How to Avoid Common Content Marketing Mistakes

In a 2022 Statista survey, 90% of marketers said that content marketing was a part of their overarching marketing strategy. That’s a 20% increase since the results reported in 2019.

There are many reasons why content marketing has become such an integral part of many marketers' strategies. The boost in website traffic, the reputation as a thought leader, and better engagement from customers, to name a few.

However, to achieve these results, it’s essential to stay away from the mistakes other content marketers have made. In this post, we’ll cover four content marketing pitfalls and how to avoid them.

1. Not Setting Goals and Not Defining Your Strategy

Marketers have the intention of getting results with their content marketing strategy. But they may not define exactly what they want to get from content marketing and how they plan to get it. As a result, they won’t achieve much with their content.

Don’t make the mistake of not setting goals and not defining your strategy. Know where you want to go so that you can develop a solid plan for getting there. What do you want to achieve overall with content marketing? Brand awareness? A stronger reputation in your industry? More leads?

Keep in mind you’ll also set goals for individual pieces of content. To make sure you hit your overall and individual content marketing goals, attach key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to them. For instance, to measure brand awareness, track your social shares and referral traffic.

After you define your goals, document your strategy for getting there. Discuss what marketing channels you want to use, the kind of content you want to create, how often you’ll publish, who’s involved in content creation, and anything else that helps you nail down a blueprint for your content marketing strategy.

2. Focusing on Quantity Over Quality

You probably hear all of the time how crucial it is to produce as much content as possible on a regular basis. Don’t make the mistake of taking this to heart and solely focusing on how much content you produce, like so many marketers do.

Focusing solely on quantity when it comes to content works against you. You're so busy trying to churn out lots of content that the quality lacks. Search engines don’t like subpar content and neither does your target audience.

So, while it’s important to produce as much content as you can regularly, it’s more important to produce high-quality content. No matter which piece of content a person engages with, it will be unique, engaging, and educational. And that, in turn, drives audience engagement and higher rankings on search engines.

You can start by pruning your content. Get rid of what is no longer relevant and up to quality standards. That way, search engines will only have high-quality content to crawl through and people will have a better experience with your content.

Then, focus on creating high-quality content. Create a realistic timeline for creating and editing your content. Choose topics that are relevant to your target audience. Experiment with various content types to appeal to the majority of your audience. Make sure your content is reflective of your brand too, in personality, visual appeal, tone, and messaging.

It may take you longer to produce exceptional content, especially if you’re going at it alone. But it’s worth the effort for the results and engagement you’ll get from your audience. Give it time and you’ll eventually be able to put together a content creation team to ease your workload.

3. Trying to Reach Everyone

One of the best benefits of content marketing is its ability to generate leads. All it takes is one piece of content that is highly engaging and relevant to a person for them to be convinced to make a purchase or convert in another way with your business.

However, you first need to know who you’re targeting to get leads. Trying to reach everyone is a huge mistake. Producing content for a general audience is the quickest way to mediocre results.

People have specific content interests and needs. If you can find out what they are, you can accommodate them, making it easier to attract the attention of the people you want to draw in and boost conversions.

Before you create any content, define your target audience. Who does your business serve? Who are you trying to reach with your content? What is their demographic information? What can you tell about their lifestyle, behaviors, interests, and abilities?

The better you know your target audience, the better the content experience you can offer them.

4. Not Collecting and Analyzing Data

Creating content can be so time and effort-intensive that marketers just want to get it published and be done with it. They don’t think about data collection and analysis. If the world wasn’t so digitally focused and digital marketing wasn’t a core part of successful marketing, this may not be a big deal.

But the world is becoming increasingly digital. And digital marketing is fundamental in every marketer's strategy. Embracing data collection and analysis is a must. Much of your target audience will engage with your marketing content online more than anywhere else.

You need to know what they’re doing and why to continually meet their content expectations. Use the built-in analytics tools available on digital marketing channels like social media, and Google Analytics for your website.