7 signs that your content marketing sucks
To begin with, what is content marketing and what should it be. We will ask someone who knows everything, Wikipedia.
In practice, it turns out that "content marketing" is more a buzzword than a long-term company strategy. Therefore, before deciding whether this promotion channel works for your business, ask yourself:
In order to make it easier for you to answer this question, I will list you 7 main signs that your content marketing is worthless and you need to change something.
The first sign that you have gone the wrong way is the presence of direct advertising of your products or services in content marketing.
Do not get me wrong, there is a place to advertise your products, and if more than 30% of your publications contain an advertising character, this is no longer content marketing.
When you publish a promotional video selling your products or an article about why a customer should buy a particular product from you, do not expect readers to shout “Uraaa” enthusiastically, like and repost.
Effective content marketing is built primarily on the basis of the needs of your audience, and not your needs to sell something to it.
First build a trusting relationship with your potential customers, and then move on to sales.
Keywords are an essential part of content marketing. After all, for it to work and bring results, it is necessary that your articles are read.
Keywords allow your content to appear in search results, so you get referrals to your blog and win readership.
Remember that if you don’t use keywords, your competitors will use them and will take your customers away from under your nose.
Adding them will take no more than 5 minutes of your time, but in the future you will get customers.
Facts, statistics are important and interesting to readers, while if your content does not contain anything else, it is difficult to perceive it.
It’s really hard to add humor and personalization to the content at the initial stage of the funnel, when the visitor first came to your site and you still don’t know anything about it. But don’t give up.
We all love the human approach and good humor. Write more from yourself, add a few jokes. Make your content more like a personal story than a review article containing only facts.
Content marketing appeared only due to the fact that we are moving from the "world of dry technologies" to the "world of handshakes", where you need to be friends with customers and customer service has become the number 1 factor when choosing who to purchase a product or service from.
If you think that you do not have time to visit thematic forums, commenting on articles on blogs dedicated to your topics and communicating with clients on social networks - you miss the point of building the right relationships with clients.
Content marketing is not the case when "if you want to do well - do it yourself." No need to neglect outside help.
What help can this be:
Answer yourself only 2 questions:
If you create content just because it is easy, you will be disappointed with the results. Effective content marketing should contain 2 things:
One cannot exist without the other, otherwise you will not get the desired result.
What happens after a potential customer leaves their contacts for you to get useful content? Does he receive an email or does your manager call him? Or are his contacts just gathering dust in your customer base?
If you do not have a clear plan on how to conduct this customer across the sales funnel: from getting contacts to selling, your content marketing is useless.
An integral part of the problem may be that your sales team is not dedicated to the content marketing strategy. They make every effort to close the deal, while they do not know all the intricacies of your business goals and plans, respectively, sales suffer.
To solve this problem, you need to bring together your entire sales department and conduct them throughout the funnel, from visiting the site and receiving customer contacts to the first sale. This will help to turn website visitors into buyers as efficiently as possible.
The popularity of content is rapidly gaining momentum in the online business, so content marketing is growing in price.
Becoming successful in this area is becoming increasingly difficult and competitors are constantly breathing in the back.
But better late than never. Therefore, if you still have not launched content marketing for your business, now is the time to start.
Good luck!
Content marketing - a set of marketing techniques based on the creation and / or dissemination of information useful to the consumer in order to gain trust and attract potential customers. Content marketing involves the preparation and dissemination of high-quality, relevant and valuable information, which is not advertising, but which indirectly convinces the audience to make the decision necessary for the distributor, to choose his service. The advantages of content marketing are that it effectively attracts the attention of the audience, helps to gain trust and unobtrusively promotes a product or service in the market.
Total, we get that content marketing should primarily be useful, win an audience and attract potential customers, and, last but not least, unobtrusively promote a product or service.
In practice, it turns out that "content marketing" is more a buzzword than a long-term company strategy. Therefore, before deciding whether this promotion channel works for your business, ask yourself:
"Is it really what you do that can be called content marketing?"
In order to make it easier for you to answer this question, I will list you 7 main signs that your content marketing is worthless and you need to change something.
1. Buy, buy, well, buy the same ...
The first sign that you have gone the wrong way is the presence of direct advertising of your products or services in content marketing.
Do not get me wrong, there is a place to advertise your products, and if more than 30% of your publications contain an advertising character, this is no longer content marketing.
When you publish a promotional video selling your products or an article about why a customer should buy a particular product from you, do not expect readers to shout “Uraaa” enthusiastically, like and repost.
Effective content marketing is built primarily on the basis of the needs of your audience, and not your needs to sell something to it.
First build a trusting relationship with your potential customers, and then move on to sales.
2. Ignoring the “Keywords”.
Keywords are an essential part of content marketing. After all, for it to work and bring results, it is necessary that your articles are read.
Keywords allow your content to appear in search results, so you get referrals to your blog and win readership.
Remember that if you don’t use keywords, your competitors will use them and will take your customers away from under your nose.
Adding them will take no more than 5 minutes of your time, but in the future you will get customers.
3. Dry facts and no personalization.
Facts, statistics are important and interesting to readers, while if your content does not contain anything else, it is difficult to perceive it.
It’s really hard to add humor and personalization to the content at the initial stage of the funnel, when the visitor first came to your site and you still don’t know anything about it. But don’t give up.
We all love the human approach and good humor. Write more from yourself, add a few jokes. Make your content more like a personal story than a review article containing only facts.
Content marketing appeared only due to the fact that we are moving from the "world of dry technologies" to the "world of handshakes", where you need to be friends with customers and customer service has become the number 1 factor when choosing who to purchase a product or service from.
4. You only speak, but do not listen to your customers.
“The first thing a company needs to do in order to get results from content marketing is to think about what customers want, what would be interesting to them and how can you give it to them. In other words, content should be more of a standalone product than part of marketing or advertising. ”Robert Rose, CSO of the Institute for Content Marketing
Marketers begin by identifying the needs and wishes of their audience, and then move on to how to satisfy these needs and deliver useful content.
If you think that you do not have time to visit thematic forums, commenting on articles on blogs dedicated to your topics and communicating with clients on social networks - you miss the point of building the right relationships with clients.
5. Do it all alone.
Content marketing is not the case when "if you want to do well - do it yourself." No need to neglect outside help.
What help can this be:
- Get your employees involved in content creation. Show them that their participation in the company's content marketing strategy will bring them career growth and dividends.
- Use third-party content and cases. There is nothing wrong with posting content of other companies on your blog, the main thing is to add your thoughts, statistics or facts to it and indicate the source.
- Involve your social media subscribers in content creation. This is a great way to get loyalty, identify needs and learn to listen to your customers.
- Outsourcing of large projects. Order several large-scale studies, articles or video content from professional companies. You will receive not only high-quality content from market experts, but also an objective view from the outside on your niche and business.
6. Lack of concentration on the main thing - on business.
Answer yourself only 2 questions:
- What do you want the client to do after reading your article or e-book?
- Does your content lead the customer to this targeted action?
If you create content just because it is easy, you will be disappointed with the results. Effective content marketing should contain 2 things:
- Storytelling (eng. Storytelling)
- Focus on keeping your storytelling aligned with your business goals.
One cannot exist without the other, otherwise you will not get the desired result.
7. Your leads are stuck in a sales funnel.
What happens after a potential customer leaves their contacts for you to get useful content? Does he receive an email or does your manager call him? Or are his contacts just gathering dust in your customer base?
If you do not have a clear plan on how to conduct this customer across the sales funnel: from getting contacts to selling, your content marketing is useless.
An integral part of the problem may be that your sales team is not dedicated to the content marketing strategy. They make every effort to close the deal, while they do not know all the intricacies of your business goals and plans, respectively, sales suffer.
To solve this problem, you need to bring together your entire sales department and conduct them throughout the funnel, from visiting the site and receiving customer contacts to the first sale. This will help to turn website visitors into buyers as efficiently as possible.
Conclusions:
The popularity of content is rapidly gaining momentum in the online business, so content marketing is growing in price.
Becoming successful in this area is becoming increasingly difficult and competitors are constantly breathing in the back.
But better late than never. Therefore, if you still have not launched content marketing for your business, now is the time to start.
Good luck!