Why Your Content Marketing Strategy Isn't Working

Businesses are told constantly to publish a blog, send a newsletter, post on social media and film a few videos. Plenty do, and then wonder why the phone stays quiet. The trouble is rarely effort. It is that the content was never given a job. Content marketing works when each piece is written for a specific person, at a specific point in a decision, with a clear idea of what that person should do next. When any one of those is missing, the piece becomes more noise in a crowded feed.

Five common reasons are covered below, followed by a short test you can run on anything before it goes live.

Content marketing is a central part of what is often called inbound marketing. Instead of pushing a message at strangers, you publish something useful and let people find it when they go looking for an answer. That idea is sound. What has aged badly is the suggestion that it replaced everything else. Radio, television and outdoor advertising still put a business in front of people who were not searching for it yet, and content is what those people find once their curiosity turns into a search. One approach creates interest and the other answers the questions that follow, so a plan is stronger when it can use both.

When every competitor publishes the same list of tips, readers meet the same advice again and again, and the value of any single piece falls. Length and polish do not fix this. A longer version of a generic article is still a generic article.

Start with the questions your customers actually ask, the ones that arrive by phone, by email and across the counter. They make better topics than a list of trending subjects because they come from real decisions. Before you write, learn enough about the subject to say something specific, and ask why people care about it in the first place. Then add what only your business can add: local knowledge, a clear point of view, plain examples from your own work, and photographs or video of the real thing. If writing is the bottleneck, a blogging service can take on the drafting, though the topics should still come from your customers' questions.

A business that serves Atlanta-area customers has a natural advantage here. Neighborhoods, local rules, seasonal weather and community events give you subjects that a general-interest publisher cannot match, and local readers can tell when an article was written by someone who knows the area.

Few people buy on a first visit. They notice a problem, compare ways to solve it, and then decide whom to trust. Content that tries to do all three jobs at once usually does none of them well, so decide which stage each piece serves and give it a matching next step.

Early content earns trust by being useful and gives readers a reason to return. Middle content keeps the relationship going and can mention your products or services lightly, as one way to solve the problem. Late content has a simpler job. Readers are close to deciding and often just need clear guidance and an easy way to act. A conversion point at each stage, such as a newsletter sign-up, a downloadable guide or a consultation request, lets people move forward at their own speed instead of pushing them into a sales conversation too soon. A dedicated landing page is usually the right home for those conversion points.

"Know your audience" gets repeated so often that it stops registering, which is exactly why so much content ignores it. If you do not understand what your readers need, want and worry about, you cannot write anything that keeps them reading. Research them: who they are, what they are trying to achieve, what gets in the way, which words they use for the problem, and where and when they read. A short description of a typical customer, a simple buyer persona, is enough to keep everyone who writes for you on the same page.

You do not need expensive research to begin. Talk to your sales staff, read your reviews and the questions in your inbox, and notice what people say on the phone. The guide to defining your target audience goes into more detail. The how, when and where matter as much as the who. A reader on a phone between appointments wants something short and easy to scan, while someone comparing options at a desk will read further. Write and format for the moment your reader is actually in.

Publishing a page and waiting is not promotion. Search engines can send visitors over time, but a new piece rarely finds its audience on its own, and sitting back is a quiet way to waste the effort you spent writing it. Give promotion its own plan.

• Send it to your list through your email marketing, with a sentence on why the reader should care instead of a bare headline.
• Share it where your audience already spends time, whether that is Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, YouTube or a neighborhood group on Nextdoor.
• When you answer a question on another site, a forum or a local blog, point to your article if it genuinely helps the person asking.
• Link campaign emails to a dedicated page rather than the home page, so the message and the destination agree.
• Find out which sites, newsletters and communities your audience already trusts, and look for honest ways to appear there.
• Revisit older articles, update whatever has changed and share them again.

Traditional media can help too. A radio or television message that points people to a specific web address gives them a reason to visit, and the content waiting there decides whether they stay.

Readers are surrounded by distractions, and a page that ends without a direction leaves them to work out their own next step. Often that step is to leave. A call to action gives the content a purpose: download the checklist, register for the webinar, request a quote, claim a coupon, attend an event, visit the store.

A few habits keep calls to action honest and effective. Offer one main action per piece and match it to the stage the reader is in. Say what the reader will get, since "Download the planning checklist" is clearer than "Click here". Place the action where interest is highest, which is often partway through a piece as well as at the end. And make the next step easy: a short form, a visible button, a plain sentence about what happens after the click. This is where content turns into leads, and it is where many otherwise good articles fall short.

Run each piece through four plain questions. Is it relevant to the specific reader you wrote it for? Is it useful, meaning the reader can act on it and not just nod along? Is its quality consistent with the pieces around it, so readers know what to expect? And is it trustworthy: accurate, current and free of claims you could not back up in conversation? Content that passes all four, reaches the reader in a convenient place at a convenient time, and offers a clear next step is doing the work a content plan is meant to do. Over time it also shows readers your business's personality, which can keep them interested long after the first visit.

Kirk Donovan wrote AdSense2: The Digital Revolution as a look at advertising from the point of view of a behavioral scientist. The book shows readers how to look past advertising rhetoric, draw in the customers a business actually needs, and approach advertising and marketing decisions the way a behavioral scientist would. That is a useful lens for content as well. Before a piece is published, ask what response it is meant to produce and whether the reader has a reason to give it. You can read more about the book on the training page, and find related articles in the digital marketing section of this blog.