Are you facing content marketing problems? Trust us, you’re not alone! Insufficient resources, increasing competition, and maintaining content consistency — these are just some of the challenges brands need to deal with. Nevertheless, they are not giving up on content marketing. In fact, 70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing.
However, great content takes a lot of hard work and time to make. It also doesn’t help that competition is getting fierce every year. Apart from focusing on your brand, you also need to check what others are doing to ensure your company can compete against them. And then, you need to analyze your content, see how your audience reacts to it, and what you can improve in the future.
Indeed, being a content marketer is not easy. But once you find your feet in the industry, you’ll rise to any challenge! Admittedly, regardless of your experience, there will always be some problems with content marketing that will require your immediate attention. However, no matter how hard it gets, don’t give up on it! It can help you achieve various goals and get your brand noticed by more customers.
What’s more, companies rely on this marketing form to reach many priority goals. One research revealed the main reasons why brands use content marketing:
So, if the above is what your brand is working towards, content marketing is important for you! If you’re new to the business, you’re probably wondering what kind of content marketing problems you may expect. In this article, we’ll list some of the biggest challenges that are keeping experts up at night.
Let’s start!
Problems With Content Marketing Everyone Faces
Content marketing offers great opportunities to all those who want to build their business. It’s no surprise, then, that companies spend 46% of their budget on content creation. Luckily enough, they can create various content types to keep customers interested in their brands. Want to engage and hook your audience in just a few seconds? Start making videos! Want to establish authority in a particular field? Post relevant and informative blog posts that customers can’t stop reading!
The world is, as they say, your oyster thanks to content marketing. Unfortunately, many companies waste resources and time because they don’t know how to go about creating good content that engages with and influences their target audiences. This just proves that brands struggle to solve a number of key content marketing problems.
Here’s what’s troubling marketers!
Insufficient Resources
If you ask marketing teams what’s the number one thing that stresses them out in their work most of them would say insufficient resources. What the majority of them mean by this is a lack of time. They always feel they don’t have enough time to go through their creative processes as they should. More often than not, marketers work on several projects at the same time, so things can get tricky.
That being said, producing content is easy. However, making good and quality content is much harder, as you probably know. It takes time and skill to create something that will stand out in this competitive market. You shouldn’t feel rushed to publish your next post on social media or update your blog. If you need time to make a piece of content that will stand out, take it!
According to one research, there are over 500 million blogs on the internet. Also, 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every 60 seconds. So, it’s almost an impossible feat to get your target audience to notice and engage with your content. The only thing you can do is ensure that what you publish on the internet is valuable and worthy of your customers’ time. This is the only way to grab their attention.
Of course, there are other content marketing problems professionals face. One of them is certainly a lack of budget. Marketers need to justify the cost and investment in content marketing. In most cases, your boss wants to see immediate results. But, content marketing takes time to show those results.
Okay, we now know that a lack of time and budget is one of the leading content marketing problems. Nevertheless, insufficient resources aren’t the only challenge here.
Increasing Competition in the Relevant Industry
No matter what you do, you shouldn’t forget about your competitors. In fact, increasing competition in their industry is one of the biggest challenges for marketers. Whether you’re posting DIY videos or blogging about useful marketing tools, someone else has already been doing the same thing for years now. You need to catch the attention of customers who are already following that brand and get them to turn to you.
To make matters worse, consumers’ attention span is decreasing, amounting to only eight seconds! This only adds to the problem of increasing competition and puts you under pressure to create content that is not only better than that of other companies but also engaging enough to interest your audiences. This requires more time and money, which returns us to the first challenge on our list of content marketing problems. The result is a figurative race — which brand can make the best content and post it frequently?
What’s more, as competition for the audience intensifies, the expectations of your customers also grow! This places you under even greater pressure to create exceptional content. But, over time, you will gain more experience, which will help you understand how you can beat your competition and show why customers should choose your brand over them.
Our next challenge marketers face is connected with the previous point. Let’s check it out.
Maintaining Content Consistency
One of the major content marketing problems is figuring out how to deliver engaging and relevant content frequently while maintaining consistency. Trying to stay at the top of your game with each post is no easy feat. If it gets difficult, just remember that content is one of the most effective ways to promote a brand! Your “only” job is to ensure that it remains of the quality your buyers expect from you.
This means you should avoid creating the same content other businesses are already producing on a daily basis. Instead, you should strive to give your followers something different that has real value. To improve your content marketing efforts, we recommend that you research your competitors and see how their content is performing in the SERPs. This will give you a clear idea of the standard you need to match or exceed.
Furthermore, if you’re operating in a highly competitive market where it’s difficult to rank highly for relevant keywords, then do something different. Focus on publishing content that is bold and original, as, without this, it’s unlikely you’ll attract the attention of your customers.
To produce high-achieving content, you should experiment as much as you can. Find a unique angle and see how consumers react to it. If they love it, you can develop it fully and use it for topics that answer the questions of your audience.
Numerous content marketing challenges exist, but it’s possible to find a solution for each and every one of them. Just devote your time and you’ll see the results!
Proving Content Marketing ROI
As you know by now, developing a successful content marketing strategy takes time and effort. Once you come up with a plan and target your audience, you might encounter another problem — showing the return on investment (ROI) of your initiatives. And let’s be real, executives want proof that what you’re doing is producing results for the company.
If you’re not monitoring and analyzing various metrics, you won’t know whether or not your content is effective. As far as measuring is concerned, you should use tools that can help you determine how your campaign is doing. Of course, the first rule is to decide what you want to measure and why. This means that you need to choose appropriate KPIs and enable the right analytics from the start to be able to measure your performance.
Like with other content marketing problems, there is a solution for this challenge as well. Research the relevant analytics tools and pick one that will help you measure ROI and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Let’s see what’s the last challenge on our list of content marketing problems!
Choosing the Right Channels
The content you create needs to be distributed across different platforms. Luckily, marketers have numerous channels and platforms at their disposal. Your job is to focus on the ones that can connect you with your customers, i.e., the ones they are using the most. Usually, brands choose social media to promote content and ensure it gets seen by a larger audience.
What’s more, you can do this as well, but we suggest that you take the time to identify the most important websites and channels to reach your target audience. If you don’t, your posts might end up on a platform that isn’t visited by your existing and prospective buyers. So, conduct research to determine where you should publish, and you can find content marketing success!
Typically, marketers promote their content using paid advertising on social media, websites of renowned publications, and other online platforms that might drive traffic to their own sites. Traditional and digital marketing, together with collaboration with social media influencers, can also get you a long way.
Whenever you encounter these content marketing problems, brainstorm with your team about how you can go about solving them!
Closing Thoughts
Admittedly, it won’t be always easy to overcome some of these content marketing problems. However, if you put in a great deal of effort, nothing will stop you from rising to any challenge. The great news is that customers want to consume content. So take this to your advantage and make relevant and engaging content!
