Today, many small and medium businesses take off with utmost enthusiasm and then, after a while, they face a sudden downfall and are closed forever. Most of the times, in their endeavors towards advertising and hardcore promotion, they forget that “Content is King”.

Content marketing is a huge chunk of any business that shouldn’t be ignored under any circumstances. It happens to be the voice of your brands that needs to vent and reach out to your audience. And if you block that vent, you are in deep trouble.

Understand that content marketing mistakes have been made by big brands as well, including Microsoft, so it’s only fair for small and medium enterprises to go through it once. But what are the major reasons why these businesses fail at producing content that matters in the first place? Let’s discuss them.

1. They think it’s ‘Easy’

When taken on its face, content marketing is a benign and easy process. A few blogs, a couple of research articles, probably a press release and you’re in business. It may sound ideal and close to perfection. But step out of that ideal world and into the practical world to find that it is anything but easy. Companies and their brands are fighting several challenges to give a unique voice to their brands and make their content worth viral sharing. This makes the businesses failing the need to tie the content creation efforts to the sales strategy. Remember that content it closely associated with sales.

2. They don’t see the value of ‘Content Promotion’

Content promotion is a matter of life and death. Why? Take a look at all the big brands, Red Bull, Nike, etc. and the taglines they use, the descriptions they come up with. They are simply, catchy and inviting. In the need of reaching our sales goal, we only discuss the selling point in a very unattractive and mundane manner which turns away the customers. Create content that is compelling as well as inviting for the customers.  

3. They forget it’s how they ‘Communicate’

It is of utmost importance to understand that the content plays the role of communication between you and your potential customers. It is your voice, a set tone that helps your audience remember how you communicate with them. If you are catering to business professionals, keep the tone professional and blunt. If it’s teenagers that you are focusing, casual tone can do wonders for they will think of you as their own.  

4. They put ROI before ‘Valuable Content’

What is the worst of all the mistakes? Approaching the audience with content marketing and promotion and that too with a marketer mindset. Catastrophic! What successful businesses today are doing is that they are digging into the customer insights to find a common ground for creating a strong connection. Why? Because meaningful relationships with the audience matter before anything else. A publisher or a content marketing strategy can help you do just that by creating valuable content and not treating it merely like a strategy but a funnel to deliver value. Return on Investment can be dealt with later. If you get too busy counting on what you get, you will never be able to focus on the opportunities that lie ahead of you in the form of much-needed customer insight.

Bonus Tip:

Remember not to neglect your target market under any circumstances. Study it and see how you can make things better for them and then inform them of the value you are going to deliver by creating valuable content.

Focus on the customer’s needs over your needs to make things work. Eventually, everything else will fall in place and in your favor if only you could connect with the audience with the right content.