Content Marketing Strategies
Content marketing is the key to building strong and long-lasting customer relationships and content creation is the biggest challenge businesses have to face. Ideally content should be a mix of what brands want to say and what buyers want to hear. But not many business owners understand this notion, and want their content to completely promotional. This is one of the biggest mistakes of content marketing, since such content is not accepted by anyone and everyone.
Studies show that more and more businesses are investing in content marketing and are reaping the benefits. According to Content Marketing Institute, 70 percent of B2B companies are engaged in creating more content than they did in the past year and B2B marketers spend 28 percent of their total budget for content marketing. Even though businesses are aggressive about their content marketing strategies, the results are not satisfactory. 79 percent of marketing leads never get converted into sales. What is the reason for such disparity?
Here are 5 reasons why your content marketing strategies are failing to produce the expected results:
Producing the Wrong Type of Content
To make your content marketing campaigns successful, you need to have an idea about the type of content that your audience is interested in. Most of the businesses invest their time creating slide presentations, product brochures, videos, infographics, etc. but in reality that type of content that attracts attention are white papers, videos, analyst reports, webcasts, etc.
You Don’t Have Specific Goals and Specific Target Market
The key for successful content marketing is the ability to narrow down your target audience and create content to cater to their specific needs. For instance, if you offer physical fitness related services, you should target people looking for fitness solutions rather than people looking for baking recipes.
Secondly, you need to determine the purpose of your content marketing campaign. Do you just want to educate your audience about fitness or want them to join your fitness studio? Make sure your goals are realistic, achievable and measurable.
Making Content Too Promotional
Ann Handle, one of the earliest leaders in content marketing said, for successful content marketing you need to take your brand out of the story and make your customers the hero of your stories. In simple words, you should create content that is focused on educating the audience and helping in problem solving, rather than talking about yourself throughout. You should be able to show how your audience can benefit from your products or services, rather than endorsing them directly.
You Fail to Promote Your Content
What good will a great piece of content do, if people don’t come to know about it. Just posting a blog and sharing it on Facebook is not enough. There is a lot of content out there already and you have to compete against them, so it is necessary that you have a well thought out plan to promote your content across various channels.
Lack of Consistency
If you are looking for long-term sustainable results, you have to be consistent with your content marketing strategies. You cannot expect results overnight, you have to be committed. Determine how frequently your audience wants to listen from you and schedule your routine likewise. Keep posting valuable content and you surely will be gaining the benefit soon.
To sum it up, if you want content to work for you, drive leads and increase sales, you should be focused on creating non-promotional and helpful content. Narrow down your audience and post content regularly. It’s only when the audience realities that you offer value to them that you will start reaping the benefits.
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