Content marketing can be a powerful strategy to grow your business. It can introduce your brand to new prospects, turn website visitors into email subscribers and turn email subscribers into buyers.
However not every business succeeds with content marketing. Knowing why they fail is useful for helping avoid the mistakes others have made.
Here’s six reasons content marketing fails for an organisation, and what you can do to avoid them.
1. The content is not relevant to the audience
If you are producing content that is not relevant to your audience they are less likely to take the time to read it. You’ll see this in their level of engagement, whether it be clicks or views. This problem often occurs when a business doesn’t understand their audience really well and either presents content that is focused on the wrong motivators, or is too focused on the business itself, rather than on providing value and solving problems for their customers.
How to avoid this:
Make sure you understand your customer and where they are in their journey. Maybe you already know your customers are predominantly men in their twenties seeking high risk leisure activitives – but that may not be enough information to hit the mark. Are they currently engaging in these activities already and seeking support on how to avoid injuries or to record their activities via photos and video, or are they considering what activity to take up – skydiving or paragliding – and need pros and cons on whether different leisure activities fit their income and lifestyle.
The more targeted and relevant your content becomes, they greater your engagement and the higher the success you’ll have with your content marketing.
2) The content is not seen as valuable
If your content is not seen as valuable, it will not be shared. And if it’s not shared, it will not be seen by others. This is because the internet is a content-driven environment, so if your content doesn’t stand out, it doesn’t matter how great it is.
How to avoid this:
The best way to avoid this problem is to create content that is seen as valuable. The best way to do this is to make sure it solves a problem and provides value. If you are not sure what problems your audience is facing, then you should be asking them.
3) The content is not well-written
Poorly written content will make your readers feel like they’re reading a generic, run-of-the-mill blog post. They’ll be bored and they’ll click off your site.
How to avoid this:
This problem can be avoided by producing well-written content. This is not easy and takes a lot of time, but the results are worth it. Here are some tips on how to create good quality content:
- Write in your own voice, don’t try to sound like someone else.
- Make your content short, concise and to the point.
- Don’t use jargon, it will confuse your readers.
- Use conversational language.
- Avoid the passive voice.
- Avoid jargon and hard-to-understand words.
- Write in short sentences.
- Keep your paragraphs short.
- Use paragraphs to break up your text and make it easier to read
- Use a writing tool that can write your first draft quickly, like SimpleMarketing.AI, so you can focus your time on polishing the quality, rather than writing a first draft.
4) The content is not optimized for search
If your content isn’t optimized for search, it won’t be easily found on Google. Not being found on Google means no one will be able to find your content, and that’s not good. While SEO is often seen as a dark art, understanding how to embed the right keywords into your content to help it rank higher in Google, and other search engines, is crucial to having your content appear first in the list when a customer types their problem into the search engine.
How to avoid this:
The best way to avoid this problem is to make sure you are always optimizing your content for search. One way to do this is to make sure you’re adding keywords to your content.
5) The content is not engaging
Engaging content is key to keeping your readers interested. Whether it’s a post, video, infographic or another type of content, it has to keep people interested. If your content doesn’t engage then your customers will switch off and go elsewhere.
How to avoid this:
The best way to create engaging content is to make sure it is well-researched, well-written and communicates its message in a clear, concise and interesting way. Experiment with different approaches and lengths to see what resonates with your audience. Also the more you know about your customers the better you can tailor your content to be engaging.
6) The content is not promoted
If your content is not promoted, it won’t be read. Just posting into your blog won’t build your audience or draw people back to your site. You need to promote your content as broadly as possible using all your channels to keep
How to avoid this:
The best way to promote your content is to make sure it is shared on social media across all your channels. An email list is also a great way to share your content with your clients. You may also want to consider paid advertising on social media or relevant blogs. It is also useful to make sure your content is easy for your audience to share as well. Use a social plugin to ensure that people can instantly share your content when they read it, so that your reach expands much further.
The SimpleMarketing.AI Content Engine generated this post (with a little human editing).
To learn how you can reduce your own Content Marketing burden with AI assistance, visit SimpleMarketing.AI