Why Content Marketing is not working for your business?

Yes, for many companies out there, content marketing doesn’t work. The reason could be any, like either they are having wrong expectations or maybe wrong creation and promotion strategies. All in all, when content marketing isn’t deployed correctly, it won’t just work.

When it comes to content marketing, it is a bit of a buzzword. It has been around since quite a long time now, however of late it has successfully grabbed attention with social media and SEO has started valuing content more and more. Another reason is that customers nowadays prefer to do more research prior to making a purchase, and hence you can see the reason why content marketing is getting more recognition than ever before.

In fact, in the last few years, content marketing has surprisingly surpassed search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click in search popularity. So much so, that among the big four digital mediums, it is trailing only social media marketing in current interest.

But what exactly is Content Marketing?

There is a lot of misinformation about whatever is in trend and the same goes for content marketing. Like, out there, there are many definitions of content marketing varying from native advertising to blogging to social media. So, technically, there are all kinds of content, and then there are even forms of marketing but is that even content marketing.

As we proceed in this article, let’s limit the definition of Content Marketing to this:

“Content marketing is the act of a business, organization, or a company that produces that promotes informative content in order to engage and interacts with their target audience.”

Why doesn’t Content Marketing work?

Well, businesses believe that content marketing does work, and they even have evidence to it that it does. However, at the same time, they are not seeing their own content marketing work well, and they keep wondering why. So, here we are exploring the reasons why that may be so.

Is your content Boring?

The bottom line is Content Quality. Like, you can bring in traffic, but if that traffic doesn’t receive value and benefit, they will just be one-time visitors. So, it is vital that you use media and visuals as much as you can. You can say a lot of visuals and videos and it will definitely engage visitors more.

Come up with fabulous headlines and speak to needs, solutions and pain points in a creative manner. The goal here is to inspire, educate, and entertain in exciting ways. You can simply give a thought to the big difference between boring written instructions and a “how-to” video.

Basically, your goal is establishing relationships, so allow the visitors to know you well personally by telling stories about yourself, the team, the customers and community involvement. Just try having fun and simply be humorous.

Are your SEO strategies outdated?

The very idea behind SEO is to make your content pop up as people look for answers to their queries and are finding solutions. Traditionally, it involves finding the right keywords and then to repeat them all along your content. Now with search engine algorithms continuously improving, it has turned out to be an outdated practice, and it is vital that businesses adapt their SEO strategies to keep up with it.

Are you not promoting enough?

Each time you are publishing a post on your blog section, consider ways you can adapt for promoting it. Are there share buttons? Do you provide any incentives for your readers to share the content? Are you advertising it on your social media platforms with appealing teaser statement? Do you consider an arrangement with other bloggers for cross-promotion?

These were a few ways for content promotion. What good content marketers do is that they constantly hunt to grab more attention to their content.

Are you not spending enough?

As compared to traditional marketing, content marketing is considerably cheaper. However, you will still require a budget to market your content. Like, you need to have content writers. There need to be people who understand how content should be promoted. Like, you can either go for hiring in-house or can choose to outsource. Ensure that enough resources have been allocated for the same, or else the money is simply wasted.

At the same time, you must also analyze the success of each strategy that has been put into place. Ensure that you are revising or dumping the ones which are not giving you a return and rather do more of what is working.

Are you lacking a definite strategy?

As it comes to content marketing, it is just entirely about writing great posts or entertaining your potential customers on Facebook. Instead, it is about developing a strategy. For the same, you would require to ask yourself a few questions.

• Who is your target market & where are they online?
• What problems do your target market have and how you can solve them?
• What are you aiming to attain with your content marketing? More traffic? More Conversions? More leads?

Once you have answers to these questions, you can determine what kind of content needs to be created by you and like where to put that content and how to promote it. Simply throwing the content out there and hoping to get best results is not a strategy, as you need to work for it. You need to specifically decide like what your content marketing must accomplish and then accordingly evaluate it, making changes as required.

Are you not patient?

Ultimately, content marketing is not a magical marketing tool that would just work overnight. You need to keep in mind that visitors won’t just become your followers and quickly share your content. They first need to trust you. Hence, give it some time and continue publishing regularly – after all your visitors and followers expect it.

Despite all the noise out there about content marketing being dead, stay assured that it is here to stay, and by creating and providing smart and creative content, you can successfully rise above that noise in order to get noticed and make relationships in profitable ways.