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The 3 biggest content marketing obstacles - And how to overcome them

You’ve probably heard the phrase “content is king” before. But do you know what it really means and why it matters for your business?

Content marketing is the art of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain your target audience. It’s not just about selling your products or services, but about providing value and showing your customers how you can solve their problems.

Take a look at three of the biggest obstacles faced when taking on the challenge of content marketing and how to overcome them to succeed in today’s competitive market.

Challenge 1: Creating engaging and relevant content

Content marketing is a powerful method to reach both existing and prospective customers. However, getting started is often the most difficult part. Most individuals will start by explaining that their company is wonderful. That’s all good. BUT. Business to Business buyers are interested in SOLUTIONS. Tell them WHY you are so good at what you do.

To do so, you must put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Try to understand their wants, preferences, and pain areas. Better still, ask them yourself!

Surveys, interviews, and analytic tools are your friends. Use them to your advantage to learn more about your target audience. Take those issues and tell your audience how your product can make their lives easier.

Remember that your audience isn’t made up of rocket scientists; they’re regular people like you (unless you happen to be an actual rocket scientist!).

Keep your message conversational and free of industry jargon and language so that ordinary people can grasp it. Reduce things to their bare essentials and make it clear how your product or service will benefit them.

Challenge 2: Distributing content to the right channels and platforms

Marketers will frequently use the same content marketing format. Sponsored articles and opinion pieces are an excellent approach to displaying your expertise and positioning yourself as a thought leader. However, not everyone absorbs content in the same way. Some people prefer reading articles, while others prefer listening to podcasts, viewing videos, browsing an Ebook, or scrolling through social media.

By changing up the content you share, you may reach more people and express yourself in new ways with your audience. This will require some preparation and the creation of a strong distribution plan for your content marketing. You will decide what kind of content—written, audio, or visual—you’ll be producing and where you want to distribute it, bearing in mind where your audience will be searching. Having this in place will allow you to reach your audience through a wide range of touchpoints and maximise the results from your content.

Having trouble reaching new audiences? Borrow an audience from someone else. Influencer marketing has become so well-liked because it enables a brand to connect with new audiences who share similar interests to their own.

You may want to think about co-authoring a blog post, hosting a joint webinar or podcast, producing an e-book or whitepaper as part of your B2B content marketing strategy. You can take advantage of your partner’s loyal readership and establish yourself as a thought leader in your field by doing this. Keep in mind that when asking other businesses for collaboration, you must show how valuable you are and how the partnership can be mutually beneficial.

Challenge 3: Measuring and optimising its performance

So you’ve created and shared your content with the world. Great! Now what?

Reporting on the results of your content is just as, if not more, important than creating meaningful content and distributing it in the right place. This offers an opportunity to learn what went well and how to improve your content. But what to measure?

Your content marketing metrics need to align with your business goals and take into consideration the type of content and stage in the funnel. Your key performance indicators (KPIs) could be the following;

User behaviour metrics: These metrics show how users interact with your website and content, such as page views, bounce rate or time on page.

Engagement metrics: These metrics show how users engage with your content on different channels and platforms, such as likes, comments, shares, and mentions.

Conversion metrics: These metrics show how users take action after consuming your content, such as leads generated, sales made, and revenue earned.

Retention metrics: These metrics show how users stay loyal and engaged with your brand and content over time, such as return visits, repeat purchases, and churn rate.

Measuring these metrics is easy with tools such as Google Analytics, BuzzSumo and SemRush. Once you have this information, you can assess how successful your content marketing campaign has been and use it to improve your content creation, distribution, and optimization processes.

Looking to expand the reach of your content marketing?

Take a look at our content marketing options or get in touch to share your message with an engaged audience of UK business professionals on Bdaily.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Bdaily Digital Marketing Team .