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Why Is My Content Marketing Not Working?

Joel Conner • May 18, 2020

Learn how to Optimize your Content Marketing

There are a lot of businesses these days trying out content marketing. B2Bs, Small Businesses, B2Cs all make use of content marketing; many companies give it at least a weak try.

It is estimated that about 70% of all businesses make use of different content marketing strategies, which means a lot of businesses are trying it out. Although many companies are doing content marketing it doesn't mean that most of them are succeeding at it. 

Based on a report from the Content Marketing Institute, just about 5% of the B2C marketers get to see their efforts at content marketing as been "very effective. " This means, most time production of content doesn't seem to make much of an impact.

There's currently a kind of disconnection between what the marketers are involved in and that which is working. It is not false that content remains the present as well as the future of marketing.

Is there any success in content marketing? 

Just because a marketing term is in vogue, commonplace, or "trending" doesn't mean that it's worth it.

This article was written for businesses that are involved in online marketing but are not seeing the desired results. They have not seen the effectiveness of content marketing. 

Below are some reasons why you might be unsuccessful at content marketing. 

The first reason will be dealt with properly due to its importance. Let's see if you're familiar with any. 

1. Your Strategies are Missing the Mark. 

Just like other forms of marketing, you'll need to devise a strategy to enjoy some success in the market. 
It's surprising how a lot of businesses do not have a strategy to make their content marketing successful.  

Are most content marketing companies implementing any strategy? From the survey carried out the answer is no. 

This question was put forward first on this list for a reason. If you want to become successful at developing content, then you'll need to have a smart plan and some insight.

An effective strategy is important to be successful. Below are certain tips that will help you in developing a strategy:
  • A very successful strategy in content marketing begins with a definition of your goals. Get to know the numbers that move the bar for your business, keeping tabs on shares, traffic, views, purchases, form submissions, phone calls, etc and be able to track them properly. 
  • When you discover what you're doing is not effective, you must change your strategy.  
  • There are many content marketing agencies available, but they sometimes fail to do a thorough job as regards strategy. Some just take up the responsibility of sketching out your posting schedule, writing the articles, then sometimes helping you to publish. However, we here at Blue Swing Media consider strategy before we write the first word.  
  • Just publishing a bunch of blog posts is in no way an effective strategy. There is a big scope as regards the issue of marketing — search terms, searcher intent, audience as well as competition. So, just making random content isn't going to cut it. You need insight and a clear plan to dominate or at least compete.
Young man taking notes form his computer at a coffee shop

2. Your Content Fails to Provide Sufficient Value to the Reader.

Content marketing entails that content has to be produced, but we are concerned about the quality of the content as it has major importance. Developing and sending out crappy content doesn't tell well on your brand, and produces just a negative impact. This gives your brand a bad image and poor performance. In some cases, the content might have very poor quality as some writers lack the basic knowledge of your industry and as such can not be effective bloggers in the industry. 

3. Poor or Boring Presentation of Content. 

There are lots of articles that have some value but are presented in a way that is plain and boring. There is a need to develop very engaging media with depth, focus, and value. It is quite harder to stand out as a content writer at this time as there are a lot of people cranking out articles. 

To succeed, you'll have to create something that stands out a bit from others in the market. To achieve this doesn't come easily or cheaply and takes grit.

4. The Competition is Fierce! 

Business who are having very difficult times seeing results are those who are in quite difficult industries :
  • Industries where customers aren’t online.
  • Industries that are not very popular, mostly B2B. 
If you're involved in a very competitive vertical or space, you can't perform any magic to achieve quick success using content marketing. You'll need to develop a very sound strategy and then stick to it. 

Take Action: Develop a list of very effective players who are dominating search results in your industry or your niche. Learn their ways.

5. No Effort to Promote your Content.

Doing nothing after developing content is sure enough to undermine your effectiveness. 

Here's an explanation.

Some marketers assume that the business of content marketing just entails content creation. Then what? Certainly, the viewers will discover the content, then there will be an increase in traffic, people will look into it, then convert and we're sure to attract plenty of customers, right? 

Well, that's wrong! 

Developing content is just the first and foundational piece of content marketing. Then the other major half is the promotion of content. Let's split up content marketing into two major parts:
  • Content creation.
  • Promotion of content.
Which of the above are you actively doing which are you not carrying out? If you engage in active promotion, but just develop very little content, then you might enjoy more success than any company who is involved in a lot of content creation but just little promotion. 

Promoting your content is as significant as developing.

Take Action: If you're not involved in promoting your content, restrategize to spend more time promoting your content. 

Hand stopping a domino effect

6. You Give up to Early.

I have witnessed this occurrence numerous times. A company is so excited about creating and developing their blog because they see others getting results. Some write 5 articles, others write 10, some just write 3 and others even 1. Then no result is seen. 

They tend to believe it's not working and then give up. This has happened to some of our clients that have unrealistic expectations. Their posts seem not to have any traffic after some months and then they cancel. Unfortunately, those posts tend to become recognized a few months later but fail to reach their full potential. 

7. Their Domain is Young and Doesn't Have Authority. 

When you buy a domain initially, it is going to be lost in the large sea of other new domains on the internet. Also, there are about 359.8 million already registered domains on the web. Your new domain is seen as a "baby" by Google's algorithm. And most times search engines do not readily recognize these new sites as they assume they do not have many contents to present. 

8. There is no Consistency to Your Content Flow. 

Once you have something valuable and useful to share, your readers will come to appreciate your blogging routine or schedule, however, it is been carried out. Ensuring you post once a week or twice a month helps you communicate with search engines and readers that your blog means business. Also, long posts (1k+) often perform better in results and levels of engagement. 

If your major aim is to increase traffic numbers and attract some clicks to the site and your content, then you'll need to post more frequently. It's totally on you to develop a schedule that will suit you best. If your competition is posting much more frequently than you, watch out.

If you have just a small blog with a few co-workers, then brainstorming, creating, and publishing a new article multiple times in a month might seem difficult to carry out. Hence, a need to draw out an effective plan or take a look at working with a content marketing agency. When making plans for the campaign of your next product launch, create time to plan and outline your blog posts. 

Conclusion

There could be a lot of reasons why content marketing may not be working very well for you, and there are chances one of the reasons may be because you're involved in one of the issues listed above. Try to reach out to us if you require a professional content marketing analysis. That's the thing that we do best. 

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