and make your customers happy enough to spend their money on what you’re selling.

2. Repurpose Old Content

Investing time in publishing fresh new content on a regular basis is tough for many marketers. In fact, 51% of marketers claim they lack time to publish the content they know their website needs.
Rather than outsource content creation (and have to dip into your content marketing budget), try saving time by repurposing old, but super popular, content in new ways to drive more interest.
To find out which content is popular enough on your website to repurpose into something new and refreshing, check out MonsterInsights, an easy to use Google Analytics plugin.
All you have to do is go to Insights > Reports and click on the Overview report to see which posts and pages on your website are the most popular.

If you don’t have Monster Insights, you can always check your Google Analytics account under Behavior > Site Content > All Pages to see which of your webpages are the most popular.

Once you determine what content your target audience loves the most, it’s time to think of creative ways to turn it into different content that your readers will love:
Convert old blog posts into handy checklists, guides, or downloadable PDFs

• Turn a popular webinar into evergreen video content
• Update old posts with new information and re-publish them
• Gather authoritative advice and create an eBook
• Build an infographic from a popular blog post
• Share a compilation of your most popular posts in a newsletter
• Break long-form content into smaller, more actionable posts
• Create an email series from a favorite article
• Take popular stats from your content and Tweet them to engage followers
• Republish old posts on platforms such as Medium, Reddit, or Social Media Today

Great content helps to drive more traffic to your website, improve your brand, and encourage more people to convert. And repurposing old content saves you money too.
In the end, it’s a win-win situation.

3. Create a Curated Resource List

People love lists. They’re easy to scan, come with visually appealing content, offer a lot of value to those reading them, and are easy to share.
If you want an easy way to tap into people’s love of listicles, try creating a curated resource list.
All you have to do is gather relevant information from around the web and list it on your blog post, linking back to the original post so people can learn more if they want to.
Here are some ideas you can use for inspiration:

• Top influencers to follow on social media (including popular platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram)
• The most startling statistics about your industry or field
• The best articles from around the web related to a topic your readers are interested in
• A news round-up of the latest happenings in your industry

And that’s just the beginning.

4. Optimize Your Site for Speed

If you want to make your content marketing strategies work for you, you’ll have to invest some time and effort into optimizing your site for speed and performance.
After all, driving traffic to your website that takes forever to load is only going to increase your bounce rate. In fact, nearly half of all site visitors will abandon your site if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds or less.
Not to mention, a 1-second delay can mean a 7% reduction in conversions on your site, which can be devastating to your bottom line.
To find out how fast your website loads right now, use the free Google PageSpeed Insights tool:

From there, follow these best practices for optimizing your website:

• Delete unnecessary plugins that may strain your server
• Choose a high-quality hosting provider
• Use a caching solution
• Compress images into smaller files sizes
• Minify your CSS, HTML, and JS files
• Clean up post revisions that take up extra room on your site

Lastly, leverage a CDN and deliver site content to users around the world at blazing fast speeds.
With a content network delivery, servers storing your site’s data are spread out across the globe.
As a result, whenever someone accesses your website, the server geographically nearest the user will deliver your site’s content so your page loading times will never slow down.
Doing this helps increase site speed and performance and gives site visitors an exceptional user experience, which will encourage them to come back time and again.

Final Thoughts

You don’t have to have a lot of money to run a successful content marketing plan. In fact, many creative strategies, including the ones above, require very little (if any at all) money to do.
If you find yourself on a strict budget when it comes to content marketing, try implementing some of these actionable tips and see what happens.
You’re sure to get positive results in the form of traffic increases, user engagement, email subscribers, and more sales. And you won’t have gone broke getting there.