Author name: Gagandeep Singh

Challenges

The marketing industry has got a new buzz! A new super-selling term has entered into their territory. And the good news is- all are reaping benefits from it. It’s a new craze and it’s pretty much a fashion now!

Well, well we are glad that you rightly guessed it. But, in case, you did not. then, let us just unfold this mystery. Folks, we are talking about Content Marketing.

Content marketing serves as fuel for your marketing goals if it’s been executed under a proper strategy. Because a great strategy is a road that leads to success.

We’re living in an age of great information, spread all around, worldwide. The information is bombarded from everywhere all around the world. Gone are the days when grandma’s stories used to be our whole world.

Now, the whole world is full of stories and connected all around which means loads of content. But, meanwhile listen to the confessions of great content marketers, guys. Producing content in bulk is easy, but creating engaging content is no child’s play. Now, that seems the top-most challenge.

Challenge 10: Lack of time

Time is of great essence and so valuable. A study shows that 69% of marketers feel that the lack of time is the major challenge for them when producing content.

Lack of time or insufficient resources for producing content seems the first big challenge. In that case, if you think of hiring or paying someone else to produce content for your business then you’re thinking in the right direction.

If budget is no constraint for you then outsourcing or hiring an in-house content team is a good approach.

Solution

Content production requires a proper skill set and a lot of time investment. So, either you do it on your own or hire some agency or resource to write for your business-ultimately you are the one who is going to pay for it.

Outsourcing content from a third party or building an in-house team both require time and capital investment. When you outsource content, maintaining the right production schedule and editorial quality assessment are some of the risks attached to it. But if the produced content does not match your expectations then this can cause a hell lot of harm to your hard-earned brand.

So, you’re left with the option of producing content with the help of your in-house team. For this, you ought to be prepared with a sufficient budget and the time devotion of uncountable hours. This is a high time coming out of this freaking thought of understanding content just as a ‘free’ marketing strategy.

Challenge 9: High Quality

This is something, we want to say in all CAPS ON. Quality content is just not a buzzword which is played for the fun of marketers. It’s pretty much serious!

And quality is such a factor which is often compromised when the challenge is big. Delivering engaging, interactive and meaningful content is hard and it requires hours and hours of time and sincere efforts.

Awful grammar, poor spelling, typos, improper page and text formatting and most importantly, bad sentence construction can put your brand in big trouble. Just because your visitors find some small spelling mistakes or typos on your website, they are not going to visit your site again.

Solution

The solution is in the right intake of your dose. Yes, you heard it right!

What makes a writer? Reading. Yes, a good reading habit can make a writer’s career. And similarly, a poor or low-quality dose can kill the entire thing.

A good writer does a plethora of research daily and reads beyond limits. And let’s get honest here. While scrolling through the internet, we often come across awful articles or stuff which is nothing but just crap.

So, if you are aware of this fact now, you just can’t serve your audience the same food!

You need to understand the responsibility of creating high-quality content which is just like creating value to keep your audience occupied with something really meaningful. So, the best solution lies in brushing up your skills and developing your writing skills.

The best thing is to keep abreast with the editorial standards and writing guidelines and stay updated with the latest content trends.

This way you can better understand your responsibility of publishing high-quality content and not compromising with it ever.

Challenge 8: Unrealistic expectations

Content marketing is a fashion now. But a misconception which has created fuss is -the unrealistic expectations from the content. Skilled content marketing players also fail because they cannot set real expectations for the content they publish. It takes years for them to understand how the entire thing works.

The problem lies not in the content marketing but with the unrealistic expectations set with it. When the content strategies do not deliver results, it is going to bring disappointment.

And in that case, businesses often turn to traditional ways of marketing without understanding the goals attached to the content they publish. So, before setting any expectations from content marketing, you need to understand your business goals and the kind of results you want to achieve from the content.

Solution

First, you need to manage your expectations with the content. You need to review the organic traffic and customer engagement programs. This whole analysis will save you from the disappointment and the crisis of failing.

You need to observe if your efforts match the goals and expectations set by the published content. And what you can do more to strategize and achieve the desired results. It’s good to find manageable goals while crossing the ladder and once you achieve a little expertise on that, you can always stretch your efforts and face challenges.

But in the initial phase, it’s not wise to go so hard and over-ambitious.

The conversion is only possible with the better content. Only with quality content, you can get a good conversion rate and can sincerely achieve wonder-working results from it.

Challenge 7: Fierce competition

This is something killing the content marketing industry, but it’s been fully ignored. The fierce competition within the industry.

The only thing marketing creatures understand is ‘promotion’ and that’s what insanely drives the whole process. Just because a Facebook page has thousands of followers, the quality of content published over there can’t be assured.

After all, we live in such an age where social acceptance and rejection matter the most.

All we need to understand is that there is intense competition going around. A great pressure is already there to deliver exceptionally meaningful content to your target audience and you’ve to differentiate yourself from the rest of the crowd.

And that’s the hook of the story!

Solution

One thing we can assure you in content marketing is – if the content is crap nothing can save your brand from sinking.

Delivering exceptionally good content is the only funda and trick to survive in this industry.

Before you launch any campaign, review your campaign strategy for a while and think about its execution.

Do a complete SWOT analysis of the content you’re posting and the kind of results and expectations you want to fulfil from your posted content. Once you post your content, the basic social media analysis is the right approach to evaluating the key opportunities and weaknesses to sustain with your target audience.

The best thing you can do is explore the best blogs that are making wonderful hits! Explore the strategies they are implementing and how they’re making it to the path of excellence. The savvy content marketers have a knack for succeeding on what they’re publishing but how they beat the competition is worth learning.

Challenge 6: ‘Content Race’

Content is highly misunderstood in the way it’s been produced in today’s age. The thousands of content marketers are doing it just by applying to a simple funda of selling. Either they want to sell a product, service or business idea.

So, the whole battle starts with the intention of ‘selling’ and earning money. If you too are working on the same line, then hold on and review.

The content does not sell, it adds value!

What value your published content is adding to the lives of your audience- is the big question to ask today.

And if you can’t find an appropriate answer to this query then it’s good to take a break and plan the whole content idea with your management team before committing them to an impressive ROI.

If you’re just producing content for the sake of doing it or just to compete with the competition going around- then, you need a complete review of your content strategy. Defining a clear set of goals and objectives is a great way to start.

Solution

The solution lies in doing it differently from your competitors.

Yes, that’s the key solution! Once you find ways of doing it differently, only then you can taste success. Because you can’t generate promising results just by putting in the same efforts you were doing earlier. You have to monitor the strategies on which you’re operating and expecting results.

Rather than producing a plethora of content, keep it limited to a few pieces.

Schedule your whole content plan in a way that you not only can write but can also test the content for results.

Plan some levels of testing observe the results and also see how it influences your audience. See how your content is working on social media and what message it is giving out to your audience.

Prefer doing audience research, media research and new trends research through tools like Google Trends or Buzzsumo.

Until the time you are not doing a complete evaluation of what content you are producing, the results can’t make you stand out from the competition and crowd.

Identify the ways you can differentiate yourself from your competitors rather than just being in the content race and producing a bulk of the content.

Challenge 5: Unclear focus on the subject

This is one of the biggest challenges that content marketers are facing. Zeroing down on a subject area too broadly or unclearly can put your brand in great trouble.

Let’s learn it with an example.

Health is a wide, broad subject matter, but till the time you don’t zero down exclusively to the right segment of your target audience- you can’t find a way. With this subject, you need to identify what exactly your focus is and how you want to achieve that.

A well-managed content production team can understand this challenge and bring the right solution.

Solution

Start categorizing the content with the help of your editor or experts.

Look out for the relevant topics and see how it works for you. Take enough time to do good research and build an idea factory to experiment it in different ways.

We all know there are 100 good ways of doing the same thing differently with a new strategy every time.

Challenge 4: Target Audience

Half the battle is won if you know your target audience.

And that’s where the content experts often fail. Just the surface-level details of your audience are not going to bring glory to your business.

You need to do it a bit differently. Because identifying the primary market is easy, but researching the target market is a real challenge.

Solution:

Just doing demographic research for your audience will not suffice. Knowing the sex, age, and location details won’t give the exact idea about your audience. You need to evaluate it on different parameters.

All you need to do is understand the troubles /challenges they are facing and touch that pain point.

You also need to understand what value and solution your content is going to add for your readers but that’s only possible once you define the USP of your business clearly. Either, you want to bring awareness, educate or simply want to sell something to your audience.

Challenge 3: Comfort zone

Solution

You need to experiment with it in bits and pieces. Choose small content pieces and different subject matters to test based on recent updates and trends. Once you are done with the testing phase, the real work starts.

Now comes the learning phase where you can apply the explored results to your future projects.

Building a content strategy in a competitive space is just so challenging. And the most challenging thing is working towards it to bring desired results.

The whole world wants to gain attention and that’s why keeping your brand voice high, clear, and authoritative is the only advice experts give. Because that’s what directly impacts the ROI of your business.

Challenge 2: Consistent & long term

Have you ever heard about ‘Content Shock?

Research says that content is not going to be sustained for long.

Reason? The bulk of content and end number of publishers. Then, what’s the future? Who would be the potential future leaders?

No doubt, there is content noise all around!

But the content experts who are clear with their strategies will only sustain. It’s surely going to be the survival of the fittest.

Some brands have taken the oath of educating their audience and that’s how they are bringing change in their lives.

Your readers are just not going to consume content but they’re going to find reliability in awesomely consistent and long-term content things. And that’s the hook of the story!

Challenge 1: Writer’s Burnout

That’s the top most challenge when you as a brand feel you have hit the wall in content production. Or, your resource just can’t take 3,000 plus unique words, resulting in bringing write-ups in a day.

Solution:

You need to understand the resource who is writing for you is using all his creative nerves and not at all a machine. In case you’re quite okay to put your brand image in trouble then that’s a completely different story. Otherwise, play it differently!

So, in a nutshell, go fresh, radiate more new ideas, and serve differently! Just think of a reader’s burnout too.

Think of adding value to what they read and that’s what drives them back to your web blogs. This is the only mantra of sustaining long and long in the industry.

So, big cheers to your next content piece! Stay tuned with us for more tips on content marketing.

Do share with us any recent challenge you came across with content marketing and we will deliver the best solution for your business.