Top 10 Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Strategy is Totally Failing

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It’s ‘Content’ with which the ‘Search’ began!

Content marketing is indubitably, one of the best marketing techniques that has become the backbone of digital marketing today. It has reached beyond the shadow of doubt about its effectiveness.

According to the 2018 B2B content marketing statistics from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 93% of the most successful B2B content marketers report that their organization is very committed to content marketing.

It is the most cost-effective means of reaching out to your audience, and making impact on them. A Demand Metric report indicates that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates three times as many leads.

As a matter of course, to reap the returns of all your content marketing efforts and investments, you need to first make sure that you performing it right!

Are you sure, you’re doing it right?

Content marketing isn’t a cake walk, its rather a path with scattered banana peels that you need to simply skip over and get ahead. Identifying those camouflaged peels, is prerequisite for that. Else you would end up wondering about why are you losing the foothold.

In case you’re already cudgelling your brain about this, hold on! You need to go through some mistakes that might be happening here!


Table Of Content

Mistake #1: Bad Writing and Editing

That is the first thing you should consider, obviously! Content writing is not just about pulling up a topic and simply writing about it. You need to be sure about the topic, create a plan in your mind about how will you shape up the content while making twists wherever required, apart from hundreds of considerations for generating interest among your readers.

Writing definitely requires a thought process. A well-thought about topic flavors your write-up with confidence. If you are not able to create well-written, valuable and error-free content, you surely could be hurting your business.

You can’t afford losing your business because of this, can you? Make it certain, to create high-quality content for better site ranking, credibility, and improved traffic on your website!

Mistake #2: Fancy Heading or Title

Sometimes in a bid to catch quick attention of the reader, writers pick a catchy title that does not even match or relate with the content following it. Of course, such a heading grabs attention of the reader but for a very short span of time.

Imagine you catch a glimpse of a heading claiming about a never-before slimming formula that works within a week, and as you go ahead reading rest of the content, you find out that it was just about a common herb growing in your backyard. You’d feel cheated, won’t you!

A title is what the readers click on the post for. They wish to read further about the topic. It gets very exasperating for them to find that the title and the content do not match, so they abandon such a page with the blink of an eye.

At the same time, the content loses its credibility, forget conversion!

Smart copywriting tips can enhance your content manifold, and can turn your marketing copy to a sales copy!

Mistake #3: Clogging the Content-Flow with Brand Mentions

This is the one of the most common mistakes which occurs when a brand or business mention is tried to fit in the content, just beside the point. The culprit here is the perception among marketers that makes them try to link everything with the brand, to get the brand ‘maximum benefits’, whether it looks fine or not.

For example, you’re writing about harmful effects of smoking and you blatantly mention of some liniment for headache, of a certain brand. Won’t you just stop and ponder about its mention here? You may even leave the page by cause of this.

This ruins the impact of your content, making the reader feel confused, lost, cheated and leave the page right away.

John Hall, co-founder and adviser of Influence & Co., a content marketing agency, has rightly said, “In general, you should avoid all mentions of your company that don’t enhance the reader’s understanding of the message you’re trying to convey.”

Mistake #4: Thinning the Content (Less Concentrated content)

Thinning of the content has nothing to do with its short length. Even the one paragraph post by Seth Godin cannot be termed as ‘thin’.

Thin Content refers to the content that fails to provide valuable information to its readers. This happens especially when the writer needs to write on a small topic, that does not carry enough scope for content, but the writer needs to showcase their effort.

As a result, the content lacks value concentration, and rather looks too diluted for the reader, to stick to it!

So, it’s better to write short but condensed and informative content that engages the reader till the end.

Mistake #5: Inadequate Topic Coverage

Thinning of the content happens when either the topic is too narrow to have enough scope of writing, or when the writer does not have much information of it. Well, sometimes the topic is too wide for the writer to put it all in words, and they end up with producing the value-deficient content.

It’s better to break up the big topics into smaller chunks, and present them in well-explained series. People hardly wish to go through heavily loaded content paragraphs these days. Present short and crisp content to them, that is easily digestible.

In fact, it helps the reader make a deep go through your content without losing interest.

Mistake #6: Undefined Target Audience

Churning your mind and grinding the words just for furtherance of writing articles, without even knowing your audience, does not really matter in content marketing.

It’s like shooting an arrow in the dark, without aiming at anywhere!

A piece of content, no matter, how well-written, holds no meaning when it is not aimed at a particular audience and that’s where the entire content marketing strategy fails. You need to present value to your readers and for that you need to not only determine your audience, but understand them, their needs, interests, connect with them, and finally lead to conversions.

Mistake #7: Tone Mismatch with Audience

As mentioned above, determining the audience is not enough. You need to know them, connect with them, and for that adjust your tone accordingly. Tone plays a huge role in presenting the intent which needs to be perceived the right way. It helps you connect with your readers.

The vocabulary need not be too formal or technical where it is required to be idiomatic.

Many content writers fail to adjust their tone and so, intent of the content is lost inadvertently.

Mistake #8: Too Much Technical Details

Your company may be specialised in technical field and your website should represent that. Of course, you should showcase your technical expertise and you may tend to upload even your research papers, but sometimes it may kill the readers’ interest.

Optimizing such content for readers’ better understanding, can be a good idea as it will not scare or bore the readers. To get them the zest of the content, you may invite them for more, which means they may or may not choose to click. So, this saves them from getting bombarded by bushel of abstruse content, at a first glance.

Mistake #9: Missing Calls to Action (CTAs)

You are being read! So, your SEO worked well, Congrats! How are you going to benefit from this now? You want the reader to take the next desired action – Yes, leave their email address or buy the product, or submit a contact form! Did you create a valid space for that?

In case you didn’t, and are still wondering about why are you not able to generate conversions, that’s like attempting to drive a car without wheels – thus, making a big blunder!

CTAs are extremely essential as more than 90% of visitors who read your headline also read your CTA copy, according to a source.

Mistake #10: USP Not Clear

In an attempt to leave a mark on the audience, content writers/marketers sometimes draw away from their prime objective of showcasing their unique selling point (USP).

In a fiercely competitive market place, where every other service provider is setting a new standard with every passing moment, you need to make sure that your audience learns about your USP, only then can you expect to get noticed and considered.

In the Nutshell!

Content writing is not simply about flaunting your writing skills. It is about causing an impact upon the reader in such a way that they started thinking, how you want them to. You can no way create a content that’s perfect yet but it’s very important to avoid these basic content writing mistakes, as they hinder your way to creating the content that ‘performs’.

Aiming at driving the desired customer action for business, it is important to adopt a strategic marketing approach for creating and presenting relevant and value-driven content consistently, to attract, engage and acquire a particular audience. Availing smart content marketing services, you can market your business through you content, the way it deserves. That is when you will be able to say, your content ‘performed’!

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