It’s no longer news that content is king. The bone of contention is how to create an effective content marketing strategy that engages prospects and generates leads.
People love to buy but hate being sold to. The invasive all-in-your-face marketing antics of today is to blame for this guarded attitude of consumers toward marketing.
Content marketing tactfully draws prospects into the marketing process. Valuable information provided catches their attention and arouses their interest in your product. They click on it, willingly, to get more information.
A B2C Content Marketing Report shows that only 38% of B2C businesses take the time to document their content marketing strategy. Content may be a conversation starter, but it takes a well put-together strategy to close the deal.
Here are four signs that your content marketing strategy is broken:
1. Sign-ups from the wrong people
You create a content marketing strategy from scratch to finish. Everything looks good for a launch. The response is impressive. There’s an inflow of traffic to your site, and visitors are doing the needful – signing up. You couldn’t be happier. You have every reason to jubilate, more signs up, more sales.
It’s time to evaluate your prospects, and you realize that the majority of them don’t belong to your target market. They had clicked through your site for various reasons, but from all indications, they won’t buy your product.
Selling to the wrong people is counterproductive. Resources spent in nurturing them cannot be recuperated. Such a hassle can be prevented when you understand the persona of your ideal customer, and you are intentional about getting them.
Before you put pen to paper, conduct customer analysis to understand the demographics and psychographics of your target market. People pay attention to you when you speak a language they understand. Sieve out the wrong crowd by focusing on your targets.
2. No one is sharing your content
Great content gets passed on. There’s an inherent desire in people to share content that intrigues them. Conversations are more interesting when parties involved have an idea of the subject.
If people are “checking out” your content, and moving on without sharing it, it’s an indication that something is off.
Spending money on advertising can get your campaign in front of a number of people, but engagement isn’t guaranteed.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) may get you organic traffic, but what about consumers who don’t search products online?
According to Statista, there are over 3.69 billion people on social media in 2018. Social media is a huge market for brands to harness. You shouldn’t be selling to everyone on social media; many of them are out of your target market. Create share-worthy content for your own market. A single retweet gives you sales opportunities to an audience you never knew existed.
3. Mismatch in your backlink profile
Backlines are important in content marketing for SEO. Placing your content on highly ranked sites and getting backlinks, send strong signals to Google and the likes. It’s an indication that your content isn’t one of the many fluffs online.
Great SEO gives your content high ranking and earns you an enviable spot in SERPs. More people get to see it, and troop into your site.
High traffic is truly beneficial in content marketing when it yields favorable outcomes. If your backlink profile shows that the wrong sites are linking to yours, you’ll end up with unqualified leads.
For example, if backlinks are from sites in the parenting niches while your site is in the business niche, it’s a mismatch that needs to be corrected.
There are tools available online to assist you in conducting a link audit to ensure that your backlink profile matches perfectly with linking sites.
4. Using the wrong format
Content can be created in various formats. Blogging used to be the trend, but the growing popularity of YouTube gave rise to vlogging in 2005. Vlogging is basically the video form of blogging.
A 2017 Video In Benchmark Report shows that, on a daily basis, Americans spend 72 minutes watching an online video and read for 25 minutes. It’s evident that video messages are being consumed more than written ones.
Change isn’t always easy. There’s the tendency to want to stick to the old ways of doing things.
Marketing 101 states that you don’t create what you want but what consumers want. If consumers want video, by all means, give it to them.
In an era where consumer behavior is constantly changing, content marketing is one strategy that remains constant in its appeal. Rather than swinging side to side to be in sync with customers, focus on providing value. Once that’s in place, they’ll always have a reason to stick with you.
Featured Image Credit: Unsplash