4 Reasons Your Content Marketing Isn’t Working

Published in

Marketing And Growth Hacking

5 min readMay 16, 2018

There’s a lot of hype around content marketing these days. The problem is that most marketers and entrepreneurs fail to get it working for their businesses. So today I want to give you 4 reasons why your content marketing isn’t working, and what to do about it.

Let’s go!

1) You’re probably not doing content marketing

The first thing you might fail to realize is that you’re not doing content marketing. You’re just writing a bunch of content. And writing content is only one part of the formula.

You might be podcasting. Writing blog posts. Publishing on social media. But creating the content itself won’t automatically drive visitors to it. You have to market it!

And how do you promote it?

There are many different ways to promote your content but I’m gonna give you my favorite one.

Email outreach

Email outreach is where you reach out to bloggers and site owners in your niche. You start to build a relationship with them and eventually ask if they want to promote your content.

Here’s what I want you to do:

1) Write down a list of 25 bloggers and site owners you would like to approach. Make sure they are relevant to what you’re promoting.

2) Email them and tell them a little bit about yourself, the content you’ve created and ask for feedback on how to make it better.

3) Improve the content based on feedback (if necessary).

4) Ask the bloggers if they would be willing to share your content with their audience.

This sounds like it’s way too easy to. But you might be surprised how well this works if you’re being authentic and in the right mindset. Below is a sample script you can use. Don’t just copy and paste it but customize it to fit your voice. Credit for the script goes to Brian Dean from Backlinko.com.

Hi [First Name],
I was looking for content on [Topic] today when I stumbled on your article: [Article Title].
Good stuff! I especially enjoyed [Something specific from their article].
Also, I just published a new guide on [Your Topic]: [URL].
As someone that writes about [Topic], I thought you’d enjoy it.
My guide may also make a nice addition to your page. Either way, keep up the awesome work with [Website]!
Talk Soon,
[Your Name]

2) You probably don’t know who you’re talking to

Do you know who your ideal customer is? Can you define your customer? What drives them. Who they are. What they do for a living. Their values.

If you don’t know who your ideal customer is, then how can you write content to attract them? You can’t. Take the time to figure out who your customer is. Develop a persona and create content specifically for them. That way you’re more likely to engage your audience.

3) You’re probably not building a list

Many marketers and entrepreneurs are still not collecting email addresses and building a list. Insanity!

You get the views on your site, but nothing happens beyond that point. Meaning it’s a challenge for you to get people beyond the awareness stage. So start collecting email addresses!

You start building a relationship with your list by sending out value. And suddenly you’re able to guide people all the way from awareness to purchase and loyalty stage.

I recommend you create a content upgrade to start collecting leads. You can use tools like Optinmonster or Sumo to build it out.

4) You’re probably focusing on quantity instead of quality

A bunch of “gurus” out there keep telling you that you need to publish blog posts every day. Post on Instagram every day. Post on Facebook every day. They are flat out wrong!

If you’re doing this then you’re writing too much content. Focus on creating top-notch quality content and then spend more time on marketing it. A good ratio to keep in mind is 1:4. So if you spend one hour creating a piece of content, you want to spend four hours on promoting it.

And if it takes one day to create a piece of content, you spend four days on promoting it.

Conclusion

Doing content marketing but not seeing any results? It’s probably time to do a health check on your strategy.

Are you spending enough time on promotion? Are you focusing on creating quality content over quantity?

Are you building an email list and most importantly building a relationship with it?

Take your time answering these questions as they will be key in your future content marketing efforts.

Are you using freemium in your business? Leave a comment and let me know 🙂 If you enjoyed this story, please click the 👏 button and share to help others find it!

About the author

Karl Jesper is an online marketer who has generated over $80,000,000 online by figuring out how to consistently turn paid advertising into leads and sales. Click here and get access to 85% of his proven marketing strategies, all for free!

Originally published at karljesper.com on May 16, 2018.