What Companies Get Wrong About Content Marketing

Inbound marketing is a lure that attracts companies of all kinds, but few understand the effort necessary to achieve success. After a while, “We tried content marketing but it didn’t work for us.” I hear it from potential clients all the time.

Entrepreneurs are skeptical about making an investment that may not pay off, so they become cautious and are ready to pull the plug at the first sign they’re wasting money. It’s not a given that they aren’t wasting money. There’s an epidemic of half-hearted content marketing going around that’s giving the entire inbound philosophy a bad reputation.

So, when I hear potential clients say they’ve tried content marketing but didn’t see results, these could be the reasons why.

Why your content marketing efforts might be missing the mark

Content marketing isn’t new. The ideas have been around for decades. No business professional is unfamiliar with a blog, search engine traffic, or social media.

Most company blogs have fluffy, self-centered content: pictures from their clean-up day at the local park, press-release style articles about promotions and employee of the month winners. Or, it’s full of content that feels derivative and identical to a thousand other articles on the internet. I’m not surprised this kind of content failed to bring customers in. Minimal effort, minimal results.

We tried content marketing…

Are you one of those companies that “tried” content marketing only to see poor results? I bet you got out of it what you put in. This happens for a few all-too-common reasons. I’ve seen dozens of companies fail because of these same few mistakes.

1. There wasn’t a clear owner of your content marketing

If content marketing is something that gets added to other responsibilities, it will fall by the wayside. You can’t ask someone who already has a full-time job to also produce and implement a full-scale content marketing strategy. This is, in itself, a full-time job.

2. You played it safe

To me, content marketing is about educating the customer. It’s about building trust and being transparent so that your potential buyers can access the information they need to become customers. That means you have to address tough topics. That means you have to offer honesty instead of sales talk. When we tell companies they need to communicate to their buyers the specific drawbacks and weaknesses of their products, some decide to play it safe, undermining the whole effort.

3. You didn’t have a framework

If you don’t have a plan, you won’t get very far. A framework gives you structure and benchmarks. Without it, you have guesswork and inconsistency, which can quickly lead to frustration.

4. You hired a poor agency to produce your content for you

The reason I’ve seen most content marketing initiatives fail is that companies hire ill-prepared agencies or freelancers. At first, it seems like a good idea, but the results are almost always disappointing. Sometimes they produce the same bland, generic content as everyone else in your industry, but it doesn’t work for you.

… But it didn’t work for us.

There’s something to unpack here as well. What do you mean it didn’t work for you? How did you plan to measure success? Any marketing initiative has to be measured in order to be evaluated, and those measurements need context to mean anything.

Mistakes business leaders make in their content marketing strategies

Mistake one: focusing on the wrong metrics

The inbound funnel is a compelling idea: if you get enough traffic to your site, a percentage of that traffic will convert into leads and a percentage of those leads will convert into sales. So people assume that more traffic will equal more sales. Not necessarily. While organic traffic is important, it can also be a vanity metric that distracts you from more important goals. Imagine this:

• Article A gets 10,000 views per month and brings in 10 customers.
• Article B gets 2,000 views per month and brings in 20 customers.
• Article C gets 500 views per month and brings in 50 customers.

Too often, companies chase after article A, focusing on high-traffic content that doesn’t end up converting visitors into customers. Which brings us to our second mistake.

Mistake two: not involving sales

The inbound approach isn’t just about marketing. In fact, if you limit it to just marketing, you reduce the results. Inbound is as much about sales as it is about marketing.

If you don’t involve your sales team in your content marketing, you’re more likely to produce a library of Article A-type content. Marketers love to brag about reach, and what’s more encouraging than thousands of website visitors?

The sales team will bring your marketing team down to earth. Since your sales reps talk to real customers every day, they know what questions your prospective customers are actually asking. They know why Article C is the best use of your team’s time.

The promise of content marketing

I understand that companies get into content marketing for a variety of reasons. But in most cases, the goal is to increase revenue. Brand recognition is great, but for most companies I work with, it only matters if it translates into sales at the end of the funnel.

When I hear business leaders tell me that content marketing didn’t work for them, it’s often because they were chasing brand recognition metrics (organic traffic, social media engagement, etc.)—and were probably working with a poor agency or engaging in an inconsistent effort.

It’s no surprise that the results didn’t materialize.

To get content marketing right, we need to become familiar with the real goals that matter, train our employees for excellence, and be ready for a long-term commitment. Anything less will produce disappointing results.

Taken from Hubspot