#5 Reasons Why Content Marketing Fails And How To Avoid Them Your content marketing campaigns will fall flat if you don't build a defined buyer persona.
By Sandeep Rathore •
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Content marketing is a new weapon in the arsenal of marketers. It is an effective way to attract and educate your potential customers. And the best part is you don't have to break the bank to adopt content marketing. Though more and more companies are making content marketing their main marketing strategy, not all of them are getting the desired Return On Investment (ROI). Several factors affect the result of content marketing.
Here are the top five reasons why content marketing may fail:
1. No Defined Buyer Persona
Tell me, my friend, can you hit the target if you shoot in the dark randomly? Of course, you cannot. Creating content marketing without a defined buyer persona is the same as shooting in the dark and expecting to hit the bull's-eye. Your content marketing campaigns will fall flat if you don't build a defined buyer persona.
Be it a blog, whitepaper, social media post, or any other content piece, it must match the language and tone of voice of your potential customers. Then, only your customers can feel connected to your brand. A defined buyer persona will help you know the right language and tone of voice of your content.
2. Ignoring Buyers' Journey
To get the most out of your content marketing efforts, you must map your content to the different stages of the buyer's journey. Following are the three stages most buyers go through before buying any product:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
You should have content for all these stages. Also, you should understand that each stage of a buyer's journey demands a different kind of content. Whitepapers, eBooks, blogs, How-to Videos, and Checklists are good for the awareness stage, while you should use Case Studies, FAQs, Demo Videos, and Data Sheet for the consideration stage. Free Trial, Live Demo and Estimates are ideal for the decision stage. Carefully map your content to your buyer's journey if you want to boost the ROI of your content marketing.
Not Creating A Customer-empathy Map
Many content marketers often commit this big mistake — not creating a customer-empathy map. Content marketing is all about writing and promoting persuasive content based on your buyer persona and buyer's journey. Can you create persuasive content without the insights into your customers' minds? The answer would be no.
A customer-empathy map is an excellent tool to enter your customers' minds. Once you complete the exercise of building a customer empathy map, you would know what your customers think, what your customers want to achieve, what your customers are influenced by, and more. A deep insight into your customers' minds will help you write content that will address their pain points, thus will generate leads quickly.
Selecting A Wrong Marketing Channel
If your potential customers spend most of their time on Facebook, there is no point in focusing your marketing energy on Twitter. Selecting a right marketing channel is vital for the success of your content marketing efforts. A sure-fire content marketing strategy will not yield the desired result if you fail to choose the right marketing channel. Do A/B testing to find out which channels are giving you good returns, and focus on these channels to maximize the success of your content marketing.
Not Adopting Agile Mindset
Well, you need to adopt the agile mindset to harness the real power of content marketing. In today's ever-changing marketing landscape, your content marketing should be ready to change with the need of time. Based on the audience response, you need to keep changing your strategies so that your content marketing can keep its edge. You should begin with an educated guess for content, create and promote content knowing that there is a scope for improvement, and then optimize the content based on the feedback and analysis.
Content marketing is a highly effective marketing tool and can play an integral part in building trust and generating leads. Avoid these five, above-explained, mistakes, and you will certainly boost the ROI.
