Content Marketing Not Working For You?

Do you sometimes feel like you post content to your social media platforms or your website and you are spinning your wheels? We have all been there, done that. In today’s quick “Jus the facts” world we live in, content marketing is more important than ever. If you feel you post and post and nothing is happening with engagement from your customers or prospective marketing base you are trying to target, here are some pointers that may help you turn things around.

1. Your Content is Not Relevant to your prospect’s needs

Every one of your prospects and customers is different. They have their own wants and needs. They are at various stages of interacting with you as a brand, they are looking for different things, they will be convinced and put off by different things. It is impossible to create one message and make it relevant to your whole audience. Try personalizing your content based on customer desires using a combination of explicit (form filled data) and implicit (calculated data). This should be across every channel not just email.

2. Your Content is Not Timely

Sadly, we now live in a “I want it now!” world. Unless you are retired and even that does not mean much today, we just don’t have the time for anything. In our busy day, we take about 15 minutes of that to get and find the things we need. We do it on our terms when it suits us. No matter what I’m looking for, I need to get the basic content to answer my questions when I need it. I do not want to have to wait for a week to get a call back, I do not want to wait until the right email is sent to me as part of your newsletter program. Try using inbound channels to personalize the experience for your visitors. Whether you are using the web to serve up relevant products, FAQs, or contact information, or if it is serving push notifications through your app, or you are using social media platforms, make the experience relevant for the user when they are engaged. Aim to trigger your results immediately so that your users do not have to wait.

3. Your Content is Not on the Right Channel 

Think about your mobile phone. You’ve got email, text message instant messaging, phone calls, apps. You probably use each of these for different things. At the same time, if you were to ask an older relative, they would use them differently than you do. Ask a younger relative, and they are likely to use them differently still. And all of this is context based. I personally wouldn’t want my bank to start a Facebook Messenger conversation with me, and I wouldn’t want my friends to send me emails when they have a trivial question. Everyone uses different communication channels differently. Yet as marketers, we tend to think simply of cost.  Ask people which channels they want to receive information through and adapt accordingly. You can do either as part of the email sign up process or later down the line. 

4. Your Content is Not Consistent

 As a loyal customer, if I had to go all the way back to square one when I know you have information about me, I’m going to get frustrated quickly. We’ve all had the experience of being handed around at a call center. (Oh those dreaded computer voices of push one for this and two for that) We’ve also likely had a similar experience where we’ve called in, and they know exactly who you are, your history with the company, and are able to assist you immediately. Having a one-off campaign that is relevant to the individual isn’t enough, it needs to be consistent across every campaign on every social platform you are engaging with. Rather than creating ad hoc campaigns in a manual “throw it on the wall and see if it sticks” process, try using software which allows you to collect data on who your customers and prospects and see what they are interested in, what they want to receive, on which social platform or your website, how often, and allow it to do the heavy lifting for you. It simply is not possible to do all of this and stay consistent to all of your audiences through manual work. You again will be back spinning your wheels.
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-Roy
FDMC Digital Media LLC