A Cautionary Tale of Content Marketing Fail
Yes - yes you are...
So there was this company having problems with their marketing.
They had been spending $20K a month on Google adwords but tough competition had pushed the market up to $50 a click and they just weren’t seeing the returns.
So they made some changes, fired their agency, took on an internal marketing director, and tried to effect a content strategy to replace the lost adwords traffic.
A year later they were spending $20K a month on salary, Bing ads and other consultants and were still not seeing much return for their efforts.
Their digital footprint was a mess: the website was slow and poorly designed, there was no clear visual branding, no content strategy, no local strategy and they were dropping $2.5k a month on a link building approach that stopped being effective in 2011.
But the biggest problem was that they had no budget, no plan, no measurement of their efforts that would have helped them turn it round.
When they did decide to make a change they made the number 1 mistake that businesses who don’t understand content marketing make:
They wanted results in days, not months.
When things didn’t magically turn around in a month, they changed tack, reverted to their old ways and are no doubt still scratching their heads as to what to do.
The Takeaway for you
Don’t be like that company - once you’ve taken care of your digital footprint and visual branding - know that content marketing takes time, and here’s why:
Content marketing succeeds because the more you do it, the better you get.
That’s it - it’s that simple.
It isn’t about how many articles you produce - it’s about how good each individual piece of content is and whether people deem it worthy enough to link to or share.
Until you start consistently producing content, you’re never going to improve. It’s 2016, it’s time to dig in and double down on your efforts - your future self will thank you.
Written while listening to: C major Theme - Lisbon Development
Image Credit: Your Awsome by julesssago on Flickr