Common Marketing Challenges: Content Marketing
Content marketing has never been more important but there are many challenges that make it rather difficult to carry out in today’s media landscape. Let’s look at some things that might be keeping you up at night – and, more importantly – how to overcome them.
Maintaining high content quality
THE CHALLENGE: Producing content is simple. Producing great content can be much harder. There’s lots of pressure to ‘always be publishing.’ I think it all comes down to insufficient resources. It takes a whole lot of skill to consistently create high quality content. It also takes a lot of time and time and resources are often limited – particularly for small business who tend to carry out content marketing tasks in-house. And it goes to reason that if businesses don’t have time to develop content then they ought to turn to someone else to do it. But, you know, “fast, good, and cheap” is a pipedream.
HOW TO OVERCOME IT: Come to terms with the fact that whether you outsource your content marketing or do it yourself, it’s going to cost you. Either you are ready to invest the time necessary to create awesome content or you’re going to shell out a bit of money and outsource content production.
If you’re a content marketer yourself, struggling with creating unique quality content, take time to develop your writing skills! Also, it does more harm than good if you agonize over what everyone else is doing. Yes, be aware of evolving content trends and standards but stick to working towards making your latest post better than your last one.
Increasing competition
THE CHALLENGE: No matter your industry, I’m betting it’s a crowded marketplace. It’s becoming more and more challenging to grab your audiences’ attention. The problem isn’t that there aren’t enough communication channels (there are!) but that your audience is overwhelmed with content.
HOW TO OVERCOME IT: How do you stand out in an oversaturated market? There are no sure things in content marketing but quality over quantity is your best bet. Get to know your audience and only create the best content that will resonate with them. Take the time to create excellent content and then actively promote it across multiple platforms.
Difficulty measuring ROI
THE CHALLENGE: Quantifying your content marketing efforts’ return on investment can prove tricky. Even with all the analytics technologies available, proving that your marketing works is something that even the large publishers deal with.
HOW TO OVERCOME IT: As always, what are your goals? What do you want your content marketing to achieve? Maybe it’s lead generation, or expanding your social audience, or positioning your brand as a credible thought leader.
Once you have clearly defined goals, determine how you are going to measure ROI. If you’re tracking leads generated from your blog, set up Google Analytics (or a similar tool) with conversion paths. If you’re hoping to garner more social attention, you can track your content’s impact on social with tools like Facebook Insights. Just make sure you don’t get distracted by vanity metrics like pageviews!
Targeting content
THE CHALLENGE: For content to be successful it needs to speak to a specific person. Personalizing every piece of content and making sure it addresses a potential customer’s needs, wherever they are in their buyer journey is a big ask. For content to be effective, it needs to resonate with its intended audience and a one-size-fits-all approach won’t suffice.
HOW TO OVERCOME IT: To create targeted content, you must know where that audience is in their journey. Depending on where they are in their buying process, your content might need to explain what your company does, draw attention to your products or services that will solve a problem they may face, differentiate your company from competitors, or make sure they have all pertinent information to confidently purchase.
The key to creating truly targeted content is understanding who your buyers are. Have you developed detailed personas? Be sure to check out this post on creating buyer personas. And if you think you might just need to brush off your profiles, we’ve got you covered on that front, too!
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This is only the tip of the iceberg. Content marketers also struggle with burnout, creating an effective editorial calendar, incorporating paid promotion trends, and more. However, working towards better understanding your audience, aligning your activities with an overall strategy, and carving out the time to do all that will help you accomplish your goals.
More from this series:
Common B2B Marketing Challenges
Common Marketing Challenges: Part 2
