As the year comes to a close, most businesses are analyzing what worked and what did not in their online marketing strategies. Content marketing plays a vital part in attracting and retaining new customers. However, some core strategies get overlooked by companies along the way, and the marketing efforts backfire.
Below we will take a look at where companies go wrong as they create, distribute and market their content to their target audience.
The content creation stage
The following mistakes are made by companies as they develop content for their market:
1.
Undermining SEO
Is SEO essential for every business or can some companies do without it? The objective of SEO is to improve the position of websites in search engines. This has a direct influence on the traffic of the site, ranking, leads, and sales. It is what makes SEO a critical agent for online success.
Companies should, therefore, pay attention to both on-page SEO which includes keywords, header texts, site speed among other factors the business can control to improve ranking. They should also focus on off-page SEO which involves links.
2. Being too promotional.
Customers do not really care about a product or a service unless it proves it will solve their problem. Most customers start promoting their products too soon.
Content marketers need to produce content that is customer- focused. Content that will help them get answers to their questions make them feel good about a decision they made or to get a sense of your company first.
3. Not understanding the audience.
Starting with the product or service your company offers only repels prospects.
To grab their attention, companies need to understand their audience. Demographics are just numbers; companies need to tap into the psychology of their target audience. They can do this by listening to social conversations, looking at how popular brands (even unrelated) position themselves and conducting surveys.
The content marketing efforts
Sometimes there is nothing wrong with the content but the marketing process is all wrong. Here are three major marketing errors companies downplay:
4. Not promoting.
Once content is published, there should be a clear plan to drive traffic to it. Content marketers should find ways to collaborate with influencers to share content. Another effective way to promote content is to look for what people search for in your industry then align your content with the topic or keyphrase that keeps coming up.
5. Missing Lead Generation opportunities.
Great marketers are always looking for ways to generate leads and convert them into sales. Lead generation is a very critical step in online marketing.
However, businesses fail to email their lists and keep their clients engaged. They also fail to create persuasive calls-to-action.
Businesses need to invest in great tools to manage their email lists such as MailChimp and also use different calls-to-action such as on-site email forms and pop-ups for various users.
