Your content strategy is broken. Here is why.
Wondering why your content marketing isn’t working? What is it that you are doing wrong?
Wondering why your content marketing isn’t working? What is it that you are doing wrong?
We might have the answers for you.
But the first question you need to ask yourself is:
“Do you even need content marketing?”
You see top brands active on social media and thousands of users engaging with them and you feel like that is a sure shot way to get attention.
Don’t we see such ads way too often these days?
I mean seriously National Animal Crackers Day?
Or quirky ads like
or yet
And hence we shall hire a couple of interns, make them create some funny meaningless graphics and post it on all our social platform?
Result? Well, you come crashing down to the reality that “It does not work like that for every brand”.
STOP COPYING BLINDLY!
These billion-dollar-brands with literally unlimited resources can focus on such vanity metrics and “Good to have” things. But you being the owner of a product who is still struggling with its identity in the market, It is not the focus area as of now.
Just because you and I find value on a Social Network does not automatically mean that a business should be on it. There is a plethora of Social Networks where humans should definitely be and businesses should just slide out.
The serious point is that when we choose to invest in Social Media, it comes at a cost. Not just what we are investing in Social Networks, but also what else we are not doing. The opportunity cost. Many of the young startups don’t have mobile friendly websites. Their mobile apps, if they exist, are abysmal. When you search for them, you never find them. And if you are lucky and you do find them, all you see is sub-optimal landing pages.
Most don’t have decent display advertising strategies with Google! Their email marketing programs are, literally, leaving money and customer love on the table. Some have the worst lead generation page known to womankind. But, But, But, they have a regular presence on Social Networks.
It saddens me how everyone is just following the herd.
Anyway, even if you justify your presence on the social media, what is it with the overloading greed for content? You always think you need more of it.
But trust me, what you really need is the right kind of content for the right kind of audience at the right time in their journey.
Get it straight. If your content is for everybody, then your content really is for nobody.
When you’re a brand, you have a tendency to fall into the trap of wanting to make everyone your audience. Unfortunately, not only is it hard to achieve such a lofty goal, but it starts to confuse your audiences as to what you’re trying to communicate. No wonder you have a conversion rate of 0.02%.
You don’t need to be the best brand for everyone; you just need to be the best brand for someone…and then see if they have friends. Target the evangelists. As a startup, they are your best bet.
You might think now that I am absolutely against content and content marketing. Well let me make it clear. Content marketing is, without a doubt, one of the most sustainable ways to build engagement and conversions.
Here is how you can start making awesome content that your users love
It’s all about them and not you. Users these days have unlimited options in every field imaginable. Competition is fierce. Only way to stand out is actually taking time to understand their pains and desires. Helping them achieve their goal and make their life easier.
Form a relationship with them. You can start creating impactful and effective content by following steps:
1. Know who your audience is
It all starts by you very specifically defining your target customers. What do they want, what are their pains, what stops them from buying your product etc. Talk to them, spot them on online forums like Quora and find the patterns of what they might want and answer those burning questions using your content.
Find out where do they hangout, spend most of their time at. Target them on that platform. It could be Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest or your own personal blog. That’s how you will know where to focus and what platform to leave.
2. Do a content audit
If you have previously posted content, analyse it. See what worked for you in past and which persona did it work best with. This way you will get an idea of kind of content your audience likes and the content that didn’t resonate with them yet.
3. Stalk your competitor
There is a good chance that you have a competitor or a company that does something you do as well, just are more successful. Look at the content that works for them using website like ahrefs and moz.
This is kind of a shortcut for you to learn before you make mistakes. This will also help you find out what you need to do to stand out.
4. Map your strength with users interests
If you are more of an introvert and speaking on video scares the hell out of you but you write articles that people would love to read, then you should focus more on Blogging.
Content Marketing is a very competitive space. There are a ton of average content online. What really grabs attention is your unique approach to content making.
5. Create content for every step of the funnel
Most of the time, before becoming a customer, a person will first go through what’s called the sales funnel. The sales funnel consists of the different stages a customer goes through leading up to their purchase — from looking at your website for the first time, to subscribing to your email list and reading your emails over a period of time, to talking to a sales associate and figuring out whether to buy from you.
You need to make sure you have content for users at each step in the sales funnel.
6. Distribute
This is most overlooked step of content marketing. See the work “marketing” in that line? For most brands, their distribution efforts end at them posting it on their website and social media handles.
Reach out to people who you have mentioned in your blog, share the blog with them. Distribute it in smaller nuggets on various platforms. Reach out to influencers.
Use communities like LinkedIn or Facebook group. You need to actively put the content in front of the world.
7. Test, Analyse and Repeat
Don’t forget to obsessively test your content and see what is working with your users. What is getting more traction.
Learn from the past and improve your content accordingly.
Hope you found value in it.
We would love to dig deeper in each steps, do comment below if you want us to cover the topic in more detail.
