When it comes to business, making mistakes and learning from them is a healthy part of growth. But repeating the same mistakes over and over can not only be harmful – it can be unnecessarily costly to your brand’s reputation and bottom line. The problem is, some content marketing mistakes are not immediately noticeable, and can go undetected for some time. With anecdotal emotion-led stories and vanity metrics, even the best content marketers can fool themselves into believing the strategies they implement are successful.
Content marketing is more than just the production or publication of content on digital platforms, it requires a deeper understanding of existing and prospective consumers to produce tailored content that truly resonates. Content strategist and writer, James O’Brien elaborates, "The idea central to content marketing is that a brand must give something valuable to get something valuable in return. Instead of the commercial, be the show. Instead of the banner ad, be the feature story. The value returned is often that people associate good things with — and return to engage with — the brand." So, it stands to reason if you’re not using content marketing to your advantage in 2023 you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities to grow. Recent research from Semrush reports that nearly 70% of marketers and business owners say they plan to increase their content marketing budgets in 2023 – despite the looming recession. Why? Because it continues to be one of the most effective tools in a marketer’s arsenal. To make the most out of your content marketing campaigns this year, join Wordsmith to find out what classic mistakes businesses are making and most importantly – how to fix them going forward.
1. Focusing on Quantity Over Quality
This is a big mistake that many marketers continue to make. At some point, every business struggles with limited time and resources, but when it comes to making the call for “Quantity” or “Quality” a shocking number of brands still choose to ignore the latter in favour of more – more blogs, more social media posts, more videos. And while it was true in the past that promoting content frequently was a great strategy for getting ranked higher in Google’s search results – in 2023 it’s more about the quality of your content. Google’s algorithms now assess the quality of your webpage in terms of “freshness” and “relevance”, the volume of content you have no longer matters. So, creating exceptionally good content for your target audience should be a non-negotiable.
Mary Ann O’Brien, Founder and CEO of OBI Creative urges marketers to, “Create well-researched, thoughtful content that satisfies the search intent and desire of your target audiences. Then, get as much distance as you can out of that content by repurposing it into different formats. One piece can be spun out across social channels, pitched to reporters, used in a thought leadership campaign, posted to your site as gated content and emailed to targeted lists.” Steve Kovsky, Director of CrowdStrike, echoes Mary’s advice of repurposing existing content if you don’t have the capacity or marketing budget, in an effort to strike the perfect balance between quality and quantity. “You don’t realise the value of the library of content that’s smouldering in your resource centre,” said Kovsky. “It takes a fraction of the resources to refresh that content and redistribute it in a new way than it takes to start again in full cloth.” He continues, “If interest re-emerges in that subject area or you can find a connection where customers are looking right now, you may have a wealth of content that’s waiting to be introduced to a new audience”. A great way to start this process is by bringing old blogs back to life.
2. Creating Content That is too Promotional
Even in 2023, many marketers still equate selling with over-promotional tactics to trick people into buying. But in reality, smart selling is about empowering your consumers and prospective buyers to make the right decision. Audiences simply need to be thoroughly educated on the basics, which if done right, naturally reveals the ultimate benefits of doing business with your brand along the way as it solves their problems or pain points.
Let’s face it, no one wants to be sold to at every turn; we want valuable, educational content that tells us something new. Content marketing is usually the most effective at the beginning of the sales funnel. So, you need to provide tangible value to your audience and gain their trust first in order to nudge them further down the funnel so they turn into leads that you can convert. The important thing is to teach, not sell. You should always see content marketing as an opportunity to inform, educate and share value. When audiences believe you offer them something they can’t find on other websites, they’ll want to hear more from you and stay connected. If your content’s primary focus is "asking" your audiences to do something (buy this product, subscribe to this service) before you've built trust and credibility, you’ll risk losing them. Be generous with your value. Your audiences (and bottom line) will thank you for it.
Jonathan Prichard, Founder and CEO of MattressInsider.com comments, “While it’s okay to publish and share some self-promotional content, if every piece of content with your brand name on it is sales-oriented, no one will want it. Instead, most of your content should be educational, entertaining and/or engaging. Use content to build relationships that lead to sales and your results will be better.” If you’re struggling to figure out what type of content to create at every stage of your buyers' journey, we’ve got a helpful guide to what works here.
3. Not Measuring Your Results Properly
In this day and age, it’s essential to continue measuring the success of your content marketing efforts, not only so you can calculate your Return on Investment (ROI) but also so you can tweak and adjust content campaigns that are not reaching their full potential. Measuring results can take many forms including; keeping track of subscription numbers; analysing web conversion rates; on-site bounce rates; using content heatmaps; email acquisitions; email campaign click-through rates; social sharing and the list goes on. Studies from the Content Marketing Institute in 2023 reveal that 81% of marketers said their organisation measures content performance, up from 75% the previous year. And when evaluating content performance, the top two key metrics marketers are looking at are conversion rates and quality of leads.
“The biggest mistake I ever made was not laying the groundwork to measure results,” Kerry O’Shea Gorgone, Content Creator and Editor of Appfire admitted. “A piece of content absolutely can drive email sign-ups, webinar registrations, appointments, and even sales, but you’ll never know whether it did unless you establish measurable benchmarks for that piece.” It is important to understand the objective of each piece of content you produce – as different content may be used to achieve different results. Are you using content to increase organic traffic to your website, or do you want to increase qualified leads? Once you know what your end goal is, you can plan your content more effectively – analysing its performance against benchmarks you set, and using those performance metrics to decide the next move in your content plan.
When it comes to measuring content results, Tucker Matheson, Managing Partner at Markacy, emphasises the importance of looking at brand creative and performance creative separately. “Look at brand creative (linear TV, connected TV, YouTube, website, email, organic social) versus performance marketing creative (Facebook, Google, Pinterest, TikTok, direct mail) individually and define different key performance indicators for each. Too many times, these concepts compete, when brand creative is really about impressions and engagement, while performance creative looks at spend, click-through rate, conversion rate, return on ad spend and so forth.” Here are some tips on how you can measure the effectiveness of your content.
4. Leaving out the Call to Action
When it comes to long-form content creation, like blog posts, white papers, e-books and how-to guides it’s a good rule of thumb to include a short summary at the end, which covers key takeaways and a definitive Call To Action (CTA). Why? Because it helps audiences reflect on the content and empowers them to take action – whether that’s signing up for your email newsletter, following you on social media, downloading or sharing your content, or encouraging audiences to get in contact with your team – as this takes them one step closer to solving their problems and pain points. According to research from Hubspot, personalised calls to action convert 202% better than default or standard calls to action. Blair Williams, CEO of MemberPress explains, “You need to keep driving your audience to take action in some shape or form. People want an invitation to keep engaging with you – it’ll make your content marketing more effective.”
Remember: It isn’t enough to tell someone what to do next. You need to make your CTAs alluring and show the value your brand provides. Leaving your marketing message without a creative and persuasive CTA will only encourage your prospective customers to move elsewhere to get the answers they need. Marketers must strategise with the “end” of the customer journey in mind. A lot of weight hangs on that last touchpoint with the consumer. Successful content marketing connects the dots, bringing emotions, consumer insights, personalisation and informative information together so consumers arrive at the only logical choice that benefits them – to purchase your goods or services. This is how you convince consumers to make a purchase – by empowering them to make the best decision for themselves. For some CTA examples that are proven to convert, click here.
There’s no denying that when done right, content marketing is a proven strategy for creating brand awareness, building trust, educating audiences and boosting your ROI – but there are still many pitfalls in creating a strategy that truly works for your business. If you focus on quality over quantity, steer clear of hard-selling tactics and create educational content that solves your consumers' problems, analyse your content against measurable benchmarks and write compelling CTA’s that convert, you will be on track to increase conversions, build lasting relationships with your consumers and unlock your brand’s full potential.