Top 5 Content Marketing Mistakes And How To Fix Them
Posted by Jody Pellerin on Mon, Jan 30, 2012
The keystone of marketing today is content marketing strategy. You must plan your content before you ever
set fingers to keyboard because the best marketing is consistent across channels and attracts the right buyers. It keeps your customers coming back and brings in new leads. It engages and builds thought leadership.
Bad marketing is the result of poor content marketing strategy, which can be due to any or all of the following 5 reasons:
Not Having a Strategy
Producing content without a strategy is like taking a trip without figuring out what to pack and leaving behind the map. Without a strategy, the content you develop will be all over the place. It won’t be able to lead your perfect buyer through the buying cycle. It will just lead him in circles.
Put together your plan after analyzing your customer base and determining who, exactly, you are trying to appeal to. At this time, decide who will deliver the message and through which channels. Put together a work process to get the content completed accurately and on-time.
Not Personalizing
Today’s marketing speaks to the individual, not the masses. And individuals want to feel like they are interacting with a human, not a building. Without engagement, the customers won’t stick around to learn more about your great products and services.
Since you have already analyzed your customer base, you should be able to find and produce content that can appeal to each segment of your market. Technology helps you put customer names in your emails and other communication. Over time you will learn what each segment or customer is most interested in and be able to offer the best content for that interest.
Not Knowing What Your Customer Needs
Related to the points above, if you don’t know what your customers need, not only is it difficult to engage them, you are losing opportunities to develop products and services more focused to your desired target. Relevancy creates value; relevant content is valuable to your customers and their friends.
Knowing your customers’ needs also guides the type of content you offer. By determining what your customers search for on the internet, the questions they ask on the phone, even by the products they already use, you can create content that will make them a more knowledgeable consumer. People want to feel like they are making a smart choice and they will do their research in order to meet that goal.
Not Helping to Share
You can have all the best content, but if you don’t help people share it with others, you are losing yet another opportunity….one that could net you more customers. When others share your content your message gets spread even further, helping both your SEO positioning and getting the attention of those who have not yet heard of you. And it will be introduced to them by a trusted source, which makes getting their attention much easier.
Not Using Keywords
While SEO isn’t the only tool in your marketing toolbox, it is still one of the stronger ones. Besides appealing to your customers and prospects, you want the search engines to find you. Content is the perfect vehicle. By strategically (and tastefully) placing your keywords within your content, you put out more bait for the search engines.
In addition, a good content marketing strategy includes creating and publishing new content all the time. Search engines are like people; they like novelty. If they don’t see anything new they won’t stop by your site again and you lose in the rankings. Keyword tools such as the one found in Google AdWords help you define and select the keywords best suited to your industry. Over time you can tweak them by analyzing what keywords are bringing the most qualified traffic to your content.
With these points in mind, put together a content marketing strategy that will succeed.