7 signs that your content marketing "sucks"
Let's start with what content marketing is and how it should be. Ask the one who knows everything, Wikipedia.
In practice, it turns out that “content marketing” is more a buzzword than a long-term strategy of a company. Therefore, before deciding whether this promotion channel works for your business, ask yourself:
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In order to make it easier for you to answer this question, I will list to you 7 basic signs that your content marketing is worthless and you need to change something.
The first sign that you have gone the right way is the presence of direct advertising of your products or services in content marketing.
Do not misunderstand me, advertising of your products takes place, while if more than 30% of your publications contain an advertising character, this is no longer content marketing.
When you publish a selling promo video of your products or an article about why a customer should buy a particular product from you, do not expect readers to shout “Uraaa” enthusiastically, put likes and make repost.
Effective content marketing is built primarily on the basis of the needs of your audience, and not your needs to sell something to it.
First build a trusting relationship with your potential customers, and then go on to sales.
Keywords are the most important part of content marketing. After all, for it to work and bring results, it is necessary that your articles are read.
Keywords allow your content to appear in search results, thanks to which you get referrals to your blog and win readers.
Remember that if you do not use keywords, they are used by your competitors and will steal your customers from right under your nose.
Their addition will take no more than 5 minutes of your time, but in the future you will get customers.
Facts, statistics are important and interesting to readers, while if your content contains nothing more, it is difficult to perceive it.
It is really hard to add humor and personalization to the content at the initial stage of the funnel, when a visitor first came to your site and you still know nothing about it. But do not give up.
We all love the human approach and good humor. Write more from yourself, add a few jokes. Make your content more like a personal story than a review article containing only facts.
Content marketing appeared only due to the fact that we are moving from the “world of dry technologies” to the “world of handshakes”, where we need to be friends with clients and customer service has become number 1 factor when choosing who to purchase a product or service.
If it seems to you that you do not have time to visit the thematic forums, commenting on articles on blogs devoted to your topics and communicating with clients in social networks - you miss the point of building the right relationships with clients.
Content marketing is not the case when “if you want to do well, do it yourself”. No need to neglect outside help.
What kind of help can this be?
Answer yourself only 2 questions:
If you create content just because it is easy, you will be disappointed with the results. Effective content marketing should contain 2 things:
One cannot exist without the other, otherwise you will not get the desired result.
What happens after a potential customer leaves you with their contacts to get useful content? Does he receive an email or is his manager calling? Or are his contacts just gathering dust in your customer base?
If you do not have a clear plan for how to lead this client across the sales funnel: from getting contacts to selling, your content marketing is useless.
Part of the problem may be that your sales team is not dedicated to content marketing strategy. They make every effort to close the transaction, while they do not know all the subtleties of your business goals and plans, respectively, sales suffer.
To solve this problem, you need to bring together your entire sales team and take them across the entire funnel, from visiting the site and getting customer contacts to the first sale. This will help to effectively turn site visitors into buyers.
The popularity of content is rapidly gaining momentum in the online business, so content marketing is growing in price.
Becoming successful in this area is becoming more difficult and competitors are constantly breathing in the back.
But better late than never. Therefore, if you have not yet launched content marketing for your business, now is the time to start.
Successes!
Content marketing is a set of marketing techniques based on the creation and / or distribution of useful information for the consumer in order to gain trust and attract potential customers. Content marketing involves the preparation and distribution of high-quality, relevant and valuable information, which is not advertising, but which indirectly convinces the audience to make the necessary decision to the distributor, to choose his service. The advantages of content marketing are that it effectively attracts the attention of the audience, helps to gain trust and unobtrusively promotes a product or service on the market.
So, we get that content marketing should first of all be useful, win the audience and attract potential customers, and lastly, unobtrusively promote a product or service.
In practice, it turns out that “content marketing” is more a buzzword than a long-term strategy of a company. Therefore, before deciding whether this promotion channel works for your business, ask yourself:
')
“Is it possible that what you are doing can be called content marketing?”
In order to make it easier for you to answer this question, I will list to you 7 basic signs that your content marketing is worthless and you need to change something.
1. Buy, buy, well, buy the same ...
The first sign that you have gone the right way is the presence of direct advertising of your products or services in content marketing.
Do not misunderstand me, advertising of your products takes place, while if more than 30% of your publications contain an advertising character, this is no longer content marketing.
When you publish a selling promo video of your products or an article about why a customer should buy a particular product from you, do not expect readers to shout “Uraaa” enthusiastically, put likes and make repost.
Effective content marketing is built primarily on the basis of the needs of your audience, and not your needs to sell something to it.
First build a trusting relationship with your potential customers, and then go on to sales.
2. Ignoring "Keywords".
Keywords are the most important part of content marketing. After all, for it to work and bring results, it is necessary that your articles are read.
Keywords allow your content to appear in search results, thanks to which you get referrals to your blog and win readers.
Remember that if you do not use keywords, they are used by your competitors and will steal your customers from right under your nose.
Their addition will take no more than 5 minutes of your time, but in the future you will get customers.
3. Dry facts and no personalization.
Facts, statistics are important and interesting to readers, while if your content contains nothing more, it is difficult to perceive it.
It is really hard to add humor and personalization to the content at the initial stage of the funnel, when a visitor first came to your site and you still know nothing about it. But do not give up.
We all love the human approach and good humor. Write more from yourself, add a few jokes. Make your content more like a personal story than a review article containing only facts.
Content marketing appeared only due to the fact that we are moving from the “world of dry technologies” to the “world of handshakes”, where we need to be friends with clients and customer service has become number 1 factor when choosing who to purchase a product or service.
4. You only speak, but do not listen to your customers.
“The first thing companies need to do in order to get results from content marketing is to think about what customers want, what would be interesting for them and how you can give it to them. In other words, content should be more an independent product than part of marketing or advertising. ”Robert Rose, CSO Content Marketing Institute
Marketers begin by identifying the needs and wishes of their audience, and then move on to how to meet these needs and bring useful content.
If it seems to you that you do not have time to visit the thematic forums, commenting on articles on blogs devoted to your topics and communicating with clients in social networks - you miss the point of building the right relationships with clients.
5. Do it all alone.
Content marketing is not the case when “if you want to do well, do it yourself”. No need to neglect outside help.
What kind of help can this be?
- Involve your employees in content creation. Show them that their participation in the company's content-marketing strategy will bring them career growth and dividends.
- Use third-party content and case studies. There is nothing wrong with posting content from other companies on your blog, the main thing is to add your thoughts, statistics or facts to it and indicate the source.
- Involve your social media subscribers in creating content. This is a great way to get loyalty, identify needs and learn to listen to your customers.
- Outsourcing large projects. Order some large-scale research, articles or video content from professional companies. You will receive not only high-quality content from market experts, but also an objective view from the side on your niche and business.
6. Lack of concentration on the main thing - in business.
Answer yourself only 2 questions:
- What do you want the client to do after reading your article or e-book?
- Does your content lead the client to this targeted action?
If you create content just because it is easy, you will be disappointed with the results. Effective content marketing should contain 2 things:
- Storytelling (eng. Storytelling)
- Focus on ensuring that this storylling matches your business objectives.
One cannot exist without the other, otherwise you will not get the desired result.
7. Your leads are stuck in the sales funnel.
What happens after a potential customer leaves you with their contacts to get useful content? Does he receive an email or is his manager calling? Or are his contacts just gathering dust in your customer base?
If you do not have a clear plan for how to lead this client across the sales funnel: from getting contacts to selling, your content marketing is useless.
Part of the problem may be that your sales team is not dedicated to content marketing strategy. They make every effort to close the transaction, while they do not know all the subtleties of your business goals and plans, respectively, sales suffer.
To solve this problem, you need to bring together your entire sales team and take them across the entire funnel, from visiting the site and getting customer contacts to the first sale. This will help to effectively turn site visitors into buyers.
Findings:
The popularity of content is rapidly gaining momentum in the online business, so content marketing is growing in price.
Becoming successful in this area is becoming more difficult and competitors are constantly breathing in the back.
But better late than never. Therefore, if you have not yet launched content marketing for your business, now is the time to start.
Successes!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/294648/
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