10 reasons you could be destroying your content marketing budget

10 reasons you could be destroying your content marketing budget

When it comes to cost effective marketing, writing high quality content is one of the best ways you can do this on a budget.  Writing up quality content doesn't cost you any money, unless you want to outsource it to a credible writer, so it's one of the easiest things to get started and build your brand over time.  The only cost that is associated with content marketing is your time, since it takes a little while to write up a decent article that people will want to like and share for the masses. 

How you use your funding is the biggest thing that factors into your success or your downfall.  If you spend too much money in the beginning, thinking other people can do everything for you, will usually be the reason you fail in the long run.  If you invest yourself and your own time, you will be able to save plenty of money and invest it into other aspects of your business, which will usually make you more successful in a shorter amount of time.

From what I know about content marketing, which is a great deal, there are 10 main reasons that people are destroying their own budgets when it comes to content marketing, and those are:


You aren't researching what you should be
A lot of people think they can just write up whatever content they want to and they will be successful in the content marketing side of the business.  This is very wrong because you probably don't know what your target market is and you likely didn't do any research on them.  This is a pretty common mistake since a lot of people writing up content tend to skip it, but you MUST focus on your audience in order to have the best content for them.  It might cost a decent time investment to figure out exactly who your target market is, but it's definitely worth it since you won't waste your time writing content that won't convert if you target the wrong people.


You aren't exploring all of your options
Most companies think "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" which is usually a good thing when it comes to business because you never know what little tweak to your system could inevitably mean a drop is revenue.  Normally this is a good thing, except with content marketing because you can switch up your methods to target different categories or even different demographics and be even more successful.  You can actually stack your success with content marketing since you won't be deleting old posts that are bringing in a decent amount of traffic to your website, and now you'll be adding more content that targets a different demographic.

Exploring all your options will allow you to know what works best, what doesn't work at all, and especially what will work along side of the previous successful methods.


You aren't split testing anything
When it comes to content, you should always be split testing so you know what works and what doesn't.  Think of it like advertising, you wouldn't want a low performing ad out there for the masses to see when you have a better one that converts at twice the amount, would you?  Split testing your content is crucial because you will know what titles and descriptions work best for your demographic, which is always a great thing.

Your competition will be even more scared of you since you're pushing to be the best within your industry, and they might even start taking notes from your actions


All of your eggs are in one digital basket
When it comes to placing your budget on specific marketing tactics and revenue streams, you need to focus on more than one thing.  If you're too focused on PPC campaigns, and not implementing content generation for your own website, you will be in a pickle if your PPC account gets banned out of the blue.  This had actually happened to me almost 10 years ago and it was a devastating time in my life.  I was on top of the world making a ton of money and relied solely on my Adwords PPC campaigns to bring in traffic and sales.  When my account was banned out of the blue, I had run out of luck and was not scrambling to figure out new revenue streams to keep my business afloat.

Spread yourself out a little bit, but not too much, in order to build up your revenue streams.  If you're not focused on content marketing, and only thinking about PPC, you might be in the same boat I was in when everything went belly up.  Focus on a few traffic generation methods, especially content marketing, and you will be grateful you did if anything goes wrong with your other streams.


You're paying an inexperienced team
Many companies will outsource their content generation to credible companies, but that doesn't always work out.  You might think the team is experienced, but in fact, they are just portraying themselves as experienced and can't keep up with demand.  If they can't provide what you're paying them for, you're going to be wasting your hard earned money and that's never a good thing for businesses.  A great content generation agency will be able to keep up with all the sales they're getting, and churn out plenty of amazing content.  This means they will give you all your content and probably over deliver what you're paying them for.  More content that is done for you, the better chances you're going to increase your ROI in the long run.


You're working with niche specific writers
Niche specific writers are great, if you don't plan on expanding even a little bit, because they write on one topic and only that topic.  Niche specific writers are usually the people who just started off writing and aren't comfortable doing content on any other niche because they don't really know what they're doing.  The can actually sell themselves at a higher price because they're "specialists" within a niche, but that usually means they can't branch out for you.  What you'll need to do is get someone that can write in various industries because they will have more knowledge with their writing and it will help you out immensely in the long run.


You want more for less
I'm sure you've heard the saying "Quantity isn't better than Quality" and that goes for content writing as well.  Plenty of people will push a lot of money into their content marketing campaigns, but they won't want to spend more than $5 on an article, which will make them look less professional than they actually are because a great content writer won't sell their work for that cheap.  I actually have cheap content writing services for how well I can write, but I price my content cheaper on SEOclerks because I like to help others out, and I'm still not close to the $5 per article mark lol.  So, if you do plan on investing into your content, make sure you're getting quality content and not a $5 spun article that won't do anything for your website.


Insufficient marketing of your content
People always think that if they write their content, then publish it to their website, people will come from all over to read it.  This isn't true at all because you need to get the content in front of them before they decide to trust you and come back time and time again.  You can publish your content multiple times, not just on your blog or website, by posting it to all of your social media accounts and even running a small PPC ad for them on that specific platform.  On Facebook and Instagram you can boost a post, which will get your content in front of people who would love to read it, so maybe you should try that out once or twice and repeat the process until you get the best engagement


You aren't monitoring your ROI
Many companies will see some sales coming in after they do some content marketing, but they aren't guaging their ROI at all and that's never a good thing.  If you're not monitoring your ROI, you're not going to know what's working best and what is actually hurting your profits.  Look through your analytics and figure out what content is bringing in the most visitors and what content is bringing in the most sales. 


You aren't re-purposing your content
This is a big thing when it comes to content marketing, since you're basically using one article and turning it into multiple traffic streams.  Think about it, if you write up an amazing article and post it to your blog, it's likely going to get some traffic from the search engines, but that's it!   If you were to put that content into a video and post it to all the big video sharing platforms, you're creating a new traffic stream.  You can also take that article and post it to popular social media platforms to bring in even more traffic.  There are plenty of ways to re-purpose your content, you just need to open up your imagination and get to work



In conclusion
There are many things that can actually hurt your content marketing budget, and you might even be doing a few of them, but you can manage everything and change for the better.  Comb through this list and make sure you're doing everything right, make sure you're working with the best writers, and always get your content in front of the best demographic in order to boost your ROI in the shortest amount of time possible   Content isn't a difficult thing to do, but it's also an easy thing to screw up, so you'll need to monitor everything as you do it and even after it's done


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Thanks!

Razzy