Why am I not getting results with Content Marketing?

So, you have decided to work the inbound of your company because you’ve realized that you need to position yourself in the market so that the right people will find you in the right moment. Beyond that, you know that this strategy will render excellent results to you mid-term and long-term, such as the rise in organic traffic and reduction of  CCA (cost of clients acquisition), for instance.

However, things have not gone as expected and you can’t identify the reason? Now we bring some strategic points that may become your Aquiles heel in case you don’t pay attention to each one of them. Understand why you are not having results with your content marketing.

Because I haven’t defined my strategy

Here at Contentools we have different materials that talk about the importance of a consistent strategy. The reason is, without a strategy, your chances of failure are really high! Just like people who are not dreamers can’t become achievers, companies without a strategy tend to become stuck, with no growth.

A good strategy is composed by personas, purchase journey, key-words, goals, and tone, crucial elements for content to generate value and for you to be able to assess whether the obtained result is satisfactory or whether you need to modify some point to improve!

As Neil Patel says in his blog:

A documented content strategy will eliminate “guesswork” and make for smarter marketing decisions.

It is good to remember that personas are semi-fictional characters created based upon your best clients, those clients that would take you to the peak of success as long as you had 1000 of them.  It is necessary to create a really complete profile, not only age, gender, profession, position at the company, but also lifestyle, day-to-day life and the struggles this persona goes through.  With a better knowledge of your target audience, you will be able to better direct your content and reach the right person at the right moment.

To reach the right person at the right moment, you need also to define how will your strategy behave at the different steps of your purchase journey. When they still don’t know they have a problem, how can you make them realize that? By creating broader contents at the top of the funnel. When you’ve realized what the problem is, what solutions may help them to solve it? Show them the solution (including the ones which are not directly connected to your product or service) in contents at the middle of the funnel. Defined a solution, from whom to buy? Show them your value with success cases, advantages, investments.  Answering these questions with specific and direct content for each one of these steps for each persona will get them to the point of decision regardless of the step in which they are, because they will be nourished with quality content to grow.

Realize that quality content is attached to your knowledge of the target audience and to the relationship that you’ll develop with them through these contents.  For that you will be required to structure a content map, that is, a content planning for each step, defining when and how to post it.
If you have 10 personas, make content at the top of the funnel to the 10, but if you have no content at the middle or the bottom, they will not evolve in the purchase journey, and this strategy will probably give you a lot of visitors but zero conversion.

That’s when goal setting comes in; what do you want to achieve with your content strategy?  Generating traffic, leads, sales? Maybe you want to build a perception of brand as an authority on the subject, to improve ranking in search engines, customer retention, anyways, you will need to choose where you want to go! Check the post of our CEO Emília Chagas to better understand these goals and to think about what you can set as the goal of your company. All the content that you create should contribute somehow to get you to your desired goal.

Because I’ve focused in just a few types of content

Do social posts bring results? Yes, they can bring a lot of traffic to your blog if you know how to use them in the advertisement of new contents. However, working only with social media does not generate indexation in the search engines, that is, you do not position yourself in Google enough to be easily found with social posts, you’ll only do it for blog posts.

Blog posts may help you to design the whole client journey, however, you will not have their data for contact and nourishment with specific material that will give you the speeding of your evolution to the purchase, if you don’t have some special content with which to provide your subscribers, for example. This is why ebooks, infographics, webinars, among other rich materials are important.

Countless download offers, that often bring just more of the same, but the same principle for those who are looking for a new job is applied here: there is always space for those who do a good job. To focus on special content, content that really brings something new and aggregates knowledge to subscribers, is certainly  going to prompt excellent results in leads conversion.  You will have a direct, closer contact with readers who are truly interested, highly increasing your sales opportunities. It is a good idea to check André Siqueira’s post where he talks about how to stand out in this red ocean.

Another option to get new leads very used here at Contentools, is the development of Co-marketing and guest posts generation. The first is marketing shared between two companies with the same target audience, aligning their interests and efforts to create together a bigger impact than they would have otherwise, through eBooks creations, infographics and several other joined content, with both brands. By doing Co-Marketing, not only you will reach some of your potential clients but perhaps your partner’s whole base, which allows both companies to better capitalize the efforts and take a big leap in material reach.

To create posts, invite an authority in a field that is discussed on your blog to create specific content for your audience. In exchange, you can do the same. It is also valid to use testimonials of other partners and create success cases. This is one way of using third party’s content in an original way, keeping the quality of your blog.

 

Because I haven’t put up enough time to get results with content marketing

Bear in mind that, regardless of the goal you set, you will not make it overnight. That is because content marketing requires dedication and time for its management.

Even if you outsource your production like crazy, nobody knows your business better than you do, and it is necessary to commit yourself to monitor the development of your content strategy, monitor its performance, collect feedbacks and constantly improve.

A blog post doesn’t get all its views in one day, it takes time for search engine indexation, that means that you will not be ranked at the top right off the bat. This may cause anxiety, but remember the upside: you have made something that will be available to the reader for as long as you want, this investment can keep bringing results, even long after it’s been posted. Different from isolated campaigns, that cost much more and have much more limited results.

Besides that, you will need to accumulate some amount of quality content in order to become a reference, it is normal for a blog with just a post to have low traffic and high bounce rate, after all there is nothing to read but that content alone.

Check Hubspot report, they show that companies with over 400 posts get the double of the traffic compared with those under the 400 posts mark.

Also: companies that published over 16 articles a month got 3.5 times more traffic than those that published up to 4 articles a month.

It is possible to see the importance of dedicating time for structuring a pre-set post attendance frequency and keeping it with a blog, right? This is one of the foundations of success in content marketing!

In conclusion

There are several actions that you can take to balance your strategy and get significant results. Of course you can still boost your inbound with sponsored links, as sometimes you’ll need a more immediate return. Just consider that the more you invest in them, the more expensive they get.

Now that we’ve helped you with the first steps, it is time to get your hands on, after all there is no rest for the content marketing wearies. It demands the involvement of the expert in the market (that is, you!) sharing all this knowledge and transforming it into real results (through content).

Defining flows, people in charge and deadlines is essential.  It may be difficult to save investment time for strategy, but you will be able to benefit from this same time by automatizing your processes. Not to mention that, once you have your key points set, you will only have to adjust the strategy with the analysis of the results you get along the way.

Remember that according to Content Marketing Institute:

Companies that have set their goals for content marketing have had five times more results than those which started without a clue.

See you next time!

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