How to Overcome Content Marketing’s Biggest Challenges
Content marketing is one of the most potent and efficient ways to grow your business. But, just like anything else, there are certain challenges that you’ll face, and you won’t find success until you conquer them. We’re going to talk about the most troublesome issues that companies deal with and how you can overcome them in your marketing.
It takes up too much time
Creating and distributing quality content is not some “set it and forget it” marketing method. It’s going to demand time and serious effort. 61 % of marketers said that content creation is too time-consuming. But time consumption can be managed to the point where it’s a non-concern.
If you’re having problems with the amount of time content creation requires, you are probably disorganized.
Disorganization only creates speed bumps. To make a real impact, your content needs to be efficient, and it needs to be created and distributed with consistency.
By far, the best way to do this is to use a content marketing calendar. Having a schedule that you must abide by will make your content creation efforts run smooth. Knowing what dates that you have to create and deliver content will keep you organized, and your marketing will be more consistent.
Aside from the use of a marketing calendar, minimize your process as much as possible. Meaning, don’t spend too much time on things that are not necessary. If research, for example, is taking up to much time, figure out how you can shorten the process without compromising the quality of the content. You can delegate tasks among your staff. You can record what exactly is taking so much time, and see if you can do anything to cut it out.
It’s too much work
Creating quality content can become difficult. It’s hard to keep crafting content week after week, without any dips in quality. If you’re having trouble coming up with new content ideas, then it’s time to start getting creative.
You can repurpose your existing content. If you have a blog post, for example, you can turn it into a video with narration, powerpoint slides, animation, etc. If you have a series of blog posts on one topic, then you can merge them into one longer piece of content like an ebook or a whitepaper. Transferring your existing content into different digital mediums can save you a lot of time and effort.
Connect and collaborate with other content creators. Try interviewing other experts in your field. Try connecting with other non-competing market leaders and see if you can create some content together.
Use other content as inspiration. No, don’t plagiarize. However, there is absolutely nothing wrong with extracting inspiration from other sources. Use your own research, expertise and knowledge to put a unique spin on their content ideas.
It’s hard to track results
We believe in the power of measuring your results. It’s like this: If you want to bake a cake, you’re going to measure everything—the amount of sugar, flour and whatever else is being mixed. If you don’t, the cake will come out wrong, with a bad flavor and probably even worse appearance. Marketing is exactly the same way.
You can’t move forward without knowing what works and what doesn’t. Your analytics are crucial.
To participate in a content marketing campaign without a dutiful and accurate analysis of your performance is baking a cake without checking the measurements. It should be easy to understand that. What people find difficult is determining what metrics should be used to analyze their campaign’s performance.
The truth is that certain metrics serve different purposes. We’ll condense these purposes into two camps: Initial and Gradual Impact.
Here’s the metrics you would use to measure Initial Impact:
- Social Media Sharing
- Facebook Likes, Retweets
- The amount of blog and social media comments
- Average of the page views per visitor
- Time spent on the page
If you have a decent-sized following, these metrics tell you a great deal about the immediate impact that your content is having. These are all engagement metrics.
Here’s the metrics you would use to measure Gradual Impact
- The amount of new leads a piece of content brings.
- The conversion of these leads into paying customers
- The length of the sales cycle
- The lifetime value of the customer
Unless you have a gigantic following, these metrics will take some time to generate. The endgame of your content marketing is to generate more loyal customers. Because content creation is a long term strategy, you will have to wait before you’ll see any major ROI.
Don’t let these challenges set you back. Conquer these challenges by using the solutions we’ve provided in this post.
