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6 Content Marketing Challenges & New Ways To Deal With Them

March 25, 2019
1:56 AM

The digital marketing landscape has been quick to grow. Be it social media or content; every aspect of digital marketing has witnessed unprecedented growth over the years. Moreover, businesses have been relying on the same to boost their prospects further. They want to stand out in the crowd, amidst the populated landscape.

Out of all the digital marketing elements, content marketing has created quite a buzz for itself. And in the present scenario, nothing is more essential than content marketing.

Don’t believe me? Well, according to a report released by the Content Marketing Institute in 2016, 51% of companies agreed to increase the overall budget allotted to content marketing. And they did! 60% of marketers invest in crafting at least one piece of content every day. Furthermore, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and ends up generating 3x times more leads.

In short, content marketing has changed the ways content marketing has revolutionized traditional marketing methods. Creating content not only satisfies your audience (giving them detailed solutions to their problems) but also allows you to be recognized as a thought leader in your niche.

However, creating content is not easy for it takes a lot of time to research and come up with an informative piece. Also, the topic of discussion should be interesting enough to capture your audience’s attention. Relevant topics that offer solutions, appropriate keywords, and phrases are also essential — avoid clichéd buzzwords.

Also Read: Know Whether Your Content Marketing Strategy is Effective

See, the point is that content marketing packs a lot of things together. For this reason, numerous challenges arise, rendering it difficult.

Here is a compilation of the 6 most common content marketing challenges and new ways to approach the same.

1. Not having insufficient resources

Crafting content is easy. It is challenging to craft good content. And honestly, there is a massive gap between these two. The internet is filled with content; however, finding a reliable piece can be difficult. To produce quality content consistently, you need to invest a lot of time and put in considerable effort, which can prevent marketers from concentrating on other pivotal tasks.

Crafting a proper piece of content that is educative and informative takes a lot of research. Rushing through it is not the way to go. And the most notable barrier is TIME.

Every content marketer is faced with a simple dilemma, known as the project management triangle, which includes three essential elements- fast, cheap, and high quality. You can opt for only two aspects at a time, and the result is the combination of what you choose.

If you go for cheap content and want it fast, you may have to compromise the quality. Whereas, if you want content that is of high quality and is easy on your pocket, it might take longer than expected. This is where the challenge of resources comes to play. You need to invest in incredible solutions- be it outsourcing your content needs or hiring in-house experts. Not investing in the right resources can dampen your content marketing goals.

You need to find viable resources that will produce fast, high-quality content at an affordable price. Takeaway: Find good resources to produce content.

2. Inability to measure the effectiveness of content

One of the most repetitive obstacles in content marketing is often cited as the inability to measure the effectiveness of content. Not knowing how your content is performing is a roadblock, and honestly, you don’t want to get stuck with it. The reason is simple- it can taint your content marketing efforts.

You might think that a blog is doing well; however, the metrics might reveal a different story altogether. It is thus pivotal to know how your content is performing.

Now, when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of your content, there are specific parameters that are always referred to. Website traffic, conversions, time a reader spends on site, feedback, number of subscribers, and SEO ranking are all considered to be metrics for measuring the performance of your content.

Once you overcome this obstacle, your content marketing strategy will become more feasible. Takeaway: Start measuring your content using various parameters for an effective content marketing strategy.

3. Improper publishing schedule

The effectiveness of a content editorial calendar is immense. It might seem like a no-brainer to most, but to content marketers, a calendar can be their key to success.

Having a calendar is not only about creating a schedule and sticking to it. A calendar also allows marketers to visualize their content plan for a certain period. Getting access to a content calendar is essential to ensure that no two pieces of content overlap.

A calendar further allows you to prioritize your content according to its relevance. One of the best ways to create a routine is to categorize the pieces based on the total time of completion accordingly. Another method of segmentation is done based on priority.

Organizing your content into a proper editorial calendar will help you identify tasks based on priority, eliminating all possibilities of getting caught in trivial tasks.

Takeaway: Create a proper content publishing calendar by prioritizing tasks.

4. Not measuring ROI

This particular challenge is an essential one and is not discussed as much yet. Ensuring that your content marketing strategy is working is essential to your success. Once upon a time, it was difficult- almost impossible! Most content marketers and writers wrestled with getting a good ROI (Return on Investment) for their content marketing strategies.

But with the development of sophisticated analytics and all of it being at our disposal, it is easy to measure content marketing results. In short, you can measure the ROI (Return on Investment) for your content marketing campaigns. All you need is to plan well.

First, determine the purpose of the content, or what it is trying to accomplish. Are you trying to generate more leads? Or do you want to be recognized as a thought leader? Without clear goals, it is difficult to measure your content’s ROI.

Not measuring your ROI will not allow you to decide whether or not your content is working. Various tools such as Google Analytics give you real-time proof relating to your content.

Simply blogging and hoping everything else will fall in place is not the right approach to content marketing. You need a plan, and you need to measure the efficiency of your project. Measuring ROI is the right way to do so.

Takeaway: Always measure the ROI of content published using various metrics.

5. Not knowing your target audience

Ask any content marketing expert, and they will point out that no content marketing strategy is complete without knowing who your target audience is. You should know to whom you are delivering your content. This also ensures that whichever piece your target audience is reading, adds value to them. Delivering content that isn’t significant to your audience is just a waste. To craft the right piece of content, you need to know who you are writing for and what are their pain points.

Content goes to waste if it doesn’t reach the target population. Thus, knowing about your potential audience is pivotal.

But how to create a buyer’s persona?

Well, it is simple. To begin with, you need to shortlist the hurdles your prospects face regularly. By asking them direct questions, you can discover their pain points. Marketers also often segment their audience based on demographics, geography, preferences and so on to get a more targeted audience.

You can conduct surveys on social media channels to get a detailed insight into your potential prospects.

But to ensure that your content is worthy, find out who your audience is.

Takeaway: Create a buyer’s persona to target content to the right people.

Also Read: How to Find Right Target Audience

6. Having unrealistic expectations & goals

There is no doubt that the marketing landscape is becoming populated every passing day. Competition is at an all-time high, and content marketers are faced with harsh decision-making processes daily.

Ever since content marketing has come to vogue, the expectations from it have sky-rocketed. The management thinks that by investing in content marketing, the returns will shoot up immediately. But this is a misconception of the greatest sorts. Everything good takes time, so does content marketing. Hence, being impatient is not going to help you achieve anything. Content may take at least a few years before attaining what it is supposed to accomplish.

This isn’t a flaw with content marketing itself. It is preferably a problem of setting unrealistic goals. Content marketing strategies should be made keeping in mind long-term benefits. Achieving success overnight is almost impossible and has been achieved by very few websites. Take any big website into consideration, and you will notice that traffic to their site has grown slowly but steadily. For some, it took two years, while for many, the waiting period has exceeded four years. Consistent content marketing efforts have ensured that they reach their goals in time.

Becoming an overnight sensation, only to lose credibility along the way makes no sense whatsoever. Building an audience over time using your content ensures that you form long-term relationships with your audience. Unrealistic goals and expectations do no good when it comes to content marketing.

The most effective way to overcome such a challenge is to agree upon a realistic goal, both for traffic and conversions. Set such targets which are achievable. If your targets are too high or unrealistic, it will only bring you disappointment. Don’t underestimate or overestimate your content marketing strategy. Keep an eye on the real-time results and keep working on improving the same.

Takeaway: Have goals that are achievable and believable.

To sum it up!

Content marketing is the presence of digital marketing, and there is not even a single shade of doubt in that. The challenges are inherent, but overcoming them becomes more comfortable when you know what you need to do. So, be patient, have realistic goals, keep monitoring your content marketing strategies, and be true to your end goals.

To get more amazing tips on content marketing, subscribe to our blog. Overcome all content marketing challenges and take your business to the pinnacle of success.

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Michelle Rowley

Michelle Rowley is a content writer by profession and writing has been her passion since her childhood. Spreading kind gestures is something she deeply believes in and realized early on in her life the impact that words can have and, finds expressing herself through Blogs fascinating. Apart from blog-writing, she is currently working on writing a romance novel too.

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