firdaushelmyOriginal Post: https://longitude.ft.com/10-content-marketing-challenges-and-how-to-overcome-them/
Challenges that are faced by companies around the world
Content marketing presents significant opportunities for brand and business-building opportunities, which leads to successful marketers to allocate over 40% of their budgets to content strategy.
However, numerous companies face challenges in creating engaging and influential content that resonates with their target audience which also leads to wasted resources.
The following list highlights the 10 major content marketing challenges marketers face today:
- Producing high-quality content
Content is one of the most effective ways to promoting a brand or business but of course, it must be of the quality that the B2B buyers would expect and want to see.
This also means that avoiding the creation of the same content that others have produced, and giving readers something different that’s of real value. Evaluating the performance of competitors’ content in Search Engine Results Pages or known as SERPs is crucial, considering metrics such as bounce rate, time on page, and depth scrolled.
In a competitive marketing where it’s a struggle to rank highly for relevant searches then focus on maximising these metrics is not enough. The content that is created must be original and bold as without a strong opinion or point of difference, it is very unlikely that you will gauge your target audiences’ interest. - Generating content consistently
If your brand is to be taken seriously as a thought leader in a particular industry, you must produce consistent content. However, for 60% of marketers, generating content consistently is by far, the biggest challenge that one is currently facing.
One of the main reason content is not being produced consistently is that the majority of businesses do not have any documented content strategy being planned.
Hence, by having a clear content strategy, this will help ensure that the content will be prioritised and its importance are being communicated to your stakeholders for both internal and external, not all of whom may understand the relevance or its value in today’s marketing mix. So as for the strategic planning, developing a content calendar for at least the next six months and begin to monitor your competitors’ output will definitely increase your marketing game plan and this will also give you a rough benchmark of how much content you will need to create in order to make an impact in your marketplace. - Prioritising content expertise
Creating a quality content requires design, journalistic, technical and creative skills. If you are going to produce these type of content in-house, chances are you will need to establish a team either by reallocating staff who have the skills or to recruit new talents that may help you with these contents!
Alternatively, if you lack the resources to create content to make an impact, it would be best to appoint an external agency to run the whole process for you, as increasing numbers of companies are doing at this era. - Understanding different buyer personas
Buyers, or known as your so called target audience are not your typical homogenous group, but more of a complex ecosystem of individuals who prefer to consume their content in different ways. However, you can only fully appreciate that their disparate preferences when you have taken the time to go deeper than just establishing their demographic factor. In order to connect with your targeted audience, one should always think about building NOT JUST ONE, but MULTIPLE buyer personas and then creating different content types to help reflect to this diversity.
One of the ways to understand your customers’ needs, is to simply ask them, in which, it’s something that 58% of B2B marketers never do. One instance, your audience may be made up of ‘skimmers’, ‘deep diverse’ and ‘waders’ of content, some of whom will prefer more to video as compared to a podcast, reading at their desks rather than to listening during their morning commute, or even reading short articles to a long ones just to save time. It is crucial to service them all and give all of them every opportunity to engage. Buyers will definitely appreciate this gesture. - Producing content in suitable formats
To adapt to the varied landscape of B2B buyers, it’s crucial to provide a variety of formats to reflect this diversity.
Especially when you have invested so much time and money in developing a piece of content, make sure that you use it to its fullest. Ensure that it is being repurposed across multiple formats, such as blogs, infographics, and podcasts, to enhance visibility across a wide variety of channels.
Regardless of the format, the focus should always be on delivering content that adds value and also packed with insights and solutions. - Measuring content ROI
Increasing investment in data-driven marketing means that there’s an ever-greater focus on measurement as well as analytics. Consequently, if you aren’t monitoring and analysing metrics (such as backlinks from posts, traffic flow to and from your content, your site’s domain authority, the volume of email enquiries or social media shares) you won’t know how hard your content is working.
Consider assigning a monetary value to every website visitor and gauging the number of visits each piece of content achieves. Utilize lead magnets, such as white papers, and give a value to the number of leads that come from the downloads. Marketing automation platforms, such as Hubspot, Pardot, and Marketo, enables end-to-end tracking from the first visit to the purchase.
Accurate measurement of content ROI necessitates the presence of appropriate analytical tools and ensuring their proper configuration. Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and dashboard visualisation software like Databox, are the most popular analytical technologies being used by B2B organisations currently. - Creating buy-in among stakeholders
While a timely, well-written and carefully researched piece of content can become an overnight success, it’s very rare that this happens. Generally, you will need to create a foundation of content before you get traction in the marketplace, and this process takes time. Hence, it is crucial to manage stakeholders’ expectations, ensuring they understand the long-term benefits and opportunities content marketing presents.
Firstly, this might mean using online resources, statistics, and case studies to help stakeholders understand the potential benefits of content marketing.
We recommend setting specific objectives for each content piece, such as increasing organic traffic, generating leads or building trust, and then setting up your analytics to track these goals. Ultimately, you will be able to generate reports that show the effectiveness of your content and help justify the investment and overall approach to your stakeholders, showing the rewards as your content marketing gains traction. - Aligning content with the buyer journey
The content that you produced must cater the needs of your target audience at every stage of the buyer journey. Ensuring the right content is available to buyers when they need it is typically one of the biggest challengers marketers face.
Approximately a quarter of B2B buyers engage with five or more pieces of content before even reaching out to a supplier, indicating that there is a clear demand for information along the length of the purchasing journey – not just at the top of the funnel, which was the focal point for 50% of B2B content back in 2019.
But if you are to add value by creating compelling content for every stage of the buyers’ journey, then you must make sure it has the right narrative and is presented in a preferred format. For instance, PR and articles work well in order to raise awareness; videos and round-up pieces support buyers during the consideration phase; and case studies and demonstrations – either live or on-demand – help when it is decision time.
Do take note that NEVER neglect your existing customers in the process. Supporting your customers’ ongoing needs can increase retention and encourage them to become advocates for your brand. - Activating content effectively
Failure to activate content in a manner that it connects and engages with its target audience means that significant amount of the content is being overlooked and unseen. In order for content marketing to be effective, it needs to shift from a passive to a proactive process, where buyers are guided forward and encouraged to consume more related content as they go, rather than leaving being left to their own devices.
This means that developing a strategy that ensures one piece of content leads directly to the next, while also addressing obstacles and dead-ends such as broken links or unnecessary forms that audiences may often face when trying to access content. The goal is to make things simple and smooth as possible so that audiences don’t experience any friction. This becomes especially crucial considering that two-thirds of B2B buyers say they want easier access to content. - Choosing the right channels
Last in the list of content marketing challenges is choosing the right channels. With a plethora of marketing channels and platforms available, focus on the ones that best connect you with your buyers.
It is crucial to take your time to identify the most appropriate channels to reach your target personas, or else, you could end up ‘fishing in the wrong pond’ and your target audiences will never get to enjoy your carefully crafted content.
While Google still remain as a go-to resource for many B2B buyers in the awareness phase, relying solely on organic reach has its limitations. The smartest content marketers promote their content using paid digital advertising via social media, reputable industry publications and other online platforms to bolster their organic traffic. Additionally, they also leverage traditional and digital PR and build partnerships with social media influencers to further support their content marketing initiatives.
What are your biggest content marketing challenges? Get in touch with our consultant to find out how we can help you solve them!