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5 Adverse Content Marketing Strategies Leading To Customer Engagement Failure

So you have been updating your blogs 5 times a day, but still, are not getting the kind of engagement that you have always desired for? Well, something is definitely wrong!

The world of content writing is a vast one and some of the initial reasons for the popularity can be owed to the thoughtful nature and uniqueness of it which has challenged the traditional marketing ideas in many ways. The thought of inbound marketing was rather revolting to some of the marketers at first, but as times passed, it turned out to a more interactive form of marketing. Not only was inbound marketing brought to the forefront with specific strategies, but it also went on to lead to unbelievable conversions.

Naturally, brands started to take a keen interest in content marketing which led to the web being subjected to unexpected content flooding. But no matter how much content was been poured out by companies over the web, the rate of failure (in terms of engagement) also increased drastically. Here are the 5 top reasons which cause content marketing engagement failure.

1) Your content lacks uniqueness

Brands often confuse content marketing with large scale production of content. And obviously, when you need to produce such a large chunk of content, you would have to find enough sources to fetch info to write them down. In such circumstances, keeping a close eye on the competitor’s content strategy seems to be the easiest way. And this is where the problem starts. This is what leads to the web being flooded with the same content which is something that restricts your content marketing strategy being similar to that of your competitors. Obviously, when similar content is presented all-over, it would only make it harder for your content to attract customers easily.

Let’s elaborate this with an example. If there is one grocery shop in your locality, then it is bound to get all the business of your area. Herein, if you see that there are 5 grocery shops in your locality then the business will be shared, hence reducing the profit quotient likewise. A similar phenomenon takes place for content marketing, which according to quite a few experts has been explained to become a lot less profitable over time. The only way to change things for you here would be to understand your business better and ascertain its true value.

2) Personalization

When you talk about marketing, personalization is considered to be extremely important, not only for the customers but also with the brands. Personalization deals with targeting content keeping in mind the reader’s preferences and tastes in mind. Personalization is done on the basis of who customers are, where they reside, what interests them and so on. Surveys have shown that nearly 85% of the brands are using personalization models for marketing purposes which is a staggering statistic in terms of content marketing.

If a reader found good and useful info on your site which is what he was looking for, he is sure to return back. And the cycle continues. However, the real challenge is to use personalization in a way that customers get comfortable with it, without you bombarding the tactics on them. Herein, another survey was conducted to find out the actual problems which the customers feel and here are the results

• 38% respondents were not sure whether the data was accurate
• 40% faced issues getting insight of the product at first
• 39% of the respondents feel that they don’t have enough data

But irrespective of the problems, the tendency of most marketers here is to get over these issues and provide a much careful and strategic content to the customers. As a result, brands that actually implemented such personalization strategy prudently saw a rise of 19% in their overall sales.

It is highly recommended to serve content which has quality and relevance to the customers. Moreover, it would be wise of you to keep a keen eye on the type of content they are already being exposed to understand how they respond to it as it. This will allow you to devise your own content likewise. This thorough study of your competitors’ content will also help you realize what your customers actually look for in the content, a piece of information that is crucial for better content marketing. It effectively assists you in formulating a better strategy which will be tailor made for your customers. The best way to initiate your own study on the behavior of your customer base would be to follow the on-going trends and understand how and why the preferences change from time to time.

3) Content which is not good enough

As already said, bombarding the users with a lot more content than what is actually required is not going to do any good. Quality content is the key here. This is the reason that why even after putting all the relevant information in your content, your competitors win the race with their short and simple content.

You need to start a dialogue with your customers, engage them, and interact with them to make sure that the required info is imparted while keeping them hooked. Creating one-dimensional content that hinders the reader’s flow is one of the prominent reasons why your content marketing fails.

This content does not have the X factor which separates your content from the others, and why would users like to read the same content twice and thrice when they have already read it at your competitor’s blog? Most of the surveys conducted here have found that the respondents would want the content to be made according to their specific needs. Moreover, as many as 91% of the total respondents have advised the brands to come back with quizzes, calculators, and information in a graphical form which will help them understand and engage with the brands better.

4) Content shock is not good for your customers

One of the reasons why content marketing is such a sound strategy is that it lets the customers get information and an understanding of your brand. But after the initial content surge on the web, the supply of content actually exceeded the demand. And soon it was realized that there was a lot more content than what the customers could take in. This capacity of the customers to take in the content is known as content shock.

In simple words, this can be described as the content about a brand being a lot more available than it should be. This in effect distracts them to such a degree that they cannot consume it as much as we would want them to. Moreover, the content shock is something which is more likely to happen if the consumers perceive your content to be way too similar to that of your competitors as it makes them think of you to be boring.

5) Messages not right for the medium

Humans are fickle minded and can be easily distracted and when it comes to the web, their attention span is not more than 15 seconds. It is for this simple reason you have to formulate your message in such a way that it can direct their 15 seconds of attention to your product. You need to realize that it will not take them a lot to move on from your product which also means that you are losing valuable customers each minute or rather every 15 seconds if not less.

Therefore, the key here is tailoring your message in exact specifications which you can provide the customers at the right time. However, a safe distance should be maintained from delivering monotonous messages, which is certain to harm you and will make you lose customers faster than you can count.

Another reason why you should avoid monotonous message is that they don’t appeal to the customers, hence take longer to get out even on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. So what you need to do here is make your content accessible and interactive which you can do by providing quizzes, breaking the content into shareable parts, provide graphic information, etc. This will eventually help your content get the exposure it needs and allows the customers to decide whether it is meant for them or not.

Even if they think that the entire message you are sending is not worth their time, they might choose the ones which cater to their specific needs and can also pass them on to more people. You have to understand that the web is flooded with messages and most of the brands don’t let their consumers pick and choose. Therefore, allowing your customers to choose which messages to view, receive and share will only play to your advantage as it allows your message to stand out.