7 Classic Content Marketing Mistakes

Content marketing has really taken off. According to the ContentMarketing Institute 9 out of 10 organizations employ some kind of content marketing strategy. The most popular plan is to produce articles and blogs related to your business and engage with existing and potential customers through social media. It doesn’t work for everyone and that’s mainly because a lot of people don’t really understand the idea behind content marketing in the first place. So what can go wrong?

Listen To My Sales Pitch

The idea of marketing is to increase sales…right? All marketing must have a call to action or how will I ever convert…right? Wrong! Forget about focussing on what you get out of it and focus on what the potential customer gets out of it. The idea behind content marketing is that you offer the potential customer something useful - something that solves a problem for them. How often do you read lengthy sales pitches? Do you enjoy self-referential advertorial pieces that are clearly designed to persuade you to buy? No, and neither does anyone else.

The American Marketing Association defines marketing like this -

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

The word you need to pick out of that sentence is value. If you don’t offer some value then your content marketing efforts will fail.

We Don’t Need Professional Writers

Everyone can write can’t they? Why should we spend money on a professional when we can get the intern to do it? Well the truth is – you get what you pay for. A well briefed, professional copy writer will produce quality content that will serve you for months or even years. A badly written, awkward, or even grammatically incorrect article, will turn people away, discourage trust and harm your brand.

If you were going to redesign your reception area, or create a new look for your website you wouldn’t ask your existing staff to do it - you would hire a professional. The same thing applies to your content.

I Can’t Be Bothered This Week

If you want to show off great knowledge of your industry then a regular blog is a fantastic way to highlight that. You can display your company’s thought leadership, enhance your reputation and encourage people to visit regularly.

The main problem with company blogs is that they don’t have a proper editorial calendar. As soon as the office is busy the first thing that gets ditched is the company blog (especially if you assign it to staff – see above). To get value from your blogging efforts you need to do it regularly and you need to maintain a high standard. You should also understand that it takes time to gain traction through content marketing. It’s not something that will work over night.

Quantity Over Quality

Sometimes the problem isn’t a lack of content - it’s an overabundance of content. You don’t want three separate blogs a day (one on the coffee machine, one on what you saw on the way to work and just one about your actual business), along with an infographic, a podcast and a new white paper. You want to produce quality content, leverage that content and promote it properly. Give it room to breathe and find an audience, and then rinse and repeat.

SEO, SEO and SEO

We have optimized the hell out of this copy. Our target keywords are scattered optimally, the headers are perfect and we’re ranking high in the search results. Why isn’t it resulting in more sales?

There’s no denying that SERP rankings are important. You want to rank as high as possible in the search engines for search terms that relate to your product. You also want to ensure that the people who land on your page actually get what they came for. Fluff content, keyword stuffing and a lack of engaging or useful information is never going to please customers. Even if you can “game” search engines to get them there in the first place they will leave pretty quickly and they won’t come back.

Search engines are getting better and better at spotting hollow content and people are wise to SEO over substance. Don’t forget about SEO in your content marketing but remember it is only part of the picture. Quality content is the most important thing.

How Does It Relate?

We’ve already discussed why SEO isn’t enough but it’s also worth mentioning that great content isn’t enough. You could write the best analysis of mortgage types or the greatest review of that movie you watched last night but if your business sells suitcases then it won’t do you any good. It might pull in loads of traffic but if it doesn’t relate to your business in some way then how is it going to boost your business? That traffic will never convert to sales and it won’t hang around to read the rest of your content.

The idea with content marketing is to offer value in your business area. Establish your credentials, build some trust in potential customers that you know what you’re talking about and the idea that your service or product is worth a look will naturally follow.

Relying On Social Media

The idea that social media is the golden ticket to every marketer’s dream – a steady supply of free leads – may be flawed. You could have 20,000 followers on Twitter but how many of them click the links you post and read the content? You might be sucking in 10,000 unique visitors a day from Stumble Upon but how does that traffic convert?

The truth is that social media is a commitment and if you don’t invest properly then you won’t get anything back. There are a lot of ways to build a following on Twitter and you can submit your content to Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit and everyone else, but if you want targeted traffic you need a strategy. You don’t need to pull in thousands of people every day – you need to pull in the people who are actually seeking your services or product and are ready to buy. Don’t be fooled by big numbers – focus on the traffic that is actually converting.

Plan Your Content Marketing Strategy and Then Execute

These are just seven classic content marketing mistakes that many businesses make. The truth is there are many more ways you can go wrong. There also isn’t a definite recipe for success. Every business is different. That’s why you need to take time to analyse your business and plan a content marketing strategy that will work for you. Focus on what you expect it to achieve and then plan it carefully before you actually begin.

Got any other content marketing mistakes in mind? Post a comment and share.