content marketing

10 Signs to Look For to Know if Your Content Marketing Strategy is a Complete Failure

Did you know that 47% of B2C marketers and 54% of B2B marketers in North America believe that their marketing goals and marketing metrics aren’t even aligned? Did you also know that until as late as 2016, 34% of B2B and 31% of B2C marketers hadn’t experienced a single successful outcome in their content marketing campaigns!?

There are many marketers like this all over the world, who are completely unaware of why their content marketing strategies aren’t yielding the desired results. Thankfully, it’s never too late to rectify failures. But you can only change something when you recognise what the problem is.

So, to help you, our team of experienced content marketers have collated the top ten reasons why companies experience problems with their content strategy implementation. Take a look.

  • You don’t have a solid strategy in place

Every project needs a blueprint. Similarly, every content marketing campaign needs a definite strategy. But, many companies forget to plan every step in detail, instead, creating a random mix of content, which has no synergy with each other.

Solution: Conduct a SWOT of your company, assess your KPIs, establish your goals and use this data as guidelines to create a marketing strategy that can work for your business.

  • You’re not sure who your audience is

A lot of times, there is a basic misalignment between the audience and the content because the content isn’t intended for that particular audience. Often, companies aren’t able to define which group of people their target audience is.

Solution: Create buyer personas for each market segment you would like to attract and then use the personas to understand and shortlist the segment you wish to serve actively.

  • Your content is all about you and what you like

Many marketers make the mistake of creating content about topics that only interests them. They do this in the belief that their audience shares the same level of interest in topics that the company is passionate about. This is a really easy way to lose readership and viewership.

Solution: Create opinion polls and surveys to understand what your audience likes to read/see. You could also seek topic ideas from them through a post or a comment. This will make your content marketing more personal and engaging.

Image Credits: Pixabay

  • You’re clueless about what’s happening in the world

An effective content strategy is one which is responsive and relevant to the changing times. But if your company isn’t alert enough to pick up new trends quickly or responsible enough to remain up-to-date with the times, you could easily become a dispensable source of content.

Solution: Implement social media listening tools in your content marketing strategy. This will help you pick up the latest trending topics quickly, allowing you to create content that is valuable to your audience.

  • You’re trying too hard to stay relevant

At the other end of the spectrum is a company that’s trying way too hard to produce only trend-centric content. This too can backfire very easily.

Just following the crowd and producing content that a hundred other companies are writing/talking about can be boring for most audiences.

Solution: Readers love to read content that is unique to the brand, and that offers them a fresh perspective. Even if you report on a trending topic, taking a different stance can help you gain more respect from your audience. You can also hire specialised content writers to create quality content for you and whose skills, experiences and perspectives will add great variety and value to your campaign.

  • Your website isn’t at its best

A lot of times, a failed content marketing campaign traces its roots to a faulty website. Maybe your website is taking too long to load, or your font and colour scheme are too jarring on the eyes. Either way, things like these can make the reading/viewing experience extremely uncomfortable.

Solution: Continuously revamp your website to suit your audience’s needs. Conduct performance checks using observability tools to ensure all platforms and software are working at optimum. Enrich content with SEO and backlinks to get a better ranking online.

Image Credits: Pixabay

  • You don’t have social sharing options

Humans are social beings, and we love to share the things we love, with the people we love. But if you don’t provide your audience with social sharing options in your content, you will be actively discouraging them from visiting your website, and they may leave you for a competitor who is extremely socially-active.

Solution: Socially optimise all of your platforms and posts. Hire talented social media marketers to take control of your social pages, so you can be responsive and engaging on social media.

  • Your CTA is missing

Your Call To Action is an invite to the audience to reach out to you and speak to you. But if you don’t invite your audience to engage with you, they will never do so of their own accord. Additionally, many customers don’t know what they should do after consuming your content, and this lack of clarity can discourage them from reaching out to you.

Solution: Include 2-3 CTAs in your content. Be explicit in your instructions in the CTA. Tell your audience exactly what it is that you want them to do.

  • You’re not mobile-optimised

66% of business-related content is consumed on smartphones today. This is why it’s important to make your content available on mobile. Companies which fail to mobile-optimise their websites and those that don’t build an easy-to-use website will experience a very steep drop in followership.

Solution: Use specialised content management systems to create a mobile-optimised version of your website. Make sure there are no bugs, and the website is easily navigable.

  • You have no systems in place to track your results

There are a lot of companies that don’t take the time to find out if their campaigns have been successful or not. When you don’t know what works and what doesn’t, there is no way you can tackle the challenges.

Solution: Today, you have an extensive suite of software, platforms and services which can map your social effectiveness by tracking your online performance. For example, Google Analytics, Mouseflow, Statcounter and more; use the insights you get from these tools to identify your weak areas and work on them to ensure your content marketing campaign always work wonders.

Feature Image Credits: DiggityMarketing

Author bio:

Nisha Prakash is a blogger specializing in social media marketing and content management. She is an avid runner and a bibliophile.

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