SIX CONTENT MARKETING MISTAKES YOU MUST AVOID IN 2018

6 min readAug 7, 2018

According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute, 65% of companies that use content marketing experience an increase in the ROI of their marketing actions.

Good news for content marketers because it shows that it is effective and compelling. Nevertheless, why 35% do not systematically obtain results? Which are the errors to avoid ?

# 1 — Do not have an established content strategy

When we talk about content marketing mistakes, we often think about the approach techniques used. However, having no established content strategy is by far the biggest mistake to avoid.

According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 60% of companies with a documented and thoughtful strategy are achieving results. Thus, when a strategy is only verbal, the percentage of companies to have results is 32%. Finally, when there is no strategy, only 7% of companies get results.

The good news is that it’s not too late to start preparing your content marketing strategy for 2018. More importantly, you need to make sure you roll out the strategy so that every action is planned, clear with a determined objective.

# 2 — Ignore the release of press releases

One of the major mistakes companies make is to focus solely on content creation without thinking about its dissemination, its influence in the media. Why spend hours on content creation if it is not read? It’s about putting in place a holistic branding strategy . One of the most effective ways to increase the visibility of its content is to use the press, blogs and therefore to create a press release.

In case you still do not realize how important it is to focus on your content strategy to make your brand stronger , here are some interesting statistics:

Presenting a brand consistently can increase revenue by more than 23%.
According to 89% of readers, the brand from which the content originates is important.
It takes an average of seven brand impressions before we can remember you.

With a good distribution of press releases, your content could be distributed to multiple reliable publications , creating many brand impressions . This is good both for the visibility of the brand and to increase its perceived value.

# 3 — Do not have an emailing strategy

For content marketing efforts to pay, it is necessary that the content and emailing strategy be in sync.

For every euro spent on emailing, we can expect a return on investment of almost 30 euros, making e-mail the most effective inbound marketing network.

In terms of conversion, e-mail surpasses both search engines and social networks — according to a study that analyzed more than 500 million purchase experiences.

With the facts above, the time has come to revisit the e-mail marketing approach . It is indeed essential for content marketing to have a detailed plan for the emailing strategy.

# 4 — Do not integrate SEO into content marketing

Any content marketing strategy that does not include SEO is incomplete. Here’s why :

The two main online activities are search and email . In other words, as trends are social networks, research remains in the lead.
93% of online traffic comes from search engines.
Search engines generate 300% more traffic on sites than social networks.

In general, if the strategy does not include SEO, there is a significant loss of traffic, conversions and sales . Here are some SEO tips that can work for content marketing:

High quality content and linking are the two main signals used by Google to rank websites — Andrey Lipattsev, Senior Strategist for Google Search Quality

Create more content : Backlinko’s search (SEO training and link building strategy) shows that the longer content is better ranked, with about 1,890 words in average results on the first page of Google.
Try to use different media — especially images — to increase the chances of being ranked well. The same search by Backlinko also shows that using a single image within the content can significantly increase its chances of ranking well.
Regularly monitor keywords , both for content and for pages. We can fully optimize its SEO provided you know where you are positioned. When tracking rankings, if the process can not be automated, make sure you know where it is going. For example, it may be possible to mask the IP address with a VPN service in order to obtain unbiased results. Even more, use solutions that automatically monitor rankings and send regular reports.

# 5 — Ignore the rule of seven in marketing

There are lots of lessons learned from “age-old” marketing to use for current content marketing. For example, the famous “rule of seven” . According to this rule, one should not expect the target to become aware of an offer unless it has been confronted with it at least seven times.

This means that it is necessary to use different methods to ensure that key messages are seen more than once by prospects:

Use different networks and ensure that the message is correctly communicated.
Repeat this message on these same networks several times — research shows that sharing content on social networks can significantly increase engagement around the social media.
Ensure that the strategy in place includes a content sharing plan. It is necessary to repackage the content from one format to another and then broadcast it on different media.
Search for the sites and platforms that allow content to be broadcast and work to disseminate the most relevant content.

# 6 — Do not integrate content marketing with sales strategy

For every company, content marketing should be seen as a means of achieving goals and attracting more attention to the brand. Unfortunately, most companies make the mistake of performing their marketing efforts “in a vacuum”. For example, even if a blog has content and quality traffic, it does not necessarily direct readers to the main offers. There is no call to actiondefined, trying to get readers to learn about the products. The problem with this approach is that although the blog is popular with a lot of traffic, there is little return on investment since visitors are not sent anywhere. This concerns not only blogs but also other content delivery platforms.

As a business, your ultimate goal is to generate sales. Each piece of the content marketing strategy puzzle should be consistent with that goal. It is therefore important to have call to action and obvious links on your various platforms, which will thus promote the interest around the proposed offer.

To summarize,

In early 2018, the importance of content marketing is only becoming clear. We will see concrete results only if we know where we are going. Thus, to be certain of getting good results, care must be taken not to make the above mistakes.