We hear the term “content marketing” everywhere nowadays.
Whether it’s starting a YouTube channel, running a business online, or starting a website, it seems as if the one thing these businesses have in common is creating content and marketing it effectively to consumers online.
However, creating engaging content that helps expand your customer base is easier said than done.
Without the right team, research tools, and expertise, you might find yourself facing significant content marketing challenges that can hinder your growth and search rankings.
Fortunately, there are ways to improve your content marketing and attract more customers. Below are 7 content marketing challenges and how to solve them.
1. Not Creating Relevant and Useful Content
The purpose of creating content is to help audiences make informed purchasing decisions as well as influencing their purchasing choice by establishing your business as a leader in your field.
This is difficult to do when content is not useful and not relevant. There is a difference between the two.
- Content usefulness refers to the ability of content to help a customer’s goals and help them make a purchasing decision.
- Content relevance refers to the sophistication, timeliness, and overall expertise of content, and whether or not it is relevant to what a buyer is looking for.
These two factors are incredibly important in influencing purchasing decisions.
Let’s say someone is trying to search up content on how to install vinyl planks into their home. They want to look up a simple article that is relevant to the topic at hand and provides instructions, helps them make purchasing decisions on what tools to use, and is useful in actually helping them learn how to install flooring.
If your content hits all of these marks, the buyer is more likely to trust your site and your products, therefore leading to higher sales.
However, the opposite is true for content that is not relevant or useful. Around 71% of consumers said that content that is too general, vague and basic is pointless.
To generate better leads, avoid these three characteristics in your content.
Make sure your content pieces are thoroughly researched, up-to-date in whatever field you are in (such as technology, automotive industries, etc.), and provide useful and relevant information to your consumer.
2. Failing to Know What Your Audience Wants
Did you know that the average person only spends around 37 seconds reading through a blog post before leaving? In addition, 72% of readers said they would rather watch a video than read through a post.
This means that users want information quickly and efficiently, without any fluff or filler.
Unfortunately, not every content creator will keep this in mind when creating content, or know what format to use for their blogs, how long a blog article should be, or even if a video is a better option.
Not knowing this type of information can lead to creating content that is not engaging for users and turns them away.
Fortunately, there is an easy solution to this, which includes looking at competitor companies and examining their strategies.
For instance, let’s say you want to create a video on how to make almond milk at home. An easy way to create content that helps users is to look at the top-ranking videos or blog posts online.
Use their format to help guide your new content, and learn what users are looking for in the video.
The comment section on a blog or video can provide a wealth of information on what users are looking for in content, as can survey tools.
3. Not Knowing Which Mediums to Use For Content
It’s important to understand that different mediums will work well for different types of content.
For instance, if you want to create a food site blog and share a recipe, a blog post or short video can a great medium to use. A podcast, on the other hand, might not be a good choice for short recipes.
Content research can, again, prove to be very useful in this realm.
In addition, creating content through unique mediums, such as interactive quizzes, can help increase user engagement and make your website stand out among the rest of the competition.
Whichever medium you choose to use, make sure to use a variety of channels and formats to market your content, such as through videos on YouTube, podcasts, blogs, and more.
4. Not Producing Enough Content
It can be difficult to continue to produce content on a daily, weekly, or even bi-weekly basis.
Creating content is a lengthy process, even for blog posts. In fact, 29% of people said they spent at least 2 to 3 hours creating a single post for their website.
If you have a full-time job in addition to creating your website, or you just don’t have the skills necessary to create blogs, videos, and podcasts, outsourcing this type of work to content creators is a great option.
Outsourcing your work allows you to hire the best talented writers, freelance photographers, editors, video editors, and other content creators to help propel your business in a fraction of the time it would going it alone.
Keep this in mind if you feel stuck in your journey toward creating a broad and engaging website.
The solution might be as simple as hiring others to produce content for you, while you can focus on other aspects of your business such as research, business presentations for investors, or focusing on your other businesses.
5. Not Using KPIs For Your Business
It can be difficult to understand how well your content is working without using the proper content engagement tools.
That’s why key performance indicators, known as KPIs, are incredibly valuable for your website. Without KPIs, it is difficult to know:
- Which types of formats work best.
- Which content or platform to focus on for more success.
- Which content to update or remove due to lack of performance.
- If your marketing strategies are working to meet your business goals.
Fortunately, there are simple KPI tools that successful businesses use, including:
- Google Analytics
- YouTube Analytics
- Hootsuite
- Frase
- SEMrush
In addition, around 95% of leading marketers stated that KPIs must be tied to actual business goals to matter.
For instance, if you want to measure brand awareness, then measuring the organic traffic to your website is a good KPI.
Email sign-ups can help you measure the rate at which your customers find your content useful and want to make purchasing decisions (either now or in the future).
These are just two examples of KPIs, and how measuring them can greatly improve your content marketing and translate to meeting goals for your business.
6. Content Never Seen By Audience
Sadly, a whopping 90.63% of content never sees any traffic from Google searches.
This is primarily due to companies not understanding how to properly optimize their content, comprehend what audiences are looking for on Google, and failing to use search engine optimization, or SEO, principles to their advantage.
Admittedly, SEO best practices can be a bit difficult to understand and utilize properly for new digital marketers.
However, some basic SEO principles that can improve your traffic include:
Conducting keyword research
Keyword research through sites like Ahrefs, Google Trends, and Semrush allows you to understand the specific phrases people are looking for, such as “Indoor plant care,” or “Indoor plant care for beginners,” or “Indoor plant care in winter.”
There are many different possibilities, which makes it important in order to understand which of these keywords are being researched most, and which of these you can create content for.
Creating backlinks
When a website posts a link to your content, this is a huge win for you and can greatly improve traffic and visibility.
That’s because Google deems your site credible enough to link to, therefore increasing your search rankings and leading to more visibility.
There are various ways to improve your backlinking, such as:
- Reaching out to websites that have outdated links on their pages.
- Posting quality content that is easy for viewers to digest.
- Using authoritative sights as sources.
7. Giving Up Too Soon Due to Unrealistic Expectations
It can take a minimum of 6 to 9 months, if not years, for your content to truly engage with audiences and be effective at generating leads.
However, although advertisements and other types of paid campaigns can also help you increase customers and generate leads quickly, there are lots of benefits to digital and content marketing.
Content takes time to build. It takes time to create quality content and share that information with the public via an aesthetically pleasing website.
It also takes time to build up your reputation as a brand and rank on Google search engine pages. But it is worth the hard work for companies that want to continue to see an increase in traffic as the days and months progress.
High-quality content will continue to drive traffic online, provided you continue to update your content.
It’s important to understand this when first beginning your digital marketing campaign, and to not give up if you don’t see results right away.
An easy way to improve your outlook on digital marketing is to create realistic SMART goals for your content marketing campaign, which are goals that are:
- Specific (align to a business goal, such as improving awareness or generating leads).
- Measurable (through KPIs).
- Attainable (depending on the size of your employees and budget).
- Realistic (based on your availability and those of your team).
- Timely (set using a timeline, such as I want 16 visitors a day on my website 1 month from now).
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Content marketing challenges might lead you to get discouraged or even give up on your brand or website.
However, with the help of SMART goals, knowledge on best practices for content marketing, and the right team, you can create content that generates leads and grows trust in your brand.
To get help creating the right team for your content marketing, find ways on how to manage your content marketing team and keep your eye on the prize of continued growth.
