t's no secret that Content Marketing is making a splash. Its value is becoming undeniable and many old-school marketers, along with business leaders, are finding themselves needing to sit up and pay attention. Great content, when promoted properly, is an incredibly powerful marketing tool.
As inbound marketers, we know how incredibly effective content marketing can be. We also know how easy it is for a host of misconceptions to rise as a new trend, concept or idea emerges. And content marketing is no different - since its meteoric rise in popularity, it has been common to find people believing completely erroneous facts and statements about it.
For business owners and digital marketers, it’s imperative to integrate this modern content marketing mix into your strategy and place an even bigger emphasis on crafting personal, meaningful content that is consistent across all marketing channels and delivers value to your prospects, leads and customers, while making meaningful connections.
Taking full advantage of content marketing means starting off on the right foot when it comes to knowing what it is, and what it isn't. We've compiled a list of common mistakes of content marketing, and shone a little light in these areas to ensure you get the most out of your content marketing strategy.
Your Content Marketing Is Failing Because…
You Have No Strategy, Limited Budget
We’ve all been there. A blog post is due tomorrow. Who’s writing it? What should we write about? Which campaign are we writing for? Yikes!!!
It's easy to get caught up in generating a constant stream of content that inspires an action – often with a limited budget and resourcing at your disposal. One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is not planning in advance and trying to produce content on the fly. It's a recipe for disaster.
Fix: Creating a well-defined content marketing plan and schedule – aligned with the business objectives - will bring an end to the pandemonium of producing on-demand content and allow you to be more effective across several tactics and social channels. The result? Feeling in control of your content marketing efforts that will allow you to justify more resources or securing that budget increase you deserve.
It Adds No Value
Blogging 3 times a week is great - but how many of your blog posts actually resonate with your audience or directly address their pain points and challenges? A big content marketing faux pas today is being too bogged down with the quantity of content you produce and not paying attention to quality.
Fix: Your content impacts the way your prospects and customers find, think, and feel about your brand. Creative, innovative and value-added content combined with SEO and social media best practices is a killer combination that makes your business easy to find and engaging for your target audience. Start off by drawing up comprehensive buyer persona profiles - outlining what their challenges are, what they value, where they look for answers and what friction points or objections you need to overcome in order to win their trust. Use these profiles to inform every piece of content you plan to produce. Rather opt for less frequent publication and better quality than the other way around.
You Are Failing To Promote Content More Than Once
What’s the secret ingredient to building a sales-ready following with your blog? Hint: it’s not your content! It’s your ability to attract more readers and convert them into leads with each piece of quality content. Statistics show that 75% of marketers use a piece of content ONLY once. No wonder content marketers are missing the mark on getting their message heard.
Fix: It’s simple really: repurpose content to breathe new life into topics that resonate with your audience. Take a blog post and turn it into a visual representation like a SlideShare or an infographic. Another way is to re-promote or redistribute your content in emails, share on social media or publish on forums and communities. Or pull out the various points in a post and share it in different ways at different times to reach different audiences. Not only do you save time but a new spin on existing content increases your chances of reaching a new audience while giving your SEO efforts a little boost.
You Are Giving Up Too Soon
The biggest reason content marketing fails is tat it's either inconsistent or it stops. Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint! If you are a looking for an instant fix or overnight returns, then content marketing isn’t going to win the race. It takes time and perseverance to develop into a scalable, powerful platform that delivers better results over the long-term than those of any short-term strategy.
Fix: Successful inbound campaigns rely on building relationships with regular content generation and curation, from eBooks and white papers to weekly blog posts and community engagement. Be prepared to plan, repurpose and share exciting content that resonates with your audience. And always make time to review your key metrics and revise your strategy if you’re not getting the results you want!
You aren't able to accurately measure the impact
This is a big misconception, one that often deters c-suite executives from embracing content marketing with enthusiasm, and which couldn't be further from the truth. Content marketing can be measured using a wide variety of tools, and in variables ranging from your content's broad scale impact right down to the nitty gritty of how people are interacting with it. Knowing which metrics to measure, and being able to show a defined ROI makes all the difference when driving for budget injections and c-suite buy-ins for your content marketing strategy.
Fix: Take the time to dig deep and trawl about the web until you find the right tools to measure your content marketing. Trust us, there's loads of them. Alternatively you could consider using an inbound marketing software platform like Hubspot to create and publish your content. These platforms often come with comprehensive tools to measure your marketing efforts.
You're creating content just for search engines
While your content can certainly boost your SEO, that should never be its ultimate purpose. Content can be useful in improving your organic position in search engines, but far too many people fall into the trap of keyword stuffing to try get one over on Google. While this may work temporarily, the reality is that Google is looking out for instances of keyword misuse, and the penalties for being caught could harm your site's ranking.
Fix: The role of your content should always be, first and foremost, to provide value to your audience. That said, it is possible to create valuable content that's search-engine friendly. Review your content after creation and keep an eye open for opportunities to optimise it for SEO while always focusing on providing value first.
You believe content marketing doesn't work for B2B
You don't need to be a bouncy, fun-loving consumer-focused brand to reap the rewards of content marketing. Plenty of B2B's have discovered for themselves just how powerful content marketing can be in boosting their presence online.
Fix: Content marketing is about reaching people, whether or not it's the consumer on the street or the IT buyer in a corporate company. It doesn't matter what type of business you are; you're trying to reach someone - let go of preconceived notions and let content marketing take you that much closer.
