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It’s been said that there is no better long-term marketing strategy than content marketing. But unfortunately, many businesses give up on content marketing because they don’t see the value in it. If you’re not seeing results with your content marketing, it’s best to analyze your strategy to see where things went wrong instead of losing hope. Here are some of the reasons why your content marketing strategy is not effective:
There’s No Plan in Place
Before you start writing, it’s important to put a content plan in place. Start by determining the goals for your strategy. Do you want to raise awareness? Drive more traffic back to your website? Convert more leads? You should also identify your target audience so you know who you should be talking to when writing the content. Getting to know your target audience will make it easier to generate blog topic ideas and figure out what type of brand voice you should use.
Marketers should also discuss how often content should be created and who is responsible for writing and editing it. To make your strategy more effective, content needs to be well-written and posted regularly. If you play it by ear instead of carefully planning it out, it may never get done.
You’re Using the Wrong Keywords
Content marketing is often used as part of a brand’s larger SEO strategy, but it won’t be effective if you’re not using the right keywords. Before creating content, take time to conduct keyword research. Start by writing down a list of general topics that are relevant to your business. For example, a dentist may write down topics such as teeth whitening, straightening teeth, and oral hygiene. Then, write down keyword phrases that are related to each topic. For teeth whitening, a dentist may write down:
- At-home vs. in-office teeth whitening
- Foods that stain teeth
- Pain after teeth whitening
Once you have done this for each general topic, open the Google Keyword Planner. Perform a search for phrase to pull up a list of related keywords. Look for keywords that are relevant to your business and not highly competitive—these are the keywords you should be targeting in your content. If you’re not taking the time to follow these steps, your content will not contain the right keywords, and your content marketing strategy will not improve your SEO.
Your Budget is Too Low
A lot of marketers make the mistake of assuming that content marketing is free. This couldn’t be further from the truth. A recent survey found that businesses that have experienced great success with their content marketing allocate about 39% of their total marketing budget to this tactic.
Where does the money go? Businesses will need to hire a writer to generate topic ideas, conduct keyword research, and create the content. Part of a business’s content marketing budget will also need to cover the costs of promoting the content through social media ads, pay-per-click ads, and native advertising. If you’re going to invest time in creating content, it’s important to also invest money in making the content work for your business. Take a look at your finances to see if it’s possible that your low budget is the reason why your content marketing strategy has not been successful.
The Content is Not Promoted
Some marketers think their work is over once their content goes live on their website, but publishing content is only the beginning of this marketing strategy. Every piece of content that is published on your website should be promoted. If it’s not, there’s no point in writing it. At the very least, the content on your website should be promoted via your brand’s social media channels. Post a link to the content along with a 1-2 sentence introduction that grabs followers’ attention. It’s perfectly acceptable to post the same piece of content multiple times on social media as long as the posts are days or weeks apart from one another.
Don’t be afraid to promote your content through other channels as well. You can even reach out to third party websites to see if they are interested in publishing some of your work. Promoting each piece of content as much as possible will make your overall strategy more effective.
You’re Publishing Bad Content
Unfortunately, it’s entirely possible that the reason your content marketing strategy has not been effective is because the content you are publishing is bad. This could mean the topics you are choosing are not relevant, which means you need to reconsider how you have defined your target audience.
It could also mean that the content is not providing any value to readers, meaning it does not include new information or insight on a particular topic. If your content is similar to other blogs posted online, it won’t help you become an authority on the subject. People read blogs because they want to learn something new, so don’t regurgitate information that you’ve read somewhere else.
Be sure to also take a look at the grammar and structure of the content. Poor grammar can make content difficult to read, so be sure to ask someone to read over your content before publishing it. The way the content is structured can also affect its readability. Ideally, a blog content should be broken down into small paragraphs that fall under descriptive headers. This organizes the information and makes the content more visually appealing to readers. It’s also much easier to write content when it is structured in this manner, so it’s a win-win situation.
Are you ready to implement an effective content marketing strategy? If so, contact us today to schedule a free consultation where you will learn how we can help you with your SEO and digital marketing efforts.