Top 10 Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid: What You Are Doing Wrong

Content marketing is one of the strongest tools you can have at your disposal when it comes to promoting your brand. But just as how good content marketing techniques help to grow your brand, there are bad content marketing techniques as well that can shatter the reputation of your brand.

Your brand needs techniques for putting itself on the map. Having the most effective marketing techniques means considering all aspects of marketing, understanding your audience, managing your marketing budget, and more. A successful and detailed marketing campaign ensures that your brand maximizes ROI or Return on Investment in no time.

For instance, many leading internet service providers like Xfinity have introduced 24/7 service, which means that they are available to customers, any time of the day. It doesn’t matter what time of the day you call, dialing the Xfinity customer service number will lead the caller to an Xfinity representative who will solve the customers’ queries for them. Such a tactic lets customers know that brands are prioritizing them and that’s how they remain loyal.

However, there are some businesses that do not get the expected benefits they should, even with their carefully thought-out content marketing technique. Is your content marketing strategy successfully tapping into the surge of organic traffic of Google search results? Or are you still stuck in the outdated marketing methods that may be taking a toll on your content marketing strategies?

10 Content Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

This article will help you to successfully use your resources and maximize your content marketing strategies. Check out the following mistakes you might be making:

• Your Content is Too Promotional

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who was bragging too much? You lost interest as soon as they started to brag. It’s the same for brands as well.

Consider the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 Rule, which states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts that you put in.

When you apply it to content marketing, it means that 80% of your content should be about the customers (challenges they face and their solutions, FAQs to answer customers’ questions, etc.) and the 20% should be about promoting your brand.

Do keep in mind that the ratio may vary.

• You Don’t Know Who Your Target Market Is

Each piece of your content should have a clear definition of what your target market is. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Who is the target market of this content piece?
• What should be included in this content for them to find what they are looking for?
• What value does this target market provide to your brand?

Answering these questions should help you to figure out how to best position your piece of content. If the content is intended for a technical specialist, then it should have more in-depth information. If a content piece is for users who aren’t very tech-savvy, your content piece should be easy for them to read.

If your readers are intrigued, they are willing to stick to your brand and subscribe to your mailing list. Not narrowing down the target market of your content piece is a waste of your time and effort; when you are promoting your content in the wrong target market, you have nothing to gain, but a lot to lose.

• You are Failing on Social Media

Social media platforms allow content marketers such as yourself to reach a wide variety of audiences. But we often misuse tools that are at our disposal.

Whether you don’t understand your target audience, you are not paying attention to your competitors, or you are not engaging with social media users, you are missing out on opportunities for successful content marketing.

One tool in social media that is useful is scheduling your post to publish on time. Another is looking at how your audience interacts with your content to ensure that you are providing content that they like.

If you don’t have a social media platform, you need to develop one. If you do have one and you don’t use it, now is the time to start posting consistently on your social media platform.

• You are Sending Too Many Emails

Sending emails to your customers is an important marketing technique because customers who receive marketing emails from brands are 68% more likely to purchase than customers who don’t receive such emails.

However, it only works as far as you are doing it right. Some brands run the risk of sending three or more emails in a day, which customers cannot tolerate. This is a dangerous marketing technique that doesn’t bode well for your brand.

Do you know what’s worse? Not customers unsubscribing to your emails, but rather the emails that do not get delivered. If an online retailer has been sending marketing emails for a year, and the receiver doesn’t open a single one of those emails, then the email address of the receiver is officially registered as “undeliverable” to the sender.

Your customers might disengage for many reasons, from both the frequency and content. Make sure you are just sending one email in a day.

• You are Not Promoting Your Content Enough

The content marketing process doesn’t stop after the content has been published. You don’t only focus on creating content, you also need to work on how to promote your content!

The 80/20 rule applies here as well: you need to spend 20% of your time creating content, and the rest 80% should be spent promoting it on your social media, email, blogs, and other channels. Let your readers and customers know about your content and the products or services your brand is promoting.

Make sure you have careful planning to avoid falling into content marketing pitfalls. One thing you need to do is review the performance of your content marketing efforts: if something is performing better than expected, then you can double down on that tactic, or if something isn’t working, what tactic do you need to cut down on?

Keeping all these in mind should help you to learn what content you need to promote more, and what content did not get the reaction as expected.

• You Don’t Account for Link Building

Link building is also one of the ways through which you can promote your content and let readers/customers know about your products and services.

Take this scenario; a study from April 2020 analyzed 1 million search results to find that the number of links from external websites is a factor that is closely correlated with ranking on Google search results. In simple terms, this means that if you have a unique website linking to your website than your competitors, then your website is getting ranked higher than them on Google. That makes it easier for customers to find your brand.

Hence, you shouldn’t ignore the link-building technique. Learn about the best methods for creating SEO content and build relationships with other websites that promote the same content as you and ask them to link back to your content.

• You are Not Open to Diversity

You know the saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”? It rings true here as well; do not put all your marketing resources into just one tactic.

As a content marketer, you have so many different channels and strategies to go through. On one social media channel alone, you can use many different tactics i.e. images, text, web articles, videos, user-generated content, infographics, etc. One tactic may not work for another social media channel. A tactic being used for your Instagram content may not be suitable for your LinkedIn or YouTube channel.

• Your Content is not Mobile Friendly

Imagine your reader receives a link to your content piece on his smartphone device. Once he opens it up on the mobile browser, the view is too small or too skewed and doesn’t fit the screen, and that just makes him exit the browser.

How your readers/customers view your content on their browsers is also one of the most important factors affecting your content marketing technique. So much so that Google’s April 2015 mobile algorithm update introduced mobile friendliness as an SEO ranking signal for mobile device users.

Hence, if your content isn’t mobile-friendly, then your readers may not be interested to find out what you have got to say.

• You Have Removed CTA (Call-To-Action) or Don’t Have One

Your content marketing techniques will be negatively impacted if you don’t include calls to action.

Sure, you shouldn’t make your content too sales-y, but you do need to nudge your readers in a particular direction. That’s what the CTA button is for.

Examples of CTA button includes signing up for an email newsletter, upgrading a subscription, making a purchase, calling customer service, getting more information, etc. It’s basically anything clickable that points the readers to learn more about what you have to say, or your brand.

• Your Content Talks About Potentially Controversial Topics

Remember the Pepsi ad which featured Kendal Jenner handing a Pepsi drink to an officer at the scenes of the protest, only for it to end the whole conflict? This ad caused a massive uproar among the supporters and viewers. The reason for it was that it appeared tone-deaf. The ad made it look like protesting was this hip thing that people do for fun. Also many have even said that it might be reminiscent of the BLM movement.

If your content is going to include any polarizing or emotional topics, it should only be possible if it’s part of the brand’s objective. Otherwise, your content shouldn’t include information that would hurt anyone’s feelings. Make sure it’s measured and well-researched.  

Final Thoughts: Avoid Making Content Marketing Mistakes That Can Be Avoided

We are all humans and we are prone to making mistakes. But the beauty of it is that we are also capable of learning from it. If you have failed at one marketing technique, then use that as a lesson to improve in the future. Also, research content marketing tips that will help your brand achieve success, or use the above-mentioned tips to avoid making content marketing mistakes so that you don’t lose followers for your brand.

Do you have any content marketing mistakes to share with others to avoid? Let us know in the comments!