If you’re using a content marketing strategy to grow your business and you’re frustrated that you are not landing more sales, read this article. You’ll discover the most common content marketing mistakes made by business owners. Find out what they are and learn how to avoid them below.
Frequent content marketing errors
The entire content marketing process can be synthesized into three basic steps:
Step 1 – Create content that you believe your target market will find valuable enough to use and share.
Step 2 – Promote the content. Post it on your website, on social media platforms, and use search engine optimization tactics to make sure your content gets picked up by search engines.
Step 3 – Out of the web traffic that experiences your content a percentage will sign up for your product or service (when called to action).
The focus is to share your expertise often. This will naturally attract your target demographic.
But, there’s a common misconception that many business owners have. They think that if they do Steps 1 and 2, then Step 3 will happen immediately. It’s not that simple.
Here’s what you need to do: Repeat Steps 1 and 2 many times for Step 3 to happen. Often you have to expose your brand many times in many different ways (we call those “touch points” in marketing) before you actually land a customer.
That being said, it’s not unheard of to convert customers upon initial contact with your brand. Customers will buy immediately when they encounter your brand at the same time they have a need for what you offer. You all need to make sure you’re not making any of these common errors:
- Not tracking your conversion rates and stats If you don’t look at your site analytics you won’t know which articles are getting the most visitors. When you have this information you can gain an understanding of what’s a popular topic. If you keep writing articles that fall under that category, it’s likely you’ll be speaking to what your target market needs more of. If you do email marketing you’ll also want to track you conversion rates by reviewing number or emails opened and links clicked.
- Not growing your social media following If you aren’t actively following new contacts on Twitter, engaging with people on LinkedIn, and joining new groups, when you post your content you’ll be getting limited exposure. The same people will see your stuff. And those people may or may not be good candidates to buy from you. Do your research and connect with people you want to do business with and also other vendors in your industry.
- Doing no search engine optimization (or doing it incorrectly, thinking you’re doing it right) If you’re doing work to write one to five new posts a week for your site, you are wasting your time if you are not doing any SEO work. It is crucial for positioning your brand so the right people find you. Learn how to do it yourself. Or, hire a reputable company to do it for you.
- Selling too soon If you are trying to sell a $99 program to people you’ve sent only two emails to, you’ll need to do more work to convert them. Individuals need to see your brand many times before they purchase from you. This requires time. You have to build a relationship of trust and affinity. So, you want to warm people up. Give things away for free often. Sell them on smaller priced items first. And diversify your products and service packages so you can understand what price points sell best.
Remember, building your list of contacts and then taking them from someone who knows about you to buyer is not a quick process. It’s like a romantic relationship. It takes time and effort to build trust and love.
But, if you consistently post great content and do it strategically, you’ll be able to double, triple or quadruple your business in less than one year.
