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Having worked with several clients on developing and executing content marketing strategies for their business, one of the questions most business owners want answers to is why it isn't working for their business. This often leads to content marketers spending on content marketing without seeing any significant results in their bottom line.
If your content marketing efforts haven't been yielding the desired results for your business, you might need to look deep into the structure of your strategy and to discover why content marketing isn't working for you.
The following are reasons most marketers don't see results with content marketing.
You're Ignoring Documentation
Documentation is critical to content marketing, and this very essential strategy has been neglected by many content marketers. Your marketing documentation is what will help you identify the missing link between what is working and what you're doing.
In a CMI research that studied B2B marketers, 53 percent who reported that their content marketing was highly effective had a documentation strategy, while the 40 percent with the least result had no strategy at all. If you're not paying attention to content marketing documentation, you might be finding it hard to validate your content marketing strategy.
Targeting Customers with Irrelevant Content
Targeting your customers with highly relevant content is necessary for content marketing effectiveness. A lot of content marketers confuse meeting content demands with actually meeting the needs of their readers. For your customers to engage with your content, it's very necessary that the content you're pushing to them carries a message that will be valuable to them.
To effectively create content that connects with your customers, you need to evaluate your content marketing plan and come up with your audience persona. This means you have to evaluate your different audiences, identify their pain points and create content that will meet their needs in their journey through your purchase cycle.
Inefficient Distribution Strategy
Overcoming the content distribution hurdle is where a lot of content marketers are usually held back. Without the right distribution strategy, your content marketing is bound to fail. To tackle your content distribution challenges and reach your customers with your content, an effective approach would be to combine the three distribution channels.
There are three forms of distribution: owned media, earned media and paid media. While focusing on a single channel can help you take advantage of concentration, leading digital marketers advise to exploit the potentials of combined channels by getting more creative with your outreach and distribution strategy.
"An efficient distribution strategy combines available distribution channels, helping the target asset acquire more attention through a streamlined effort," says Ali Pourvasei, the founder of a Los Angeles SEO Company.
Your Content Strategy Lacks Credibility
Credibility is a valuable currency in content marketing, and indeed in the entire digital sphere. Brands have learned that their content can help establish credibility and are pushing to see that their content marketing efforts portray their best image to consumers.
If your content marketing lacks credibility, your customers will not trust your brand. There are a lot of factors that can help strengthen the credibility of your content marketing efforts. The following are some:
- Addressing real concerns
- Discuss a fresh message
- Easily solves customer issues
- Carries brand signals
By utilizing these factors in your content, consumers will engage with your content and you'll find that content marketing easily works for you.
You're Measuring the Wrong Signals
To understand the impact of content marketing efforts, it's necessary to take measurement into consideration. However, content marketers are still struggling with identifying the right signals to measure.
Measuring the wrong signals will give a false representation of your content marketing results -- which will eventually lead to implementing inefficient strategies.