Incorporating content marketing into your business advertising arsenal

Content marketing - defined by Newsday as "a medium that involves providing original content to engage your audience and build your brand" - is taking off among small enterprises as a tool to help level the business marketing playing field, the media outlet reports.

"As a small business, I probably have a larger competitor I can't outspend, but I can 'out story-tell' someone else," noted Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Cleveland-based Content Marketing Institute (CMI), as quoted by the news source.

Whether you choose to produce your own content or outsource the job to someone else, it's likely to be a cheaper technique than using paid media, provided it's leveraged effectively.

"Put yourself in the customer's shoes and think about what their issues are, and write a blog article about that," suggests John McHugh, president of web development and online marketing firm Brainstorm Studio, as quoted by the media outlet.

According to a blog by CMI's Carl Friesen, developing desirable content is a three-pronged process. First, convince the targeted demographic that a product or service can be beneficial to them, then consider and defuse counter-arguments and finally present the company's offering as a way to gain the aforementioned benefits.