Why Is Your Content Marketing Strategy Failing?

Why is your content marketing strategy failing? That is a very good question that plagues many people in the online marketing field. While plenty of website development companies both encourage content marketing and actively engage in it themselves, it is surprising that most businesses are not very successful or aren’t nearly as successful as they should be.

A recent UK-based survey is citing that less than 6% of marketers are confident in their execution of their own content marketing strategy.

While that survey is only drawing on the opinions of one country, it is still a noteworthy statistic to consider. There are some other interesting numbers that came out of the survey in addition to the low confidence in execution which lead to our question about why are people’s content marketing strategies failing?

Basic reasons for strategy failure

Regardless of whether we are talking about content marketing strategy, business strategy or other types of strategy, there are a few common reasons for failure which bear mentioning:

• No written plan – Statistically speaking it has been proven that taking the time to write out a plan of action provides better results. There are a lot of reasons for this. A written plan helps establish clarity, organization, expectations, and benchmarks. During the process of writing the plan you also often learn more about your business and your competition as well as discovering potential problems or pitfalls. Finally a written plan lends to the concept of accountability as you have a guide and expectation of progress.
• Consistency of action – Regardless of having a written plan or not, the consistent execution of your strategy is also a key towards success or failure. Far too many people follow a plan for a week or two but then stop or lessen effort if they aren’t seeing some sort of immediate result. It is a lot like a New Year’s resolution.

So why is your content marketing strategy failing?

The simple answer is that you probably don’t have a written plan and you are not consistently producing content.

A written plan leads to success for a number of reasons as we outlined above. Yet many businesses don’t take the time to actually craft a plan. Instead they write a few blogs now and again on whatever topic springs to mind.

You see it all the time when you visit websites that have blogs as a form of content marketing. Sometimes there will be multiple posts in a week and then nothing for a month. Or perhaps they haven’t had a new post in a year.

Along with that written plan, producing engaging content on a consistent schedule is a key to success in content marketing. There is simply no way around it!

Tips for fixing your content marketing

We have written quite a few articles on the concept of content marketing. Rather than just re-hashing or watering down that information, we have linked to some of the best articles which can help you fix your content marketing:

• Top 5 tips to freshen up your content marketing plan
• Our Top 20 Visual Content Marketing Strategies Part 1
• Our Top 20 Visual Content Marketing Strategies Part 2
• Top characteristics of great content marketing
• Crafting Captivating Content 101

The bottom line is that content marketing is a lot like other aspects of business; it takes work if you want success. If your content marketing strategy is failing it is most likely due to a combination of not having a written plan and not consistently executing. Now is the time to change that! With the tips and ideas we have shared you can get your content marketing strategy back on track and performing the way it should.

Be sure to check back every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for great new Lounge Lizard blog articles.