5 Factors That Will Make Or Break Your Next Content Marketing Initiative Content marketing is a great way to gain traffic from your website.

The problem is even though you may produce fantastic content, you may not actually get traffic back to your site. With more content than ever before going online you have a big task to stand out from the crowd. Content marketing can gain website traffic, but only if you manage your campaign in the right way.

I sat down with New Orleans SEO expert and founder of Infintech Designs Brian Hong about his tips for creating an affecting content marketing campaign. Here are 5 factors that will make or break your next content marketing initiative.

1. What's your goal through content marketing?

Only 42 per cent of B2B marketers think they're having success with content marketing. These numbers should come as no surprise. So many companies decide to publish lots of content with little idea in mind of what they want to achieve. The pages and the subjects they're targeting are all over the place, and it's preventing them from achieving anything.

Would if you were a content marketing agency that wasn't sure the type of customers you were going after? You wouldn't be effective in your work.

According to Hong, Companies only have vague goals of what they want to achieve and how they want to achieve it. The first thing I do is sit down with my clients and discuss what they actually want to achieve.

Once you decide that you want to get more website traffic you need to discuss how to do it. That includes which channels you're going to be using and what sort of traffic you want to bring in.

Are You Bringing in the Right Traffic?

Content marketing can get as much traffic as you like, but none of that matters if it's the wrong type of traffic. Marketers need to make sure they're bringing in people who actually want to buy from them. Check your analytics and drill down into your customer personas. Find out whether you're giving them what they want.

Hong mentions that many companies will just seek to get the largest amount of traffic possible. But traffic numbers don't pay the rent. The key is to get qualified traffic instead of random visitors.

Keep referring back to your analytics. Figure out whether your buyer personas are matching up with the people visiting your site.

Does your Content Solve a Problem?

People need somewhere to go when they've read a piece of content. There's little point in bringing a person to a piece of content if you don't know where you want to send them next. Content marketing is a bridge that leads someone from nothing into your sales funnel, and further down that sales funnel.

Think about whether your content is actually solving a problem or answering a question. Content for content's sake is never going to stand out. Your content has to be able to solve a problem, just like your product is going to solve a problem.

Is it in the Right Places?

You can have the best piece of content in the world, but none of that matters if you aren't putting it in the faces of your target market. Figure out where your customers are hanging out and how you can get on those same channels. There's little point in sharing your content on LinkedIn if they're all on Facebook and Twitter.

Hong believes that "The key is to find out where your customers like to consume content. Make it as easy as possible for your customers to find your content. Don't expect them to search for it because they never will."

This all goes back to the buying persona again. You have to ensure that your buyer personas are comprehensive and they tell you everything you need to know about your customers. That should include where they spend their time online. Follow your customers and your content marketing campaign will gradually increase your traffic levels.

Do you have a formula for where your visitors will go?

You have an extremely narrow view of content if you believe blogs and articles are the only types of content you'll come across. Landing pages are content just like everything else. Those landing pages are responsible for keeping people on your site, or you could have high bounce rates.

Your landing page has to fit in with the content. It's responsible for driving traffic down that sales funnel.

Conclusion

Hong always says that any content marketing venture has to be highly organized. Without organization, you're never going to get the success you want. Content marketing can drive traffic to your website, but it has to drive the right traffic and you need the content in place to keep that traffic on your website.

What are your top tips for content marketing success?