More than three quarters of all business-to-consumer marketers use content marketing to promote their companies.
With business-to-business companies, the figure is even higher, close to 90 percent.
So if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance your business is using content marketing. But are you using it successfully? Many of the companies that have embraced content marketing say they haven’t come up with a proper strategy, or haven’t seen a benefit from their efforts.
With that in mind, we’re going to take a look at some of the reasons your content marketing may be falling short.
1. People Can’t Find You.
Content marketing is what it sounds like: you create content – blog posts, white papers,
video, etc. – in hopes of getting people to realize how your company can help them.
But there’s a lot of content out there, and you need to make sure yours gets found. One way to do that is through search engine optimization (also known as SEO). When your content includes the keywords that you want to rank for on search engines, you’ve increased your chances of being found.
This doesn’t mean you should just load your content with keywords. Search engines will penalize you for this practice, and your readers will find it off-putting.
2. People Can Find You, But Your Content Doesn’t Actually Help Them.
We’ve talked before on this blog about the buyer’s journey. When people are in the first stage of that journey, they’re not really looking to buy from you. Rather, they have a problem they need to solve.
Your blog can help people at this stage. Let’s say you manufacture construction equipment. Instead of just writing posts about why your tools are the best, you could create blog entries that help people deal with problems in their industry: 10 Safety Tips for Construction Sites, for example.
When you create this sort of content, you’re helping potential customers answer questions and solve problems, and have also established yourself as an authority in your industry.
3. You Don’t Know Your Audience’s Pain Points
Of course, you can’t solve your potential customers’ problems if you don’t know who they are and what drives them.
This information is crucial, because it’s the type of thing that your sales team will need to know when they engage with leads. So before you create content, you need to ask questions about your audience’s pain points:
- What causes your prospects to lose sleep?
- What are the challenges they face every day?
- Where do they go to get information about their industry?
When you can answer these questions, you can begin creating content that speaks to your audience.
4. You’re Creating Content Without Sharing It.
It’s not enough to just write a great blog post and hope people will find it by searching for 
the right keywords. You need to get it to your audience, making use of tools such as social media and e-mail marketing to share your content.
Social media allows you to learn more about who your customers are. You can see what issues they care about, what sites they read, what topics they discuss. You might find that they have questions you can answer right there on Facebook or Twitter, which is another way to show your expertise.
Whether your business has already begun to practice content marketing or is just getting started, contact IQnection. For more than 16 years, we’ve helped businesses build websites and tell their stories through content marketing.
We identify your audience’s pain points, create content that speaks to their problems and make sure that content reaches its target. Our team of digital marketing experts will develop content that resonates with your customers and keeps them coming back to your website and your business.
