Your Content Marketing Isn’t Providing Results, What Can You Do?

Source: Neil Patel

It doesn’t seem fair, does it?

You dedicate your time and resources to publishing exceptional content.

You follow the content marketing experts and put their tested strategies to work for your business.

You do all of this, and yet, your efforts yield no significant results.

Let me say this: You’re in good company.

More than 60% of B2B Marketers rate their content marketing as either moderately effective or minimally effective.

But that comes as no surprise.

This is a competitive field.

Just take a look at how much content is published on the web every 60 seconds.

Does that mean that success is out of your reach? Of course not!

You can still win big with content marketing.

What it requires is a transformation in your approach.

In this article, I will give you a detailed process for your content marketing that will make a powerful difference in your results moving forward.

But first, let’s take a look at why your current strategy might not be working.

Why your content marketing may be failing you

There isn’t one core disconnect that cripples every marketer’s content strategy.

But there are a few likely culprits.

1. You haven’t decided what you’re working towards.

Put simply, if you have no goals for your content, you have no strategy.

If you don’t establish what pillar of your business that your content is supposed to serve, your efforts will fall flat.

Interestingly enough, many marketers admit to this — only 37% have a documented strategy.

Am I encouraged by the 41% who have a strategy but just haven’t put it down in stone?

Not at all.

As far as I’m concerned, this is a copout.

Your sales teams, customer service reps, marketers, and other team members will all be telling a different story.

To top it off, you’ll have no definite content assets that your team can use to better serve your audience.

2. You don’t put enough resources into content marketing.

Content marketing isn’t cheap. At least, not the kind that works.

Perhaps, that’s why 39% of marketers are looking to increase their content marketing spend in 2017 and beyond.

I recognize that many people don’t have the capacity to put money into hiring quality content creators and paid promotion channels.

In that case, your time is the investment.

This means that you have to commit to creating and promoting your content on a consistent basis.

Bare in mind, content marketing is a long-term strategy. A few weeks is not enough to see results.

I recommend waiting a minimum of 90 days to gain traction before you decide that your strategies aren’t working.

3. Your content isn’t aligned with what your audience wants.

Content marketing can only succeed when you keep your audience first in your mind.

What are their pain points? What are their desires? Where do they hang out both online and offline?

If you don’t have that figured out, your efforts will fall flat. Your audience simply won’t engage with content that doesn’t entertain them or solve their problems.

So, consider how well you know the people who you are trying to reach.

4. Your promotion strategy is weak.

You’ve heard this many times before.

Content is only half of the equation. Promotion is the other.

If you’ve been creating content and have spent little to no time promoting it, that’s a major problem.

There are many ways to distribute your content including email marketing, social media, and document sharing sites.

You should spend much more time funneling your content through these channels as you do creating it.

5. You’re not taking advantage of SEO.

Can SEO and content marketing be effective as stand-alone strategies?

I say they’re too important to each other to be working separately.

A significant portion of your organic traffic will likely come from organic search. If you’re not optimizing your content to match the search intent of your customers, you’re missing out on a golden opportunity.

Now that you know why your content may be underperforming, let’s get into what you can do to make some notable improvements.

The first three steps will help you answer the questions that every content marketer must answer to be successful.

• “Who am I creating this content for?

• “Why am I creating it?”

• “How will I amplify its reach?”

Let’s get started.

A step-by-step method to overhaul your content strategy

Step #1: Set outcome-based goals for your content marketing

Don’t you wish there was an overarching metric that allowed you to measure content marketing success?

It’s a shame there isn’t.

The only benchmark that we have are the goals that we set for our content.

Sounds basic enough, right?

But the thing is, most people don’t set their goals the right way.

I’ll explain.

“Publish 5 blog posts a week” isn’t a goal.

“Create 15 Instagram stories per day” isn’t a goal.

These are specific projects that may be worth pursuing, but what outcomes are they being held accountable to?

What’s the point of publishing 5 posts a week?

That’s where outcome-based goals come into play.

It’s the big picture.

It drives the direction of every content marketing project that you undertake moving forward.

It also gives you a baseline to measure your success as you now know what you’re working towards.

Here’s an example.

Outcome goal: Grow subscriber list to 5,000 for upcoming product launch

Building block #1: Publish 3 pre-launch blog posts per week

Building block #2: Create a content upgrade for each post

Building block #3: Run Facebook ads with pre-launch content

In setting this specific outcome goal, everything else falls into place.

• The building blocks that you’ll use to achieve your goal
• The types of keywords that you’ll target as you know what stage of the customer journey you’re focused on
• The type of content that you’ll create
• The call to actions that you’ll attach to your content

With this goal-setting framework in place, here are some of the other pillars of business that you can target.

(i) Lead conversion and nurturing

(ii) Brand awareness and PR

(iii) Customer acquisition and sales

(iv) Customer loyalty and retention

I wouldn’t recommend focusing on all of these at once.

If you haven’t gained any traction from your content marketing in the past, it’s important that you zone in on one or two pillars of your business. You can then leverage your success in other areas in the future.

So, select your focus for the next 90 days and create a spreadsheet to plan your content strategy.

Here’s what your spreadsheet should look like:

While it seems detailed, this is just a skeleton.

You shouldn’t commit to any goals just yet without first understanding:

1. Who you’re trying to reach
2. The space that you operate in
3. The amount of resources that it would take to achieve your goal versus what you have at your disposal

You can flesh out this data as you put the rest of the steps to action.

Step #2: Discover what your audience wants.

We all essentially want one thing from our content marketing:

To acquire and retain customers.

All the other functions of business eventually boils down to this ultimate goal.

It makes sense that, in order to set the stage for success, you get to the core of who that ideal customer is to you.

I like to view audience research as a form of risk management.

If you’re going to be putting time and money into your content, you need to make sure that investment is being poured into a responsive market.

Here’s what you need to consider.

• What are the popular websites in your niche?
• Who are the influencers?
• What types of content get the most engagement?
• What’s the response to the content that’s…

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