7 Reasons Why Content Marketing Fails & How to Fix it

Although millions of entrepreneurs have used digital marketing to boost their business, tens of millions of businesses are wondering why content marketing fails and how they can fix it because it’s not working for them.

As an entrepreneur, you may be thinking that content marketing fails because it is not really a good strategy to grow your business.

But, content marketing has worked for other businesses. So, if anything, this is a proof that it’s not just an effective marketing strategy, but it’s been a major growth hack secret for most businesses, big and small.

To drive home my point, according to a recent survey; Content Marketing creates as much as 3 times more leads for every dollar spent on it. It also converts 6 times more than other digital marketing methods.

Over here at VictorWinners.Com, content marketing has been one of the core cardinals of our growth strategy. And for more than half a decade now, it’s been delivering on tremendous results.

At this point, I know you may be wondering, why then does content marketing fail as a growth strategy for my own business, even after putting in all the effort?

Well, there are a lot of reasons for this and in this post you’re going to learn why content marketing is not working for your business and how you can fix this in the following paragraphs…

No Clearly Defined Goal

One of the main reasons why content marketing fails is because a lot of content marketers do not have a clear idea about what they want to achieve with their business, using content marketing.

Remember that content marketing is the art of creating and sharing useful content with a specified audience, in order to achieve a specific outcome?

As a content creator, before creating your content you have to keep this in mind. You don’t just wake up to start creating content because you feel like it.

This is what I used to do when I started out newly. And the result drove me completely out of business.

Before you embark on using content as a marketing strategy, clearly define what you want to achieve with your business.

Doing this will give you clarity on the kind of audience you will need to achieve that goal as well as the kind of content you can create for that audience.

Done well, you can then move ahead from here to create a strategy on how to achieve this goal using content as a major tool.

With such a clear step by step process, you already know where you’re going, how you can get there and possible outcomes that’s to be expected.

With all this sorted you can now create an effective content that will reach the expected target audience. And you can easily measure the outcome of the content.

Targeting the Wrong Audience

Another popular reason why content marketing fails your business is probably because you’re creating content for the wrong audience.

Just like a sugar vendor who tries to market Sugar to a diabetic patient, most marketers fail woefully because they are with the wrong audience.

Creating your content to the right audience is one of the first steps towards setting the stage for getting clients with your content. Or even attracting the right traffic using your content.

And there’s no way you’ll market to the wrong audience and expect outstanding results. It doesn’t work.

So, in order to fix this, clearly identify the audience that will be interested in your content.

Find out their needs and the kind of content that appeals to them. And then begin to create your content around this needs.

Finding your audience and creating the kind of content they want will definitely drive improved results for your content marketing effort.

Creating Without a Strategy

For most businesses, your lack of a clear content marketing strategy is one of the reasons why content marketing fails to deliver results.

Agreed, most new content marketers are completely clueless about how to create the right content marketing strategy but then, even though you cannot create a robust strategy, you should have some idea about how you want to use content marketing to achieve the goal you have for your business.

Even though it’s just a rough sketch, you can start with that. Without getting some strategy in place, it might be really difficult to get a decent result with your content marketing effort.

Now, by strategy I mean the process by which you’ll create, manage and market the content.

To get started, your content marketing strategy should include things like the goal you want to achieve for your business, your audience, the kind of content you’ll create and how you’ll promote it etc.

Here’s a complete guide on how to create a content strategy here.

And you should be willing to formulate a content plan as per how you’ll write, share the content and the time these will be done.

Unfortunately, most brands don’t follow through this process… Because it’s not only long and tiring, it’s time tasking.

But to fix your content marketing failure, you need to take a step to create a flexible content marketing strategy that will drive the outcomes you want.

Little to Zero Promotion

Again one other major reason why content marketing fails is because there’s the issue of inadequate marketing and promotion of the content.

So you write your content, create the video, update it on your blog. And go back to bed. You wake up two days later, there’s less than 20 views on the post. And then you begin to wonder what’s wrong.

You see, things don’t work that way. Beyond creating and posting content on your blog, YouTube handles etc., you need to share and promote that content with your audience, wherever they are gathered online.

Take it to them there and bring them back to your platform. That’s where the marketing and promotion comes in.

Do not always expect that your audience will find your post via search engines all the time. Sometimes, you need to go out there and get them in from other existing platforms.

There are a lot of online platforms, forums, groups etc. Find the ones with a good number of your target audience and promote your content on those platforms.

Here’s a complete guide on how to promote your content to your audience here.

You Don’t Measure Your Outcomes

One mistake most new content marketers make that leads to epic failure of content marketing is that they don’t measure their outcomes.

I can understand most people don’t know this. In fact I didn’t know this myself when I started out, until I’d spent some time in the industry. But that’s what it was.

When I started out earlier, most of my content marketing effort failed because I didn’t measure my outcomes or the effectiveness of the content strategies I was using.

Unfortunately, this has happened to so many other content marketers, including our clients.

When you take out time to measure your outcomes, you’ll find very important stats that will inform you of the next step you can take or changes to make.

For instance, while having a review of your content, you may find out that some of your content brings in more engagements to your website than others.

Some drive in more visitors, clients, etc. It’s your duty as a smart content marketer to follow the stats and analyze the situation. And if possible identify possible ways you can repeat the positive results while dropping the ineffective ones.

You Create Content With Zero Value

One other major reasons why most content fails is because there is no value created in the piece of content you post.

Remember the fact you need to create content doesn’t mean you have to create just anything because you want to attract traffic to your blog.

Before creating a piece of content, you have to ask yourself, does this add value to my target reader? Would this meet them at the point of their need?

Without your content meeting a specific audience need, it might be really difficult to create a decent result.

Also, while creating value for your audience, create it in an interesting way or in a way your audience can connect with the content.

Sometimes one could even be producing high quality content. But the mode of producing it gets either too technical or too boring for the reader.

Beyond being useful, be sure that your content is interesting, entertaining and educating.

If you find it difficult to create this kind of content, you can join content marketing trainings where you can learn everything there is about content marketing and how to produce interesting and result driven content.

You Don’t Optimize for SEO

As you know, keywords and search engine optimization are very critical in getting people to find your content online.

Sadly most content marketers ignore search engine optimization.

Either because they don’t know how to do it. Or they just don’t care. And this is one of the biggest reasons content marketing fails to bring in reasonable traffic to your blog…

Because people can’t find your content when searching for it via the search engine.

You see, content marketing doesn’t start and end with writing or producing great contents. It’s your primary duty as content marketer, to make your content easily findable on the internet.

And the first step to do this is by using the right keywords, and search engine optimization strategies to boost your content’s visibility.

Here’s a guide on how to use keywords and search engine optimization to create better results for your content.

Final Words

Now that you know the reason why content marketing fails, and how to avoid such outcomes for your content, it is necessary to know how good content marketing works.

And the first step to engage in successful content marketing that will generate traffic for your blog is to avoid the mistakes listed out here. And use the steps suggested here to fix your content.

So, do you want to learn more about content marketing and become a better content creator? Subscribe to our Content Marketing Course for Beginners here.

Now, its your turn What’s the major reason why your content marketing effort has failed? Drop your comments below.