Content marketing is a journey, and it’s not easy. In fact, it’s freaking hard.
Too many of the marketing professionals we know are miserable. They try to fight every day to do work they can be proud of. Marketing that works!
So we asked our clients to tell us what are the biggest content marketing challenges we help them overcome. And how we help them solve for those challenges.
The insights below represent what we hear from our clients, the content marketing community, and our unique perspective. our goal is that you too can see a way past these challenges. Whether you work with us or not.
Quick Takeaways
- Consistently publishing high-quality content requires substantial time and expertise; it’s often unreachable for some organizations.
- In order to succeed, you need to support every pillar of content marketing.
- This equates to real , measurable, and positive content marketing ROI (return on investment).
What Does the Data Say About Content Marketing Challenges?
There’s a lot of great data about content marketing available from reputable sources—surveys, research, and more. In looking at some of the areas where organizations face content marketing challenges, we’ll start by exploring what the data says.
Budgets and Dollars
First, investment in content is rising with more organizations realizing the value of it. According to HubSpot, 70 percent of marketers are doing so.
While they understand the importance of content marketing and want to invest, companies often face challenges here. They may have budget limitations that prohibit them from adding to their team.
These limitations may have become more of an issue during the pandemic. Or, they may have the majority of the budget allocated to paid channels to boost content but not focused on actually producing it.
Even when faced with COVID-19, B2B organizations still shifted dollars to content marketing from their advertising spend.
Looking ahead, companies said they would invest the most in content creation. Figuring out how to allocate this well isn’t an easy endeavor, especially if you’re trying to put resources into lots of buckets—writers, SEO strategists, etc.
Consistency in Publishing to Generate Leads
There are always obstacles to consistent publishing in content marketing. This can be due to a lack of resources, ideas, organization, and more.
The number one goal of content marketing for organizations is to generate more quality leads. They also said this was their biggest challenge.
It’s easy to create a lot of content. It’s very hard to do this at scale and to maintain high quality. Even if you have a good number of resources, keep in mind that without high throughput, you’re always lagging. Research on blog frequency tells us 11 per month is the “magic” number—can you produce that amount of content on your own?
Lack of Strategy and Vision
While 77 percent of organizations have a content strategy, only 9 percent say it’s excellent. The average rating in the survey was 3.5 out of 5. Just having a strategy isn’t good enough. You have to have an effective content marketing strategy. You must consistently execute on it and adjust it when necessary.
Why is that so hard? Many reasons come to mind—stakeholder interference (and not in a good way), there’s no time to be strategic because you’re always in the logistics, and you don’t have expertise in the area.
How We Resolve These Challenges
The data and the reality of what we see every day in the field are true. It comes down to budget, consistency/frequency, and strategy. We’ve developed a proven recipe that resolves these challenges for our clients.
Budget: Spend Less, Get More
We’ve got it down to a number–$8,000 a month is all the budget you need to achieve your content marketing objectives. What do you get for that amount of money? A lot, including:
- Content marketing strategy
- One year of content ideas
- SEO: An audit, keyword strategy, and external link building
- Conversion funnel development
- Paid promotion
For that investment, we see a 7x return for every dollar spent, which equates to $56K in revenue each month. These results won’t occur overnight or even after 30 or 60 days. Content marketing is a long game, and you must keep doing it.
Brands that invest in us to guide their content marketing will see returns. The returns are tangible metrics such as increased traffic, conversions, and revenue. Content becomes an important tool to attract, engage, nurture, and retain customers. Its value far exceeds filtering these dollars to paid ads only. Those ads only return when they are running. Content returns for as long as it’s live.
Consistency and Frequency
Earlier, we shared how 11+ blogs a month is what you want to hit. That’s not the only content you’ll be creating—video, social posts, infographics, eBooks, etc. Do you have a “machine” to accomplish this? And how confident are you in its quality?
These are two big questions that content leaders need to ponder. Even the biggest organizations would have trouble with consistency and frequency. But we have a framework that allows us to deliver.
When you engage with us, we’ve already done the topic and keyword research. The content strategy informs voice and tone and considers audience profiles. Then we execute on it by using our own subject matter expert (SME) writers, SEO optimization best practices, and buyer’s journey funnel goals.
Sure, you could go on platforms and hire a freelancer here or there, but fair warning, you’ll likely be disappointed. In most scenarios, the quality won’t be up to your standards, nor will it be relatable to your audience.
For example, we write for a lot of software as a service (SaaS) companies. To write about SaaS subjects requires experience in the industry, a healthy technical aptitude, and the ability to understand how and why customers use the platform. Sorry, you’re not going to find this for $10/hour.
Strategy and Setting the Vision
The last challenge that we solve is the foundation, the content marketing strategy. Without an actionable and well-defined strategy, you simply can’t achieve content marketing ROI. The strategy is the guiding light. Without one, you’re in the dark; with an ineffectual one, your light is very dim.
That’s why the content marketing strategies that we create for clients are full of details. It’s not a document full of fluff; it’s one of action. It defines:
- What content marketing means for your brand
- The tactics you’ll employ to develop and promote content
- Content production frequency and workflows
- Your audience: demographics, motivations, challenges, objections, and more
- Content clusters, which are the themes all the topics will roll up to
- Distribution methods
- What to measure and why
With this content “bible,” there are no assumptions or guesses about what you’re doing. The strategy tells you and delivers the path to success.
Content Marketing Challenges? Let’s Work Together
We’re content marketing challenge solvers. Let’s talk about how we can get you out of reactive mode and into a proactive approach to content.
If you’re ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content published consistently, check out our Content Builder Service. Set up a quick consultation, and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books. Get started today and generate more traffic and leads for your business.
The post How To Solve the Biggest Content Marketing Challenges appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.
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