Content marketing is the foundation of inbound lead generation. When created as part of a strategic marketing plan and fully leveraged with search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing can dramatically increase your thought leadership, inbound lead generation, and overall company revenue and profits.
We’ve seen effective content marketing typically generate an ROI of at least 300% within 9-18 months, sometimes much sooner. Unfortunately, ineffective content marketing is much more common, can cost $2,000 to $12,000 per month and may only result in a handful of leads. How can you tell the good from the bad so you don’t waste a lot of time and money?
Here are five of the most common mistakes made by content marketing providers, and how to avoid them.
Mistake #1: Content in a Vacuum
Any content marketing provider who guarantees that they can boost your online ranking with content alone is telling you a tired story. With over 409 million people viewing more than 20 billion pages each month on WordPress sites alone (according to WordPress.com), the same old story doesn’t get you anywhere.
Your content marketing has to have a clear purpose, a compelling message, be optimized for search engines, and be part of a comprehensive marketing strategy. In content marketing, quality wins over quantity, every time.
Whether you’re a content marketing provider, freelancer or business owner, your approach to thought leadership and lead generation should be strategic and comprehensive – an approach that includes market research, competitive intelligence, comprehensive marketing planning, and branding work.
In 1960, E. Jerome McCarthy laid out a framework for marketing, known as the Four Ps: product, price, placement (distribution channels), and promotion. All four Ps must work together for effective thought leadership and lead generation. Content marketing falls under “promotion” and will not work effectively by itself.
Your marketing strategy should be based on a holistic approach – content marketing built around quantity, or around doing what everyone else is doing accomplishes very little. Instead content marketing needs to be conducted as part of your overall strategy, and in harmony with other inbound and outbound marketing and lead generation efforts.
For example, a compelling blog can be an excellent link in your next email marketing campaign, and higher level content, like case studies and whitepapers, are often central to outbound campaigns. Printing out a case study and mailing it to prospects with a letter – in an envelope! – often leads to a much higher “conversation rate” (up to 50%) compared to 10-20% email open rates, where only 10-20% of those lead to conversations.
The purpose of content marketing is not pure promotion, but many content marketing providers treat it as such. Content marketing should create interest in and demand for a product or service, not just promote it explicitly.
Mistake #2: Inexperience
Many content marketing providers employ a revolving door of inexperienced people without a background in the subjects they are writing about, and many don’t have any B2B experience.
Many of these copywriters are low-paid, recent college graduates with little or no reporting or writing experience beyond social media. This is a recipe for high turnover and shallow, uninspired, poorly written, and frequently unoriginal content that won’t resonate with your target markets or convert website visits into leads. Getting visitors to your site is only half the battle – converting them into a lead with compelling content is the other half.
Mistake #3: Lack of SEO
We’ve seen websites with hundreds and thousands of blogs and web pages not rank for any important keywords. How does this happen? It’s usually because of a lack of search engine optimization (SEO). Without extensive keyword research, thorough on-site optimization and high value links to your website, your content will fail to rank and generate that coveted inbound traffic.
Many content providers claim to have much more SEO experience than they really have. One telltale sign is that they can’t explain their SEO processes in a way you can understand.
They also tend to be eager to jump in and start pumping out content but neglect to research which keywords to rank for and to create a content strategy around them. They might use Google Analytics but fail to use other extremely useful tools like Google Search Console and Moz that give insight into how you’re ranking today, what keyword opportunities to pursue or avoid, and low-hanging opportunities for thought leadership and lead generation.
Those keywords need to be worked into the entire structure of the site, including URLs, folders, page titles, meta descriptions, H1 headings, calls-to-action, and body content as part of a strategic copywriting effort.
Then you’ll need some links from sites with a higher Google PageRank than yours to improve your site’s credibility with Google. Gone are the days of generating thousands of backlinks by paying someone in India, so you’ll need to do it the old fashioned way: through networking, review sites like Clutch and PR.
Mistake #4: Quantity over Quality
What is the real goal of content marketing? Why is it such an effective tool for generating leads when people with the right experience work with you?
All content is not equal. Content marketing providers who focus on superficial, top-of-the-funnel content instead of building a combination of mid and bottom funnel content won’t do much to generate leads. Companies who pump out “fluffy” content do little more than create another indexed page on the website.
The content marketing funnel mirrors the sales funnel: the deeper in the funnel they are, the closer they are to a sale. For example:
- Top-of-funnel content: “What is content marketing?”
- Mid-funnel content: “How to generate leads with B2B content marketing”
- Bottom-funnel content: “Lead generation best practices for B2B content marketing in manufacturing”
While some top-of-the-funnel content can be good for prospects wanting to learn the basics, too much can hurt. There are numerous instances where we deleted an excess of top-of-funnel content and lead generation increased even though organic search traffic went down. This is because top-of-funnel content typically attracts more consumers, students and other unqualified prospects who read a single blog post and leave without viewing anything else onsite – this leads to a high bounce rate for the blog, and for the entire site itself if you have a lot of this content. The higher the bounce rate for the site, the harder it is to convert website visitors into a lead. Many SEO experts claim that bounce rate is not an SEO rankings factor, but we have found the opposite to be true.
Copywriters at content marketing companies that pump out fluffy content do so because they lack solid journalism experience and don’t recognize the difference between shallow, derivative content and real substance, especially when they try to create case studies, whitepapers and other forms of vital higher-level content.
According to a 2019 Demand Gen report on content preferences, case studies are the most valuable type of content in the B2B sphere – especially case studies that quantify the results you generated so they’re not just feel-good pieces. Moreover, 41% of respondents reported reading between three and seven pieces of content before contacting a salesperson. So if your marketing collateral doesn’t provide the educational content your potential clients find valuable, they won’t stick around to learn more.
Mistake #5: Falling into the B2B Social Media Trap
While having a social media presence is important for B2B companies, some are hyper-focused on it, even though it is not a reliable form of B2B lead generation on its own.
We see so many B2B marketers spending thousands of dollars – or worse, thousands of hours – per month with very little to show for it other than some new “likes” that are likely from vendor salespeople and job applicants, not prospects.
B2B social media will occasionally generate a lead, especially if your CEO likes your recent post and is important when recruiting Millennials – but these efforts must be balanced with other inbound and outbound lead generation efforts as part of an overall strategy.
Staying Afloat in the Sea of Content
It’s a waste of time and effort to just robotically publish content in hopes that it will resonate with someone. The ability to step back and analyze both the reach and strategic value of your content, including a review of web analytics, is not something all companies do, or even understand. Expertise in the digital and strategic marketing factors that distinguish result-generating content from content that just takes up space is a rare thing in B2B marketing.
Effective content marketing takes more than just engaging blog posts, case studies and well-researched whitepapers. Blog content is important, but so is creating effective home page and foundational website content that conveys the essence of your brand story. Every interaction a potential client has with your marketing materials or website should give them the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about your product or services, or make them want to learn more.
Make sure that your B2B marketing agency or other content marketing provider you hire can provide the strategic and holistic mix of inbound and outbound marketing that will elevate your business.
