7 Signs Your Content Marketing Strategy Needs Improvement

If your content marketing strategy is not producing the results you hoped it would, check out these reasons your content marketing strategy may not be performing up to your expectations, and simple ways to fix it.

1. You Aren’t Sure Who Your Target Audience Is

Defining your target audience is the first step to creating your content market strategy. Without a clear understanding of your audience, the content you produce will not perform as well as you want it to. Furthermore, the content will lack a definite purpose without taking the target audience into consideration while creating your content. Try to understand your audience clearly, and is as much detail as possible. Doing so will save you time and effort when you write your pieces of content, and provide better results.

2. You Haven’t Defined the Buyer’s Journey of Your Audience

Once you’ve figured out who your target audience is, and understand their desires, you’ll need to define the journey they will take to go from strangers to buyers of your products or services. If you don’t have a straightforward path for your audience to take, from being strangers, to reading your content and ultimately buying your products or services, your content marketing strategy will not perform as well as you expected. So, ask yourself after you define your audience, what are their goals, and how are they served by my products or services? That is the kind of question that will help in defining the steps your audience will take to become buyers.

3. You Haven’t Defined Any Key Performance Indicators for Your Content Marketing Strategy

Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, are the statistics you track before and after publishing a piece of content within your larger content marketing strategy. These indicators should come from your buyer’s journey, first as desired outcomes within that journey. Some common KPIs in a content marketing strategy are “how much time did people spend reading the article,” “how many people continued reading related articles,” and “how many people bought your products or services after reading your articles?” There are a limitless number of indicators, but they will be different from business to business and from audience to audience. Choose the indicators that benefit your content marketing strategy the most, and make sure to define these KPIs before putting your strategy into action.

4. Your Content Isn’t Scheduled in a Content Calendar

Not using a content calendar is one of the most common mistakes many business owners make when implementing their content marketing strategy. People love habits and regularity, and content marketing strategies depend on a regular publishing schedule to effectively impact their target audience, and future customers. Once you begin with a regular schedule, you need to maintain that schedule as well, which is where a content calendar is crucial. A content calendar including the assets—all drafts, images, and other files—will help you in organizing and executing your content marketing strategy effectively.

5. You Aren’t Getting the Traffic You Wanted

Site traffic is typically the biggest KPI people imagine when they think of content marketing. If sharing the content on social media or other sites has not attracted people to your site, this may be an indicator your content marketing strategy needs improvement. Reevaluate your content as objectively as possible. To do this, consider your audience. Ask yourself what’s in it for them? If your audience doesn’t think they will get anything useful or valuable from your website, they won’t visit your site, and your site’s traffic will probably never reach your goals.

6. You Don’t Make it Easy for People to Find Your Content

Many small business owners don’t pay attention to Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, which is understandable. Outside the content marketing and IT circles, many people are unaware how websites and articles appear on Google and other search engines. This is where SEO comes into play, and why it’s so important to pay attention to the keywords within your articles that search engines will recognize (and rank) you for. When creating a content marketing strategy, and individual content pieces, consider the keywords that are relevant to your site, and that specific topic. Make sure to use these keywords as naturally as possible when writing your article, but it is advised to use any number of SEO keyword tools to be sure your article is able to rank for the keywords you believe it will.

7. Your Content Isn’t Promoted or Shared Elsewhere

Before your site truly gains momentum on its own, many businesses share their content on social media platforms. The most commonly used for content promotion are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, but some businesses also use TikTok and YouTube. It’s possible on these platforms to gain enough traction organically to gain followers and have your content seen by tons of people, but it’s more than likely you will need to pay for promotion on your articles to gain traction in the beginning.

Use TDA Content Marketing Agencies to Improve Your Strategy

Fixing these problems sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? If you’re not able to maintain and update your content marketing strategy right now, there are hundreds of digital agencies on TDA that can help.

Check out our guide to hiring a content marketing agency for quick and easy ways to find the right fit for you.