These 4 Content Marketing Fails Are Fixable: Here’s How

When your content marketing program is starting, almost anything is likely to make a positive impact on your audience and your business goals. With minimal effort, you might see new consumers engaging with your business, brand conversations picking up speed, website visits increasing, or even more leads and sales inquiries rolling in.

As time goes on, you may find progress slows or stops altogether. Some of the causes may be things beyond your control, such as the competition for audience attention, shifts in consumption behaviors, or evolving consumer trends and needs. But some of the reasons are within your control. Even minor mistakes and missteps can throw your entire content program out of whack.

Here are four common mistakes often made by content marketing teams, along with signs, symptoms, and corrective actions to put your content engine back on course.

Mistake 1: Creating content without knowing your who, what, or why

Your content is great – it’s creative, well-written, and holds value for your audience. You’re producing tons of stories in a wide variety of formats for viewers to choose from, and you’re sharing them everywhere your consumers are likely to find them.

The problem is, according to your traffic and engagement metrics, the audience doesn’t seem to care. Your efforts don’t get much traction on any content platform, and those who view it move on quickly without engaging.

Signs to look for

Great content that doesn’t resonate or spark the desire to connect with your business may indicate your content lacks an audience focus or a clear content mission (aka your unique purpose). This often manifests as a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none syndrome – you aim to appeal to anyone and everyone instead of building deeper, subscribed relationships with the one audience group that stands to benefit most from your content.

Here are a few signs that you may be guilty of this:

• You publish content without knowing what success looks like or how your content works to help you achieve it.
• You can’t explain who your target audience is, what their needs and interests are, or what content they need to progress along the journey from casual viewer to active customer.
• Your content doesn’t speak from a unique point of view, leaving your audience struggling to distinguish your assets from those of your competitors.

Solution: Create a content marketing strategy

It’s common to think you need to cast the widest possible net with your content to get enough traction – who wants to miss an opportunity to connect with a potential customer? But even the highest-quality content in the world won’t help your business if you don’t have a clear view of why you’re creating it, for whom, or how it will help push your business towards its goals.

You can start to develop a content marketing strategy by answering these three questions:

• What goals do we want our content to help us accomplish, and what will that success look like?
• What audience stands to benefit most from the stories we share?
• How will we make those stories uniquely compelling and valuable, so they’ll stand out among our competition?

TIP: Time-strapped organizations often skip strategy creation because they think the sooner they get content assets into the market, the quicker they see results. But a content marketing strategy doesn’t have to be complex and time-consuming to build. In fact, you can use this guide to creating a strategy in simple steps.

Mistake 2: Your content is narcissistic and lacks empathy

You’ve worked hard to create content that puts your business in the spotlight and casts your experts as leading industry players. But while your unique views may be on an upswing, they’re not translating to an uptick in customer behaviors or inquiries.

This can happen when brands forget that content is a conversation – both parties need to see the benefit of the exchange. If your business talks a good game but fails to give its audience a voice, demonstrate an understanding of their problems, or express a genuine interest in providing help, your audience may see your content as irrelevant noise and refuse to engage more deeply.

Signs to look for

Content solely focused on your business, its offerings, and its views on relevant topics shows your business is more interested in speaking than listening – a sure turnoff for today’s marketing-fatigued consumers.

Remember, the goal isn’t just to get users to view your content, it’s to get them to take meaningful action on it – subscribe to your newsletters, register to download your lead-gen assets, or make a purchase. It’s hard to make that happen without earning their trust.

Here are a few signs you may be guilty of this:

• Your content talks about your products and solutions instead of the customer problems they solve.
• You start conversations on your social media platforms, but rarely respond to your community members’ comments or engage in relevant discussions that you didn’t start.
• Your content experience doesn’t make it easy for your audience to interact with your offerings on their own terms.

Solution: Make your audience the star of your content experience

Instead of focusing on your marketing goals, focus on your customers’ desired outcomes – and not just the transactional ones. Remember, consumers aren’t abstract constructs – they’re real people who want to be seen (and valued) as individuals. They have unique needs, goals, challenges, and passions – both business and personal. If your content experience shows an understanding of and empathy for those attributes, it will be much more likely to resonate.

The following content tactics and techniques are well suited to demonstrate a genuine interest in helping its customers achieve their goals:

• Use social media to create trust, not just transactions: Listen and engage in conversations among your social community members, especially those that your brand didn’t start.
• Drive participation with interactive content: Give audiences something to do, say, see, and feel – to express their views, opinions, and preferences, which helps them feel more personally connected to your content experience.
• Recognize customers and empower them to share their stories of success: Content like reviews, case studies, and testimonials let customers talk about your benefits in their own words, which can inspire other like-minded audiences to put their trust in your brand and the value it offers.
• Customize the information exchange: Giving your audience the ability to decide how, when, and what information they receive from your brand puts the power in their hands while keeping the channels of communication open. At the very least, offer subscribers the ability to opt-out of any type of message. If you have marketing automation capabilities, consider using segmentation and personalization techniques to tailor their content experience based on any interests, behaviors, and preferences they’ve shared with your business.

For example, AT&T Business created a series of four customized guides for its small and medium-sized business customers. Each addresses an IT-related growth challenge. But rather than sending all four to everyone on their mailing list, the company implemented a highly targeted distribution plan powered by AI technology.

The guides were published on the business intelligence site Quartz. Using Quartz’s proprietary machine-learning tool, AT&T (and its content partner Hearts & Science) tracked relevant site visitors, analyzed their on-site activities, and grouped them into 16 communities. Visitors were then served intelligent display ads personalized to the key characteristics of their affinity community and led them to the guide most appropriate for their distinct needs and use cases.