Welcome to Day 17 of the Crafting Your Content Marketing Strategy Challenge!
Content marketing is very powerful, but sometimes people start trying to do it without fully understanding how to do it and why they’re doing it. The truth is, just putting up any type of content without a purpose or a call to action is not going to impact your business in the way that well-planned content marketing will. Let’s look at the content marketing pitfalls that you will want to avoid going forward.
#1 Creating Content Without Knowing Why
Before you even start creating an outline for any piece of content, ensure that you know what your goals are for the content. Whether you create it, buy it, or curate it, there must be a point for it existing before you do it.
#2 Sharing Content That Has No Point for Your Audience
When you create content, it’s imperative that you first think about the exact prospect or customer that the content is for so that you can use the right terms and give them just the right information at the right time.
#3 Not Continuing to Study Your Ideal Audience
Remember that even if you researched your audience six months ago, you should still be studying them. Audience characteristics often stay the same, but their behavior and thoughts change. Imagine if Dove tried to sell their soap products today in the same way they did 50 years ago, for example.
#4 Not Adding CTAs
Calls to action not only give your readers and viewers something to do after they consume the content (the next thing). It also is your reason for creating the content. It’s the why and the point of the content that you need to ensure that you know before doing any of the work.
#5 Avoiding Following Up
Once you make one content with a potential buyer, it’s important that you keep finding ways to touch base with them. It can take 7 to 14 touchpoints before a new prospect is ready to make a purchase. Find ways and excuses to follow up more every chance you get – from thank you notes to surveys, and more.
#6 Ignoring Search Engine Optimization
SEO may seem like hocus pocus, but it’s actually very powerful if used correctly. Learn all that you can about on-page and off-page SEO so that you know how to write compelling titles, calls to action, and ensure that search engines help your ideal audience find you.
#7 Not Setting Up a Marketing Funnel
When you take the time to create a marketing funnel, it will make marketing tasks simple to determine. You’ll be able to help the customer follow their journey through the buying cycle. Your funnel will provide you a visual model and framework to monitor and analyze your impact.
#8 Not Making Plans Based on Your SMART Goals
The other thing that is very important for your ability to use content marketing successfully is to learn all you can about developing SMART goals. When you use this powerful way of setting goals, you won’t go back.
#9 Not Setting Up Metrics Based on Your KPIs
When you set your SMART goals, you will also determine the key performance indicators or data points that you need to check using the technology you set up for each goal you set.
#10 Not Even Looking at Your Data
It’s shocking how few marketers look at their data, which makes repeat success very difficult. If you mind your metrics and analyze the data that you produce, you’ll vastly improve all your content marketing efforts.
If you plan for the full life cycle of every piece of content that you develop, publish, and share, you’re more likely to experience success with content marketing.
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