The promise of inbound marketing is something that attracts businesses of all kinds. But the unfortunate truth is that many don’t understand the amount of effort it takes to be successful. After just a few blog posts, a lot of businesses lose hope and give up, stating that they ‘tried’ content marketing and that it didn’t work.
While the content seen online may look effortless and somewhat natural, there is a lot that goes into the creation of high-quality content. It requires strategy, experimentation and skill. It also involves identifying the correct target audience and using the right brand voice and tone to connect with the right people.
Below we identify 7 misconceptions that businesses have about content marketing and explain how you can rectify them.
1. Having the incorrect content marketing mindset
Content marketing isn’t new, in fact, it’s been around for decades. So it stands to reason that the majority of businesses would be familiar with blog posts, search engine traffic and social media. The problem comes in when too many businesses misunderstand the purpose of content marketing, which causes them to have false expectations.
This can sometimes manifest in businesses asking their marketing team to write fluffy and self-serving content. For example, a blog about their clean-up day at the local park or a press release-style article highlighting their promotions or employees of the month. Or worse, getting their team to post content generated by ChatGPT that sounds just as generic as the last piece it wrote for 100 other people.
2. No commitment, no results
As with most things in life, a business’s commitment to seeing things through will determine its results. In other words, if a business invests in something that is proven to work for long enough, it’ll begin to see a return. The same applies when it comes to content marketing.
When businesses rush into content marketing and then don’t stick around to give it a chance, it’s little wonder that it doesn’t work for them.
If you’re one of those businesses that ‘tried’ content marketing, only to receive sub-par results, you may have missed the mark in terms of expectations, your understanding of how content marketing works, and how to get the best results.
If you think content marketing didn’t work for you, perhaps ask yourself how you measured your success. Any marketing effort needs to be measured and evaluated but those measurements also need to be relevant to your success. If your measurements were wrong, it’s possible you need to unlearn what you think you know about inbound marketing.
3. Focusing on the wrong metrics
Most businesses tend to assume that the path to lead generation through content marketing is a simple one. They think that if they get enough traffic to their website, a percentage of that traffic will turn into leads which will turn into sales. The thing that they don’t realise is that more traffic doesn’t necessarily equal more sales.
Imagine this, your marketing team writes three articles:
- Article A receives 10,000 views per month and brings in 10 customers.
- Article B receives 2000 views per month and brings in 20 customers.
- Article C receives 500 views a month and brings in 50 customers.
In most cases, businesses will chase after ‘Article A’ for the single reason that it brings in a ton of views. Not considering the number of leads it brings in and then insisting on only producing high-traffic content that doesn’t end up converting visitors into customers. Which leads us to another mistake.
4. Not working with the sales team
The inbound marketing approach only works if your sales team gets involved. If you don’t include your sales team, the chances of your marketing team producing a ton of ‘Article A’ type content increases, because, from their point of view, all they can see is that it brings in a lot of visitors.
The metrics only give the marketing team one piece of the puzzle. Your sales team can give them the other piece, which is how many leads the article brought in compared to the other types of content your marketing team put out.
5. Creating irrelevant content
If businesses can’t distinguish between paid and organic content, then their content marketing efforts will be wasted. Or at minimum, won’t achieve their maximum potential. What do we mean by this? Many businesses tend to treat the blog on their website like a platform where they can park their random content ideas. For example:
- Miscellaneous business-related updates that aren’t important to readers.
- Too many posts that brag about their company culture or how they give back to the community.
- Random sales announcements and disconnected promotional content.
When instead they should be creating content that fulfils one or more of these objectives:
- Email opt-ins
- Thought leadership
- Lead generation
6. Overlooking thought leadership
Content marketing is not just about bringing in short-term sales, as important as those are. It’s about establishing your brand as a thought leader in your industry to build trust with your customers.
Thought leadership is useful when you share insights, data, and expert analysis that give your customers fresh insights on certain problems and challenges they may be facing as well as strategies that they can use to solve for their industry.
7. Valuing quantity over quality
A lot of businesses prioritise quantity over quality. And while publishing loads of content may feel productive, creating low-quality content can hurt a business’s reputation.
The bottom line? Focusing on generating large quantities of low-quality content won’t work. Businesses should instead focus on quality and ensure that each piece of content meets a certain standard of excellence before pushing it out.
Pro tip: Creating compelling content is easier for businesses when there is clear ownership of the content marketing efforts.
8. No clear ownership
If content marketing is just something that gets added to other responsibilities, it’s going to fall by the wayside. Content marketing is a full-time job and a dedicated content marketer is needed to create content that is going to get results.
It’s unrealistic and unfair to ask someone who already has a full-time job to also produce and implement a full content marketing strategy. So businesses should consider it carefully, and if they need to, hire an employee or an agency that can help them specifically with this.
Invest in your content marketing strategy
Which content marketing misconception surprised you the most?
Brand recognition is wonderful, but it needs to translate into sales at the end of the day. To get content marketing right, businesses need to re-acquaint themselves with the objectives that matter and be ready for long-term commitment.
Need help with your content marketing strategy? Chat to us today to get started.
