Content marketing seems to be the buzz word these days. Brands are continuously looking out for content, and marketers invest time and energy in creating original, exciting, and engaging content to promote their brands. High-quality content is the most critical element in generating leads and promoting brand awareness. According to Hubspot, more than 70% of marketing budgets are usually allocated to content. It is the driving force behind conversions and the determining factor of pushing your audience towards the funnel stages from awareness, consideration, conversion, and ultimately loyalty.
Unfortunately, marketers often get their content marketing wrong despite their good intentions and painstaking efforts. In fact, the majority of marketers seem to stumble at the same obstacles and fall into similar marketing pitfalls.
If you find yourself stumbling at the same hurdles over and over again, and watching your efforts go down the drain, keep on reading. We have put together a list of the most common content marketing pitfalls to avoid to make sure that your content marketing strategy never fails again.
1. Lack Of Content Objectives
The Problem
Many marketers – eager to let their creativity run wild – jump right into content creation and avoid the strategic planning and organization that precedes the exciting stage of creation. If you do not set out a plan for your content marketing, you are already on the road towards the most significant pitfall in the marketing arena. Without crystal clear content objectives and goals, it is easy to get lost and create unique and riveting, but useless content. If you are not sure about what you want to achieve, how is it possible to achieve it?
The Solution
It is always best to have one single objective for every content marketing campaign. Different goals need another type of content, so trying to tackle two objectives in one single content can be chaotic.
Create a list of your objectives and a schedule. Prioritize your objectives and scaffold your goals in an order that makes sense. Follow the funnel stages and create content for each step. For instance, it would be difficult to achieve brand loyalty if your audience is still at the funnel’s consideration stage. Instead, make a schedule for your content and revisit every two or three months.
At each stage ask yourself:
Do I want to introduce my brand to the public?
Do I want to increase brand awareness?
Do I want to increase my conversion rates?
Do I want to increase brand loyalty?
Set your objectives and work around that. Create content that will serve your objective and review and re-adjust your objectives on a regular schedule.
2. Inadequate Research On Your Buyer Personas
The Problem
Another improper strategy pitfall is thinking too generically about your audience. Marketers often group their buyers together under one big demographic umbrella: age, gender, socioeconomic status.
This, however, can be detrimental to your content marketing strategy. This information is only the tip of the iceberg. People are unique entities, and what makes them tingle might not be the same, even if they fall under the same generic umbrella.
Whereas two different people might be interested in your brand, it does not mean that the same content will engage them both.
The Solution
Research your buyers. Create accurate buyer personas. Get to know them inside out; from the sites they visit, to the hashtags they use. What are their worries, their concerns, their hopes? What makes them laugh, and how has their life been affected by recent pandemic events? What content will draw their attention and push them through the funnel? Consider any niches related to your demographic and follow your buyer’s journey to understand better what will get them interested in your brand. Some tools you could use are:
Google Analytics
Google Correlate
Facebook Audience Insights
YouGov Profiler
3. Wrong Budget Allocation
The Problem
In light of the detrimental economic aftermath of the pandemic, budget considerations have never been more prominent. This is true for all businesses but particularly so for marketing. Marketing budgets are the first to suffer a cut when a business is suffering from financial losses.
Content marketing must be unique, and this sometimes costs money. The wrong budget allocation may lead your content marketing to another improper strategy pitfall.
The Solution
You do not have to spend all your budget on one single medium. You can ratio your budget on multiple, and cheaper, allocations. Don’t spend all your money on one single TV ad during prime time. Instead, place multiple paid ads on social media sites.
Alternatively, reach out to influencers; it may be time-consuming to reach out and connect, but it is free. The beauty of connecting to influencers is that it allows you to form a relationship with your targeted niche and the audience that is already interested in your brand! You connect with an influencer and she will undoubtedly open more doors for your brand than any other ads or content. Find a way to influence the influencer and see your sales soar.
4. Not Measuring Your Content
The Problem
This is one of the trickiest pitfalls of improper content marketing strategies. It is imperative to establish how you are going to measure your content’s success from the get-go. Even before you start creating your content, you need to have an explicit idea of how you will measure your content and how you will evaluate what works and what doesn’t, what will stay the same in your content, and what must change.
If you do not measure your content, you cannot possibly know how it served your objective. For instance, if your initial objective was to generate leads, getting thousands of page views does not really mean your content was successful if no conversions were made.
The Solution
If you have a clear plan from the beginning and your objectives are set, then it should be easy to find the relevant metrics for that objective. Do you want to increase page views? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Do you want to bring back re-curring customers?
If your goals have been established, you can measure your content’s performance against these goals. Having a strategy for measuring your content will help you avoid this common content marketing pitfall. Measuring your content’s success will help you create content that will serve your objectives and generate high-leads.
Take Away Notes
Like all marketers, you invest your time and your energy in creating unique, engaging content. It is a true heartbreak when you watch that content fail. However, you do not have to fall into these pitfalls of improper content marketing strategy. Remember to create crystal clear objectives and accurate personas, allocate your budget smartly, and frequently measure your content’s success. Follow these steps, and you do not need to experience heartbreak over your content, at least, ever again.