How To Overcome The Most Common Content Marketing Struggles

Over the last few years, we’ve all heard the marketing mantra that content is king. In fact, we’re probably guilty of chanting it subconsciously. But there’s no disputing that content marketing gives businesses an unrivalled opportunity to boost customer engagement, lead generation, and brand awareness.

Whilst it’s encouraging to hear that up to 72% of marketers have a content marketing strategy in place, it also means that it’s becoming increasingly more competitive. Now more than ever, you have to make sure your content cuts through the noise of your industry. Yet, with research from Forrester claiming that 87% of B2B businesses struggle to create engaging content, there’s definitely room for improvement.

Content marketing is an intricate process and requires more effort than simply setting up a company blog and writing a few articles. If you want to succeed and see results, you can’t just start blogging, sit back and hope for the best. It’s important that you know exactly why you’re producing content and what the long-term goals of that content are.  At Liberty, we want our partners and clients to be seen as content connoisseurs. As such, we’re taking a look at the most common content marketing struggles and how you can overcome them.

Staying ahead of the competition

Content marketing can seem like a daunting and competitive landscape. After all, how can you possibly compete with the colossal companies that produce reams upon reams of content every day, right?

At Liberty, we like to remember the lessons of David and Goliath; just because your competitor seems bigger and scarier, you shouldn’t back down. With the right tools, your content can win the fight. Remember, the biggest audience isn’t always the best, you should focus on building a devoted following rather than focussing solely on building up the numbers. It won’t be easy, but if you put in the work and hone a content marketing strategy that provides honest, insightful and useful content, then you’re onto a winner.

Pleasing a tough crowd

It’s no secret that some industries have an easier time when it comes to content marketing, but with a bit of creativity and hard work, we believe that content marketing can work for any business or industry. Whilst it’s not always possible to make a more mundane topic interesting, you can focus on making educational and helpful content. More often than not, it’s a lazy mindset that leads to content being perceived as boring. A piece of content that answers a question isn’t boring to the people that need it.

Overlooking the importance of outreach

Writing great content is only half of the battle. Whilst it’s important to create insightful and interesting content, it’s just as important to ensure you’re going that extra mile when it comes to promoting it. Outreach and content placement are some of the biggest content marketing problems that businesses face. Despite the undeniably inspiring lessons from Field of Dreams, the whole approach of “if you build it, they will come” sadly only seems to work with baseball fields. Your content marketing requires a little more effort. You can’t just leave it there and expect an audience to stumble upon it.

If your content is getting lost in the deepest and darkest corners of the web, it’s time to step up your outreach and promotion. From social media sharing and influencer marketing to email campaigns and newsletters, there are lots of different ways to get your content out there. Businesses need to be aware of the many different pathways that people take to get their content out there.

SEO, email marketing, and influencer outreach are still the top three methods that brands use to get traffic to their site, but it’s worth noting that paid promotion has increased by 400% since 2014. As we’ve said, content marketing is becoming increasingly competitive, and sometimes you need to give your content an extra boost with paid promotion. If you’ve created something that you’re truly proud of, paid promotion can help you take it to the next level as well as amplifying your overall content marketing strategy.

Monitoring metrics and returning results

According to LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community, only 8% of marketers consider themselves “very successful” or “extremely successful” at tracking content marketing ROI. With any form of marketing, measuring success is both vital and invaluable. And content marketing is no exception. In order to refine your content marketing strategy, you have to be able to analyse the data.

In order to measure the success of your content, you need to determine what you want your content marketing to actually accomplish. Whether you want your blog to expand your social audience or generate more leads, you have to set clearly defined goals before you can start to measure the ROI of content marketing.

The next step is to decide how you’re going to measure the ROI of your content. For example, if you’re hoping to generate more leads from your blog, you’ll need set up conversion paths and tracking in Google Analytics.

Whilst content marketing was admittedly difficult to measure in the past, this isn’t the case anymore. With sophisticated analytics technology at our disposal, it’s far easier to measure success these days. Here are just a few ways that you can start to measure the success of your content marketing efforts:

• Set up conversion tracking on Facebook and Twitter – you can measure the ROI of promoted content by reporting on the user’s actions after viewing the content.
• Google Analytics – by setting up goals in Google Analytics, you can measure the extent of which you achieve your target objectives through your website’s content. As for monitoring lead generation, you can set up goals such as a newsletter signup, brochure download, or contact form completion which will allow you to track the total number of conversions.
• Sales transactions – B2C marketers should apply filters in order to track the percentage of revenue that comes from different areas. For example, you can adjust filters to view how many transactions came from a direct result of your blog.

If you’re still struggling with your content marketing strategy, it might be worth talking to a professional. Whilst you know your business inside out, sometimes it’s difficult to see the wood for the trees. If you need help implementing a strategy that works, we can help. Find out more about our content marketing services today by giving us a call.