Content marketing has slowly gained popularity in recent years in the corporate world. Marketing departments have opted to direct considerable resources into content marketing so as to raise awareness of new and emerging brands within their organizations. It has proven to be an effective tool to attract new clientele without having to necessarily sell to them. This is owing to the fact that content marketing is mainly an informative marketing technique as opposed to a selling one. However, many companies make some mistakes that jeopardize their content marketing strategies and methods. Let’s delve into some of the most common content marketing mistakes that marketing managers should avoid.
Insufficient Groundwork
Before a company launches any content marketing activity, one has to know the reason and/or purpose for conducting the activity. This is essential on determining the parameters for the success and failure of the activity. This will give the general direction for which the team involved will follow, determine the target audience and alter the strategy as progress is monitored. When insufficient groundwork is done by the team involved, then the content marketing strategy employed will be ineffective, lack direction and fail to communicate to the intended target audience.
Pitching the Product at Every Stage
According to Ben Russel who is a content marketing manager at SolidEssay.com, many content managers fail to understand that content marketing is not meant to directly influence sales. The main aim of content marketing is the creation of awareness of a new brand or product within a given market. As such, it is only aimed at attracting new customers on the basis of facts as opposed to making sales. Readers of the content will tend to gravitate towards content that gives value to them as opposed to content that is boastful of the company’s achievements and milestones.
Neglecting the Customer
As highlighted previously, most content marketing activities involve bragging about the company’s milestones and achievements. These strategies neglect the customer and fail to connect with them. For a content marketing activity to be successful, it has to connect with the customer by making them feel that the information about the given brand or product relates to them in one way or another. The content has to focus on the prospective clients as it is the main purpose of content marketing. All the strategies have to be geared towards creating information that focuses on the client and their needs as opposed to focusing on the company and its achievements. By neglecting the customer, the content only achieves in dissuading the client from considering the product or brand in question. This is detrimental to the content marketing efforts.
Disregarding the Call to Action
In order for a content marketing strategy to be effective, it has to involve the customer actively. This means that the prospective customer has the opportunity to give their comments or opinions regarding the product, brand or content that the company has chosen to employ. This can be done by requesting prospective clients who have viewed the content to contact management through the social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter. This may also be enhanced by calling the customers to openly communicate about the product or brand with the public, giving them a call to action. This is important as the main aim of content marketing is creating an informative channel on the given brand or product.
Recycling or Repurposing
While repurposing and recycling content is usually a good way to maintain a company’s or brand’s value in the eyes of its loyal customers, it may become cliché as time goes by. Creativity is an essential part of content marketing. In order for the customer to connect with the content, it is important that content is packaged and presented in a creative manner that attracts the customer’s attention and keeps them reading. This is vital to ensure relevance of the content in the market as it has to be tuned to the prevailing fashions and tastes in the market.
In conclusion, content marketing is vital to the success of any marketing department in the business world today. However, in order for content marketing to be effective, it has to avoid common mistakes such as insufficient groundwork, pitching the product at every stage, neglecting the customer, disregarding the call to action and recycling or repurposing. These mistakes render the content marketing strategy ineffective.
Author bio: Ben works as a content marketing manager at www.solidessay.com, which is a college paper writing service. He helps to promote various essay writing guides that can be found in the company’s blog and is also in charge of their Google+ account.