PDF Content Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

As a small or medium-sized business, every task crossed off your to-do list is cause for celebration, including finishing a new digital PDF catalog or brochure. You worked hard to showcase your offerings and demonstrate your business’s value, and now, you’re ready to share your PDF with current and future customers.

But how can you make sure your PDF reaches the right audience?

You can turn to FLIPpages’ PDF content marketing, small business edition.

Understanding small business content strategies with PDF content marketing

To start, what do we mean when we say content marketing?

Put simply, content marketing is a digital marketing strategy that leverages online materials, such as PDFs, blogs, or videos, to promote your brand. Content marketing techniques are extremely popular, with nearly one-third of marketers reporting using content marketing in their strategies.

In particular, PDFs can be a powerful tool for small businesses’ digital marketing. How so?

Firstly, small businesses tend to have limited marketing resources, with data showing that half of small business owners run their DIY marketing efforts entirely on their own. Fortunately, PDFs are an excellent tool for professionally showcasing your brand and offerings within any budget. Because your PDF can be hosted online or distributed via email, you don’t have to worry about printing or mailing costs, which can quickly add up.

And when it comes to that professionalism, we mentioned? Today’s PDFs are versatile. In addition to plain text, you can include images, videos, graphics, and clickable links to create a more comprehensive and engaging document.

Ultimately, with digital PDFs, you can create whatever PDF marketing ideas best suit your business and needs.

Key benefits for small businesses

When optimizing your small business growth strategies, marketing PDFs should be at the top of your list. Why?

Simply put, they offer a range of incredible benefits.

Let’s start with how they can be cost-effective assets in your small business marketing strategy. Simply upload your PDF to a hosting site or platform and distribute it without additional costs. You can send your PDF to your email list, share it on social media, or embed it on your website.

Informative and well-designed PDFs are also exceptional for enhancing customer engagement and retention. Just think: if a customer is drawn to your PDF and spends more time reading it, they’ll learn more about your products, services, and values and might just become loyal, long-term customers.

Lastly, PDFs can be useful tools for improving credibility. Data shows that 43% of internet users take advantage of the internet to research brands and products, proving just how important your brand’s online presence is.

With a professional, interactive PDF, you can boost consumer confidence in your business.

Developing a PDF content marketing strategy

Creating a PDF is one thing—but creating effective PDF marketing strategies that include sharing your PDF to the right audience is a different task altogether. Fortunately, you can follow this step-by-step guide.

1. Identify your target audience and goals

Consider creating customer segments that outline your target audience, what they’re looking for, and what their needs are. Then, use this information to determine the goals of your PDF content marketing small business strategy. For example, are you looking to inform your current customers about a new offering or attract new customers by addressing a common pain point?

2. Choose the right type of PDF content

You can decide what goes into your PDF, keeping your audience and goals in mind. You can include in-depth product analyses, succinct product or service descriptions, or customer testimonials.

And don’t forget—you can also include high-quality media, such as videos or images, to help showcase your offerings and inspire engagement.

3. Plan, create, and publish your content

If you use a digital publishing platform like FLIPpages, you can effortlessly create and launch interactive, engaging PDFs. You can also take advantage of themes and templates to make sure all your digital content aligns with the visual look of your brand.

4. Distribute your PDF

After your PDF is published, you can use the link provided to distribute it to your audience through different channels. For example, you can embed the PDF on your website, distribute it in your monthly email newsletter, or use it to capture leads on a landing page.

Creating effective content marketing with PDF marketing tips

Certain types of content are particularly well-suited for PDFs. For instance, guides, case studies, white papers, e-books, brochures, flyers and product catalogs all excel in PDF format.

Whatever type of content you decide to create, be sure to keep these best practices in mind, especially when it comes to content structure and layout:

Organize content logically
Break up your content with headings, subheadings, and bullet points to clearly share ideas and information
Maintain a consistent visual style (including fonts and colors) to enhance professionalism
Take advantage of interactive elements like hyperlinks, forms, and visuals (such as videos and pictures) to further engage readers and maximize the impact of your PDF

Small business promotion with your PDF content

As mentioned, creating and launching your PDF is just part of the content marketing small business equation. You also need to distribute it effectively.

Here are some ideas:

Create dedicated landing pages on your website to promote your PDF
Offer it as “gated content” in exchange for contact information to help you earn inbound qualified leads
Leverage your social media channels
Distribute it to your regular email list
Make a QR code available (particularly if you have a physical location)

Lastly, don’t forget to measure the performance and impact of your PDF marketing efforts. With FLIPpages, you can track data such as the number of downloads, links clicked, and web traffic origin to see how your PDF is performing and make adjustments for improvement as necessary.

Publish PDFs with ease with FLIPpages

If you’re ready to share digital PDFs as part of your content marketing small business strategy, it’s time to partner with FLIPpages.

FLIPpages lets you quickly and easily create and publish interactive digital PDFs to boost audience engagement and drive sales for your small business.

PDF Content Marketing Strategies That Deliver Results for Small Businesses