4 Tips for Creating Content on a Budget

The idea that content plays an important role in digital marketing success has been engrained in your brain over the past decade.

You can’t discuss marketing in any form or fashion without highlighting the important role that content plays. But for smaller brands who don’t have a ton of room in their budgets, the pressure to create quality content can sometimes feel overwhelming.

If you fall into this category, it’s time to stop wallowing in despair. There are plenty of cost-effective ways to create and publish stellar content that represents your brand well.

Let’s check out a few of the top tips:

1. Bake it Into Job Roles

If you’re trying to outsource every piece of content, things can get pretty expensive. Larger companies may have no problem doing this, but a couple thousand dollars a month could put you in the hole. One solution is to bring your content creation in-house and actually ask your employees (and yourself) to produce one piece of content per week/month/etc.

If you have five people in sales and marketing, this gives you at least five pieces of content per week. And, theoretically, you don’t have to pay for the content. You’re already providing their salaries and they’re simply writing on company time.

2. Encourage Guest Blogging

Once you get your blog up and running, you may find that people will email you to ask about guest blogging opportunities. They’re looking for exposure, backlinks, or something similar, and will provide you free content in return for these things. American Express is an example of a company that uses guest blogging to handle the majority of its onsite content marketing needs.

As Single Grain’s Eric Siu explains, “Open Forum is a collaborative website, on which American Express invites guest authors from a variety of sectors to share their business knowledge and wisdom.  The result is a content-rich mega-site that’s popular with the search engines – all created without American Express needing to shell out cash to content contributors.”

3. Repurpose Existing Content

If you have a lot of content published under your brand’s name already, you may be able to extract more value from existing blog posts, articles, and even videos by repurposing these individual pieces.

Content repurposing or recycling has become really popular. As the name suggests, it involves taking a previous piece of content and using it to create a new piece of content that’s unique, yet related. For example, you may choose to turn a webinar into a video tutorial, or internal data into a case study. Other options include turning a listicle into a series of in-depth articles or a PowerPoint presentation into a Slidedeck. Feel free to get creative!

4. Analyze Existing Studies

Don’t have enough money to conduct your own research or pay for someone to come in and collect data on a particular topic? A cheaper option is to access existing research studies and analyze them. Create a report that looks at a particular data point and attempts to explain what’s happening behind the scenes. This is an awesome way to latch on to a hot topic.

Content Doesn’t Have to be Expensive

It’s a total myth that content has to be costly. While there are certainly ways to spend thousands of dollars on content, there are also a variety of cost-effective options for smaller brands on tight budgets. As you move forward and look for ways to grow your brand through the power of content, utilize some of the money-saving tips referenced in this article. You’ll get the best of both worlds – good content without the hefty price tag.