Have you ever wondered why your content marketing isn’t going as planned? Content can fail for a whole variety of reasons, and we look at four reasons why your marketing may not be performing as well as you were hoping.
The senior team are not on board
Content marketing works best when everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet and there is an alignment of objectives and goals between departments and from the top down. If the leadership team is not buying into marketing, efforts can be undermined from the get-go. This can make it difficult to generate leads and drive brand reach and awareness.
Fortunately, there is a solution. You can educate higher-ups by demonstrating just how important content marketing can be to the wider business. There needs to be a steady flow of documents and information espousing the benefits of marketing and regular dialogue about how it is being managed and can be improved.
Generic falls short
In-house teams without expert copywriters can come up short when attempting to create content that really moves the needle. It needs to be new, unique and high quality. Outsourcing your content to an agency can give you the edge here. A third party with a focus on content creation will be much better equipped to deliver the excellent materials you need, and they will be able to deliver a wide range of mediums, including blogs, news and infographics.
There is no strategy
Documented strategies can be the difference between content marketing success and failure. You need to ask yourself what problems and issues your content can address. Think about your audience and build from there. Remember, content marketing is inherently about delivering some sort of added value. It’s not standard copy that aims to promote and sell.
Econsultancy VP Rebecca Lieb adds: “Without a strategic framework, there’s no way to measure the real success of content initiatives. Instead, marketers are substituting volume metrics (e.g. likes) for business results. Marketing doesn’t exist without content, so content strategy matters.”
It’s unscheduled and lacks focus
In a similar vein to strategising, content also needs to be distributed at the right time to maximise potential and ROI. Content that is just published without thought about channels or the time of day can fall flat. You need to set a schedule and stick to it so that your audience knows when to expect it.
