5 Common Mistakes You Should Avoid in Content Marketing

Have you ever wondered what would be the smartest investments you can make in your business? Well, we know the answer to that question: Content Marketing. One of the most effective marketing strategies available today, Content Marketing has been proven to deliver the most resounding success. It is a great method of growing your audience engagement, developing your brand presence, and driving sales. 

However, Content Marketing is easy to mess up, and many marketers find themselves at a crossroads oftentimes. What should you do to improve your marketing plan? Follow best practices and avoid these common content marketing mistakes that many companies make when they start out on their content journey. In this article, we’re going to walk through the top 5 most common content marketing mistakes that cost businesses lots of dollars per year, and what you should do to avoid them. 

Not having a clear Content Marketing strategy 

A documented content marketing strategy is the secret to an effective marketing machine. And yet, according to  Content Marketing Institute’s 2019 B2B Benchmarks report,  39% of marketers don’t have one. You may think that just ‘doing’ content marketing is enough, but the truth is you have to be following a framework in order to achieve your goals.

Everything you create is intended to achieve your brand goals. Do you want to raise awareness or promote a new product? Planning to reach a new audience or drive sales? A good strategy gives you focus and clarity, helping you brainstorm better ideas, refine brand messaging, and create cohesive content that will really move the needle.

Not researching what your audience needs

Before getting started with the actual content strategy and content writing, you need to know exactly who you’re writing for. You’ve probably heard of creating customer/buyer personas. These are fictional representations of buyers you want to target with your marketing. 

A huge mistake that many businesses do is not having the data for contouring an authentic, relatable customer persona. Because the key to understanding your audience is research. Get to know your audience through feedback forms, surveys, and market research. Marketing personas are a great way to make your audience feel more personal, and it’s often easier to write for one person instead of a whole group.

Ignoring other content opportunities

Another misunderstanding, frequently overlooked, is the idea that Content Marketing only means writing blogs with no images or links – we will get to the SEO best practices soon – that can easily be mistaken for a page from the history book. 

Nowadays, content creation has to be visual now. That’s a given. According to HubSpot, the main type of media used in content marketing is video. But if you do not have the resources to create quality video content, you should probably know that the majority of top-ranking content-marketing pieces contain at least one image.

Moreover, emails are valuable content too. A successful email marketing campaign can help you build a massive subscriber base, which means keeping your brand and service fresh in readers’ minds.

Fun fact: Did you know that top-performing email campaigns report achieving an ROI greater than $70 per $1 investment? 

Not inviting SEO to the party 

In the world of search engine optimization, the combination of ever-evolving practices, changing algorithms, and new AI technology present their own challenges. But that’s no excuse to be unfocused. Search engines drive 10x more traffic to your website than any other marketing channel. Being said that, investing in SEO should be your first priority when trying to grow your business. 

You can start with the basics, like keyword research or intern linking optimization and then move on to more advanced tactics and techniques to improve your overall organic traffic. If you need additional help, you can always turn to a professional Content Marketing online course to improve your skills.

What’s worth mentioning here is that both content marketing and SEO are long-term marketing strategies, so they require a lot of time and effort. But the results will be more than you’ve ever expected.

Not having clear KPIs

Finally, the biggest content marketing mistake that we see businesses make is failing to take the time to review the performance of their efforts. Like any other business process, integral to the efficacy of content marketing is the ability to improve it with each iteration. One can only do that, however, by identifying which areas didn’t perform as intended and which did best, and that requires data. 

Take the time every three months to break down the results you have achieved. Did you ge more trafic? Wich pages performed best? What keywords are ranking the highest? What type of content did your users engage with the most?

Content marketing mistakes are easy to make. But, fortunately, they’re also easy to fix too. As long as you’re focused on truly helping your audience, you’re in a great starting position for success. If you want to gain more information on how to create a high-quality content marketing plan, along with other valuable skills for your overall digital marketing strategy, an online digital marketing course could give you the necessary knowledge. If you need help you can contact us anytime!