Last Updated on: 22nd November 2023, 12:44 pm
Content marketing can be one of the best ways that you can engage your customers, build trust and gain leads – but that only works if you do it right. Unique and interesting content can be the foundation you build your marketing strategy upon. On the other hand, dull, repetitive or poorly written content is tantamount to building your house on quicksand.
If you are looking to find out what not to do with your content marketing, read on to discover the top 5 mistakes you should avoid…
1. Not having a clear and established goal
All content is created for a reason. If you don’t know what that reason is, you shouldn’t be creating content. Before you can think about the kind of strategy you need to implement, you need to decide exactly what you want to achieve with this campaign. Are you trying to engage new customers? Build brand awareness? Encourage former customers to come back?
Once you know what your goal is, you can decide the right kind of content to best reach your goal. If you are hoping to inform, a how-to may be the better choice. If you are trying to raise awareness, a story about you and how you got here could be ideal. The key is to know your goal and then keep it in mind throughout the process, always checking that your strategy serves your aims.
2. Not knowing your target market
As well as what your goal is, you need to know who you are writing for. All too often, content is broadly created for anyone, when it should be specifically targeted to your ideal customer. By knowing who that is and what they want, you can better tailor your content marketing strategy to them.
3. Failing to create unique and engaging content
It may sound obvious but arguably the main mistake you can make with content marketing is to create bad content. Too much repetition, trying to reuse old articles in multiple places and mistakes like these will get you penalised by both algorithms and readers.
Your content should be informative, engaging and draw in your customers so that they spend longer on your page, and are more likely to buy your product or meet your goal.
4. Not using the range of methods at your disposal
Remember that content can come in many forms and in many places. You may reach more people with a video in one place, an article in another and an e-book elsewhere. Your email marketing content can be just as important as your website, so make sure that you are using all the tools at your disposal for a successful marketing strategy.
5. Not evaluating your effectiveness
It doesn’t matter how good your content is if you don’t run analytics and discover it for yourself. You could have the most effective content in the world, but if you don’t know what you have then you won’t be able to see what you have done right. And know what to do the same in the future.
Likewise, if your content has been successful in an area different to your aims, for instance in raising brand awareness rather than generating web traffic, it is important to know that too. Your SEO company in Dubai can help you go over and evaluate your content to help you craft your strategy going forward.
Finally, you can avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. There are often new mistakes to make with your marketing strategy (which spells progress), so why waste time making the same old ones? Learn what you can from each campaign and try to avoid these common mistakes and you will soon see how effective content marketing can be.
