Does content marketing work?
Let’s look at the stats:
- 86% of businesses use content marketing.
- 61% don’t believe their content is effective.
- 69% either don’t track their ROI or track it poorly.
Obviously, we believe in content marketing but struggle with execution. And with so many of us relying on content to grow our businesses, it’s something we need to address.
So what’s the problem? Let’s explore.
Why Content Marketing Fails
There’s a subtle difference between content marketing programs that work and those that don’t.
Both create content. Both usually optimize and promote it.
The difference is their process, beginning with why they create content.
As content marketing has risen in popularity, countless books and articles have told us that content impacts traffic, sales, SEO, branding, and more. Content, they say, is good for business.
So we create content.
But we often have a situation where the tail wags the dog. Even creating high-value, super useful content isn’t enough. Because content doesn’t inherently achieve all those important business outcomes. You have to perform other tactics with content marketing to get a good ROI.
Is it any wonder so many businesses feel they’re missing the mark?!
Creating content, as we’ve discovered, isn’t enough. The real secret is in your approach to content.
Most content marketing programs are task-based. Those are the ones that create content, then layer on additional tasks to promote and optimize it. These marketers are busy but often feel frustrated. They’re doing the work but can’t seem to generate results.
The marketers who are getting results are the minority. They typically operate an outcome-based program and, in many cases, are doing a lot less work for a higher ROI.
What Is Outcome-Based Content Marketing?
An outcome-based approach to content marketing starts with a business objective. Rather than simply creating and promoting content, you
- Identify a problem or business goal you’d like to target.
- Develop ideas for solving the problem or reaching the goal with content.
- Create the content to test your ideas.
- Measure results.
- If it works, optimize. If it doesn’t, try something else.
I prefer this approach because it puts the outcome before the work. So you don’t spend time on projects that add no value to your business.
It also keeps things simple and streamlined. Goals are easier to hit and opportunities easier to identify. And you can quickly figure out what’s working and what isn’t.
Compare that to the typical content marketing program, which looks something like this: Publish 3 posts a week, 1 podcast a week, and 3 guest posts per month. Create a new lead magnet each month. Use opt-in offers to drive subscriptions and webinars to drive sales.
Notice that even with a few goals listed, the strategy is to create specific types of content at a specific frequency. The focus is on hitting deadlines and checking off a daily, weekly, and monthly task list.
What I like about this approach is that it puts the outcome before the work.
Now, to be fair, an outcome-based approach looks similar on the surface. You’ll see the same blog posts, podcasts, opt-in offers, and webinars in the plan. But the focus isn’t on creating content or meeting deadlines. It’s on achieving specific results.
So for instance, let’s say you currently have a 5% opt-in rate on the blog, and you’d like to see if you can raise that one percentage point by the end of the year. Or you currently get 300 new subscribers each month and you’d like to raise that to 400 by the end of the year. With that in mind, you decide to experiment with the frequency of your blog and add a content upgrade to every blog post.
The focus isn’t on the tasks, but the outcome. The tasks may actually change as you attempt to reach your goal.
Making Content Simple and Effective
There’s a reason half of content marketers don’t have a strategy. They’re too busy doing their jobs.
It takes time to create a strategy—time to analyze the situation, brainstorm problems and solutions, then test them. Time you don’t have if you’re busy chasing deadlines.
As a result, switching your focus from tasks to outcomes can be difficult. It all but forces you to slow down and streamline things. Otherwise, you won’t have time to do it.
For real success, you need to keep your content marketing plan simple.
Now think about the tasks you’re completing on a regular basis. Some are effective, no doubt. Others, not so much. Without looking at your metrics, you know these tasks aren’t helping.
With outcome-based content marketing, you can strike them from your to-do list, guilt-free.
Did you hear an interesting idea at a mastermind meeting? Don’t just copy it. Test it.
What topics perform best? What formats (text, video, graphic)? What style? Your metrics tell you everything.
Does your new tactic move the needle or does it simply complicate your life? You won’t know until you test it.
Learn More. Simple Content Marketing: Creating Content for Real Results
How to Succeed in Content Marketing
Your success with outcome-based content marketing depends on four things: strategy, incremental improvements, focus, and simplicity.
Be Strategic
Content creation should be purposeful. It should support your business objectives, which means content should integrate with everything else you do—and as we’ve seen above, that requires an outcome-based approach.
You need to be strategic about the content you create. Make sure your topics are relevant and support whatever campaigns are running. And make sure you know in advance what success looks like.
You should also be strategic about the goals you set. Instead of choosing random outcomes, set goals that will impact growth and profitability. Then evaluate to be sure they’re realistic.
How do you know if a goal is realistic? You need to have the resources and the time to do it right, and you need a way to measure results.
Test Everything
Strategic content marketing is based on a simple marketing plan, not opinions or copycat tactics.
As with any marketing plan, best practices will usually steer you wrong. You need to test to know what works for your brand and your audience.
Keep in mind, though, optimization is an iterative process. Give your tests enough time to yield valid results. And don’t expect huge wins every time.
If you do something that boosts subscriptions 5%, implement it, then test ideas for improving it even more. Over time, you may be able to bump that to 7%, 12%, or more.
Stay Focused
It’s easy to get distracted. Every day, we see new apps, new tasks, and new channels. And being the creative people that we are (I’m speaking to you, content marketers!), we tend to get excited about new and exciting possibilities. Of course, we’d like to give them all a test run.
But losing focus hurts more than helps.
First, don’t believe you need every new technology to win at content marketing.
Second, you need to stay focused on your brand message, so people don’t get confused about who you are.
Maybe you’ve heard of the Rule of One. Each piece of content has one central idea, one overriding emotion, and one call to action. This keeps readers from getting distracted and raises the odds that they’ll take action.
You need to follow the same principle in your strategy. All content should convey one brand promise and one core message. Then each piece of content should give one “next thing” for your audience to do.
In the pursuit of engaging content, it’s easy to lose focus, publishing content that’s only loosely connected to your core message. And while visitors may enjoy it, over time, it will dilute your brand and reduce traffic and engagement.
To stay relevant, stay focused.
Keep It Simple
The simplest ideas and concepts are the easiest to buy into. And the simplest processes are the easiest to implement.
Complexity may look impressive, but it won’t deliver the results you need.
On a deeper level, over-complication usually signals that something is wrong. Either you don’t understand what you’re doing yet, or you haven’t been able to codify or systematize it, which amounts to the same thing.
For real success, you need to keep your content marketing plan simple. You need to be able to see the big picture of what’s going on, and drop into any part of the program to see the details. For every task, you need to know what you’re trying to achieve and why.
You don’t need to do anything complicated to succeed at content marketing. If your strategy is sound and you’re making incremental improvements through testing, you only need a simple program with simple objectives.
Summing Up
It’s true. You can do all the tasks of creating and promoting content without knowing what your outcomes are. And if you’re lucky, you’ll see results—but there’s a limit to what you can achieve with task-based content marketing.
To grow your business, you need to adopt an outcome-based approach.
Start with your customers—who they are, what they want, and how you deliver value to them.
Refine your message to attract your best customers, build relationship, and begin the conversion process: from subscriber to customer to brand advocate.
Then set your objectives, the outcomes you’d like to see, and how content could help you achieve them.
Once you have a plan, make sure you know how you’ll create and distribute the content, and how you’ll measure success.
Then do it.
Watch responses from your audience and test new ideas to improve your numbers.
It’s that simple.
And the results are out of this world. 😉
Learn more about outcome-based content marketing!
Simple Content Marketing: Creating Content for Real Results.
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