Why Your Content Marketing Never Works Out the Way You Planned

According to this research, 9 out of 10 organizations utilize content marketing and almost 80% of marketers believe that producing custom-branded contents will be  even more important this year. 

So if you’ve been doing content marketing last year to little or no avail, find out whether you’re guilty of committing the 7 marketing blunders below.

1.       You’re doing a shotgun approach. Before you even begin your content marketing campaign, you have to sit down and set your goals. Know why you are creating the content. Determine what you want to accomplish within a given amount of time.

Without goals, there’s no way to know whether your campaign is successful or not. 

2.       You’re inconsistent when it comes to producing contents. One of the main purposes of content marketing is to provide your audience useful and insightful articles on a regular basis so that you’ll be established as the go-to resource when it comes to their content or information needs. 

Imagine if after months of providing regular resource to your readers you suddenly went off the radar or start to become inconsistent. You’ll be losing the momentum. Even worse, you’ll frustrate loyal readers who keep coming back for your content and eventually lose their interest.  

3.       You’re too impersonal. Your content marketing materials is a way to give something to your customers. It’s a way to make people trust your brand. But if you’re too impersonal in your approach or too corporate-y people will have a hard time connecting with you. Your target audience wants to connect not just with your brand or your company, but with the people running behind them, too.

People want to talk with people and do business with people. It’s time to put a human face on your brand and take on a more personal approach.

4.       You’re focusing on YOU! You want your audience to get the message that you are the best company out there. Well, newsflash! Every one of your competitors claims the exact same thing. Stop talking about yourself and focus on providing your audience with the information and knowledge that they need. That’s what content marketing is for, informing and educating your audience. 

 Again, you’ll be able to build trust this way and once you get the trust of your audience, it will be easy to sell them anything. Of course, you’re selling pitch should be timely. Your sales process should begin with getting a lead, building a relationship with that lead (through content marketing) before you start selling.

5.       You’re forgetting your calls-to-action. Just because we mention that content marketing should be about informing and educating doesn’t mean that you forget your call-to-action. Every content marketing material that you produce should provide access to the next step of the sales process in the most natural way. That is, tell connected stories so that your call-to-action looks natural.

 If you’re content is in the last stage of the sales process, then you can be bold with your call-to-action. Something like a “Let A Sales Rep Call Me” button would be totally acceptable at this stage. 

Over to you..

Are you using content marketing in your business? Is it effective? If not, what do you think are the things that you are doing wrong? Please share your thoughts and comments below.