If you’ve found yourself wondering why your online marketing efforts haven’t been producing the top quality results you were expecting – you’re not alone.
Sometimes, disappointing results occur because you’re so new to the industry that you haven’t given your strategies a chance to take root yet. However, before you ask “Why isn’t my content marketing strategy making money?” take a second to think about the reality of your situation. As beneficial as digital marketing is to today’s modern company – it’s not a solution for instant fame. Instead, content marketing, online techniques, and even digital advertising are all part of a long-term strategy for creating and maintaining an effective online presence.
On the other hand, if you’ve been online for quite some time now, and you’re still not having the impact you had hoped for, this could be a sign that you’re falling victim to one of the many challenges that online marketing can present. Fortunately, this also means that there are ways for you to identify and fix the issues with just a bit of time and effort.
Following, I’ll address just some of the marketing challenges I’ve seen my clients face over the years, and what can be done to overcome them.
Challenge #1: Insufficient Resources
Producing content – blogs, articles, press releases – is easy. Producing good content is far more difficult.
While anyone can fill the pages of their website with words, it takes skill and time to produce quality content on a consistent level. Though it’s true that no-one knows your business quite as well as you do, it’s also worth noting that running that business is going to take up a significant amount of your time and energy. While you might be the ideal person to come with ideas of what you should be blogging about – you’re not necessarily the right person to write those blogs.
The Solution:
Call in the experts.
Producing amazing content week after week, month after month, quickly gets in the way of other important tasks that you need to focus on – like actually running a business. This is why if you want to create a really good long-term content strategy, you’re probably going to need to pay someone else to manage it for you. Whether that talent is outsourced or in-house is up to you, but one way or the other you’re going to have to accept that time and money is necessarily for producing quality content.
Challenge #2: Serious Competition
Compared to traditional options for marketing and even a number of other solutions for brand development that are available today, digital marketing strategies that involve content production are typically quite inexpensive. In other words, content marketing often offers an accessible and affordable advertising solution to businesses of various sizes – whether you’re a startup or an established enterprise.
Unfortunately, while the economic benefits, and the advantageous outcomes of content marketing apply to your needs, they also apply to your competitors’ needs too. In other words, you’re going to have to fight to come out on top of all the other people in your industry availing themselves of the same techniques when guiding customers to their products. If you’ve been asking “Why isn’t my content marketing strategy making money?” take a moment to ask whether you’re highlighting the right aspects of your business.
The Solution:
Highlight what makes you special.
Every market has an innumerable amount of competition filling it up to the seams. Most of the biggest players in any industry are only capable of surviving because they’re able to prove that they can bring something unique to the market. Simply put, the best way to survive today is to find your niche segment and focus on that. It’s not about showing how much variety you can deliver, or even offering the best deals – it’s about being able to suggest that you have a solution to an existing problem that is unlike anything your customer has seen before.
Challenge #3: So Much Data, So Little Time
You’re probably already aware of how much data consumers can leave behind within digital channels. Unfortunately, although that data can be essential for giving you an insight into what your target market wants, and needs, from you, it can also be difficult to get a handle on that information, and identify which parts are helpful, and which aren’t. Data collected in volume can reveal important details about the consumers that visit your website, but the crucial parts can quickly become lost if you don’t know how to properly analyze whatever you’ve gathered.
The Solution:
Increase the resources you have for data analysis.
It’s as simple as this, if you want to make the most of the data that you’re collecting, then you need to have the right tools and experts available to help you understand that information and put it to good use. There are a number of plugins and applications available today that you can utilize with a little time and research. However, just like it’s a good idea to have someone in your business that’s responsible for content production, it can also be beneficial to have a specific employee who’s responsible for analyzing and utilizing data. Delegation really does work.
Challenge #4: Unrealistic Expectations
I mentioned this concept in the intro, but it’s important enough that it really does deserve its own segment. If you’ve been asking “Why isn’t my content marketing strategy making money?” you might be suffering with too much impatience. Though content marketing is popular, and successful, there’s still a lot of misconceptions floating around about how it works, and what you should expect when you implement it into your marketing strategy.
It might not be what you want to hear, but the evidence suggests that content marketing is a long-term commitment, not a short-term fix. In fact, even with a skilled content team behind you, you might find that it takes several years for your content to have the impact you’re looking for. That’s not because this form of marketing isn’t effective – it’s because it’s designed to deliver success that is sustainable for the entire lifespan if your company. In other words, it’s not the thing that gives you your ten minutes of fame – it’s the thing that makes you into a household name for years to come.
The Solution
Be realistic, and understand what you’re getting into.
A lot of managers and executives are desperate for an immediate return on their marketing strategies. After all, traditional options for marketing like television ads, and billboards used to generate traffic to brick-and-mortar stores relatively quickly. However, we’re playing a different game today – the rules, and even the competitors have changed drastically.
Manage your expectations and set yourself up for realistic, achievable targets for engagement. This should help you to avoid some of the disappointment associated with aiming too high, too fast. It’s much better to establish manageable goals that you can achieve, than to dismiss your content marketing efforts as failures just because you can’t achieve targets that are far too ambitious.
Remember, your business isn’t a one-trick pony – it’s your livelihood – something that you want to grow and thrive for years to come. Success like that takes time.
Want to know more about creating a sustainable strategy for digital success? Get in touch at: [email protected] or fill in my contact form.