Top 5 Reasons Your Content Marketing Campaign Failed

Every now and then, I am asked to troubleshoot why someone’s content marketing campaign has not been as successful as I was hoping for. Most of the time, the cause of the problem falls within the scope of one of the following reasons. Here, in reverse order, are my top five reasons why content marketing campaigns fail:

# 5. You are not content marketing:

Content marketing consists of marketing a company to achieve one or more objectives of that company. If achieving your business goal is not the reason to produce your content, you are blogging. That important distinction is not always understood.

Many content creators don’t understand the role content marketing plays in moving your potential customers through your sales funnel. Different types of content are needed for each stage – that is, for suspects, prospects, and to retain and sell to existing customers again. If you are not producing content that supports every stage of the sales process, you are not doing content marketing.

# 4. There is no market for your product or service:

It never ceases to amaze me how many companies fail because the founders did not do proper research to establish whether there was a market for their business and whether their product or service met that need.

You may have a technically excellent product, but it will fail if no one wants to buy it. I once worked for a company that had such a product. Every prospect the sales force was introduced to said it was a great idea, but they wouldn’t buy it. It was a solution looking for a problem. Then you have the other side of the coin: there is a market, but your product or service does not fulfill it. There is a problem, but you do not have the solution.

No matter how good your content marketing is, your campaign will fail in its goal of acquiring new customers if:

• There is no market for your product or service, or

• If your product doesn’t solve the customer’s problem.

# 3. You’re posting in the wrong place:

You need to make sure that your content reaches your target audience. You need to know:

• Who is your target audience. That includes demographic information such as their age, gender, socioeconomic group, whether they are likely married, and whether they have a family;

• Where are they currently going to get information; Y

• How they prefer to consume data.

Let’s consider a couple of examples:

Example 1: You have a company that supports WordPress websites globally. Your target audience is likely to be business owners who already have or intend to have a website on the WordPress platform. They are likely in the 24-54 age group, married, and probably have a family. They are entrepreneurs, not software engineers.

You will find them on Linked In, and they probably also have a personal and business presence on Facebook. They are also very likely to use mobile computing devices, which is their preferred device for consuming data.

You need to post your content to the places these people go to get answers to their WordPress problems, like You Tube, podcasts (think iTunes, Sticher, Podcast Republic, and Zune, to name just a few). own show or make guest appearances on other shows, SlideShare, article writing (think long SlideShare documents, not just article directories), WordPress user blogs and forums.

Example 2: You provide an online tuition course in math. Your target audience is likely to be school-age children and their parents. They will have a personal presence on Facebook and will probably also use one or more of the other popular social media sites like WhatsApp and Line. They probably have a Gmail account and also use You Tube.

The nature of their service lends itself to visual media, which is how this group prefers to consume data. Your target audience will use sites like Udemy and You Tube to search for content.

The preferences of your target audience will determine where you need to publish your content and will determine the medium you use to deliver your content. If your target audience prefers to consume visual content, text-based content won’t appeal to them and they will be much less likely to visit text-based content sites.

If your target audience prefers to consume data at a time and place that suits them – in other words, they want to consume content on demand – consider audio podcasting. However, you should only do this if your content is responsive to the spoken word.

Should you post your content on your own website?

The answer depends on how long you’ve been in business and the reputation you already enjoy. The Pareto principle or the 80:20 rule will apply in any case. If your company is a startup or young company, 80% of your content should be published outside of your website. As your business establishes itself and your reputation grows, that ratio can be reversed.

Not only do you need to post your content where your audience goes for information, you also need to make sure they pay attention to them. That means consistently promoting your content on social media sites like Face Book, Google+, Linked In, and You Tube, as well as Twitter, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and other similar sites. Consider issuing a press release and linking to content in blog and forum posts and comments. If you have an email list, tell them about the content you’ve created and ask them to share it with others.

You should expect to spend at least as much time promoting your content as creating it. Not all marketers do this, which is why many content marketing campaigns fail.

# 2. Your campaign is too short:

Although there are people who claim to be very successful in a short campaign, these lucky few are the exception. For most of us, content marketing is a medium to long-term exercise that plays different roles for different stages of our sales funnel. In other words, you need to create content that is appropriate and supports every stage of the buying process.

Say, for example, you have a business selling video cameras and accessories. You will need to create content that explains the different types of cameras available, their prices, the uses for which they are best suited, and the amount of knowledge or experience the user will need to operate the device. This type of content is aimed at the person browsing your online store to see what is available.

You can then segment your content to cover different sections of your potential audience, such as those looking for a camera to take family and vacation videos, hobbyists, and high-end amateur and professional users. Content that compares the features, benefits and drawbacks, pros and cons, if you like, of each product in the market segment will help the potential customer to make a short list of the right products. The person browsing your site is now a prospect.

The next set of content will focus on a specific product and the benefits of purchasing it from you. This type of content will help turn the potential customer into a customer.

The final set of content will help your customer get the most out of their purchase and will sell product add-ons and accessories.

If you’re not creating content for every stage of the buying and after-sales support process, your content marketing campaign is likely not as successful as you expected.

# 1. Poor quality content:

Poor quality content is the main reason many content marketing campaigns fail. The term “poor quality” covers a multitude of sins.

Earlier in this article I said that your content should be created with the goal of achieving a business objective. That’s true, but your content marketing must not only do that, it must solve a problem that your target audience has. At the very least, it should give them something of utility and value. Unfortunately, a lot of content that is created is little more than a thinly veiled sales pitch.

It goes without saying that your content must be grammatically correct and free of spelling errors. It should also be well written and follow a logical sequence. If you’re writing an article, your goal is to retain the reader’s interest long enough for it to reach your resource box. This is where you should give the reader a good reason to click on the link to your website from which you will be selling.

Similarly with video. You want to hold the viewer’s attention until they see the call to action, which is usually clicking a link in the description.

Poor quality is a description that can also be applied to content that is too short or too general to be of any help to the user. Your content should be long enough to impart all the information you need to give in enough detail, but short enough to ensure that it holds your interest.

There is another definition of low-quality content that content marketers often overlook, that is, if they are aware of it. If your content fails to engage with your audience, you haven’t achieved one of your business goals. Most marketers measure the success of their content based on the number of visits it has received, the number of likes, or a combination of both. Content may have been viewed many times and received a large number of likes, but no one has engaged with it. They didn’t comment on it, share it with their own audience, or tweet about it, or include it on Reddit or StumbleUpon.

For your content marketing to be successful, your audience must interact with your content.

Food to go:

As marketers, I think we can take the following points:

# 1. There must be a viable market for your product or service;

# 2. Your content must help you achieve a business objective;

# 3. Your content should be posted where your audience is likely to find it and you should promote your content;

# 4. Your content marketing campaign should support all stages of the sales process, as well as provide after-sales support, and

# 5. You must create good quality content that encourages audience participation.

If you apply these five lessons, your content marketing campaign is likely to be successful.