What are the biggest challenges facing content marketers today?

Those ready to buy make up such a low percentage of the target audience, yet brands waste so much of their marketing budget on transactional tactics. In 2024 I predict a rise in brandformance marketing, which combines brand building and performance marketing, to move audiences seamlessly through the funnel versus focusing on one or the other.

From a product marketers perspective, the biggest challenges facing content marketers today include: Content Saturation: With the abundance of online content, standing out and grabbing the audience's attention is increasingly difficult. Quality vs. Quantity: Balancing the need for high-quality content with the demand for frequent updates can be a challenge. Content Fatigue: Audiences are becoming more discerning, leading to content fatigue if not providing unique value.

Content marketers struggle with setting timelines to refresh content, especially when dealing with a large volume of previously published materials. Balancing bite-sized and long-form content is an additional challenge. This requires meticulous planning and execution across chosen distribution channels to ensure convenient consumption by the target audience.

Within the trend of AI content, it's getting harder and harder to bring more authentic information that is helpful for readers. It's a two-edged sword. If you focus on evergreen content - there is much content out there, and it's no easy job to distinguish yourself. If you write unique content, marketing that content gets tricky; since there's not much search volume, the traffic heavily depends on how consistent you're marketing the content piece.

One way to align your content marketing with your business goals is to distribute its creation around the organisation. Creating content marketing pieces is a form of training and development that encourages cross-organisational alignment and knowledge sharing, which is an additional benefit on top of external marketing objectives.

? El escenario cambia vertiginosamente al mismo tiempo que lo hace el cliente con sus preferencias. La fórmula de hoy sería: ORIGINAL + DISRUPTIVO + VALOR ?? ORIGINAL: En un mundo saturado de información, destacar requiere originalidad. Encuentra un enfoque único, una perspectiva fresca o un formato innovador para tu contenido. ?? DISRUPTIVO: Rompe con la monotonía y atrévete a ser disruptivo. Desafía las convenciones, sorprende a tu audiencia y genera interés con enfoques creativos y poco convencionales. ?? VALOR: Asegúrate de que tu contenido ofrezca valor real a tu audiencia. Ya sea educativo, entretenido o inspirador, el contenido valioso es el que crea conexiones genuinas y fomenta la lealtad del cliente.

The biggest challenge facing content marketers today isn't making content - it's making content that people will care about. And that comes from having a deep and ideally differentiated understanding of your audience and the culture around them. Content marketers need to be researchers first and creators second.

There are multiple challenges facing content creation these days, some of which haven’t changed over the years, and one new larger challenge as we head into 2024: 1. Creating high-quality and engaging content that applies across multiple audiences and platforms. 2. The balance between gated and ungated content and understanding where each belongs in your content strategy. 3. Repurposed content and utilizing one larger piece into multiple other ways. An eBook can/should be broken into blog posts, infographics, social content, etc. 4. How to utilize generative AI. It is useful for content marketers as an idea starter but it doesn’t replace creative writing.

Content Creation and Quality: Creating high-quality content consistently is a persistent challenge. Balancing volume with quality and ensuring that content is relevant, valuable, and resonates with the target audience requires strategic planning, research, and editorial expertise.

Making good and different content regularly is tough. Balancing between making a lot of content and making it good can be tricky. Example: I helped a startup facing this. They made a schedule and got more people involved in creating content. This made their content diverse and regular, getting more people interested.

Even with great content, distribution and promotion are crucial for success. Breaking through the noise and effectively distributing content to reach and engage the target audience requires a well-planned distribution strategy and leveraging various channels.

Boost Content Impact with Strategic Distribution Content creation is key, but distribution is crucial. Reach a broader audience by diversifying channels, tailoring content, and timing posts strategically. Engage with your audience, monitor performance, and adapt content formats. Collaborate with influencers, consider paid advertising, and share content through syndication.

I used to tell people to be on the channels their audience is on. And I realized recently this was useless advice. The way I now think about it is: be on the channel your audience is on to CONSUME the type of content and information you're providing. For e.g. in growing our hospitality business, IG was the platform that worked because we were talking to Food Lovers who wanted to consume drool-worthy content. With my current software business, my audience of Entrepreneurs who Podcast aren't on IG to consume my content, but to promote their own. I've realized they use FB and LI instead to consume the type of content I produce. So when thinking about where to distribute your content, think about WHY your audience is on that platform.

Getting your content to the right people is hard. With so much online content, you need a smart plan to make sure people see it. Example: In a recent project, we used ads on social media to show content to specific groups. This made more people see the content, and the website got more visitors and sales.

Run a competitive analysis and understand how the target public of your niche or market is consuming content. Then, test new alternatives to share content. Just test and you might discover that the traditional platforms or formats are not the ones your user is engaging the most. Test it!

Content marketing, and marketing in general, should be circular, not linear. Too many marketers just look forward rather than backward, to see what's actually working. This circular approach involves continuously measuring the impact of our campaigns, gathering insights, and then using this feedback to refine and improve future strategies - and what content is already out there working for you. Let's break the cycle of one-and-done campaigns and embrace a more dynamic, responsive marketing model that truly resonates with our audience and drives sustainable growth. Oh - but also don't get trapped in analysis paralysis. Many parts of the customer journey happen in the 'dark funnel' which is much harder to measure.

One thing I found helpful is to adopt to testing and experimenting a lot. There's no hard and fast rule when it comes to optimization. You need to keep track of trending keywords, what's working and what you can apply.

The method we use for optimising content is based on Growth marketing experimentation. The basis is your goals and what you want to achieve for your content strategy in a specific period of time (say a quarter). Start with a basic hypothesis and go from there. "We believe that doing [this], will lead to [result]" Then use a proper experiment set-up to test the hypothesis. For example A/B testing with corresponding KPI's. Do not use too much variables, that will make the experiment unmanageable. These types of experiments have a timeframe of 4 weeks that you divide in sprints of 1 or 2 weeks each. After 4 weeks you measure the results and you adjust the experiment until you have enough data te make a sound decision on the hypothesis.

Making content that shows up on search engines and is easy for people to like is tricky. You need to keep up with what people like and what search engines want. Example: A client's website was not showing up in searches. We changed how we made content by looking at what people searched for. This helped the website show up more and people liked it better.

In my experience, research is the first step where it all starts. Look around your competitor's content to see what kind of content they are writing. It becomes more important when it is ranking. You need to analyze the same for topic, keywords, tone, word length, and anything else you can think of. This will give you a pretty good idea about how you can optimize the content. You do not need to copy everything the same way, but analysis will allow you to do better than your competitors for sure. It's not only about your competitor's content. You can also just look at the first 10 results on Google related to your content and check what this content has and what yours missing.

Content marketing is notoriously hard to track because a large majority of the work happens at the top of the funnel and contributes to larger brand awareness. As a result, identifying the ROI in monetary terms can be difficult especially in B2B where it might take 12-16 months to nurture a lead through the funnel.

Attribution models can be dangerous. That's because customer journeys are typically more complex and chaotic than we'd like them to be. And a lot of that journey may take place in the "dark funnel" - i.e. the part that you can't track. Imagine, for example, that someone listens to your podcast. Then subscribes to your blog. Then they tell a colleague or peer who is in the market for your services/products about your brand on a phone call. That person Googles you, turns into a lead and converts. That sale would be attributed to SEO - and you and your CFO might decide to double down on SEO and remove the budget for podcasting and blogging. Econometrics models are a safer way to look at content marketing ROI. Don't forget the dark funnel!

Delivering personalized content experiences is crucial, but it can be challenging to collect and analyze the data needed for effective personalization while respecting privacy regulations. Coordinating and optimizing content across various channels (social media, email, website, etc.) can be complex. Ensuring consistency while tailoring content for each platform is a persistent challenge. when it comes to measuring ROI, attribution and measuring the return on investment (ROI) for content marketing efforts can be challenging. Establishing clear metrics and demonstrating the impact of content on business goals is essential.

This is challenging particularly for search based and inbound content marketing strategies because these are macro approaches and analytics may not show results or return on investment for a long period of time. Measuring ROI is easy when the investment is clear (i.e. ad spend, time, cost of product etc). But not all content is created with measurable costs or expenditure, particularly for solopreneurs, who manage their own content creation and publishing. The important thing is to know what you hope to get from the content you share, have clear call to actions and measure those results to determine if the time, energy, effort and any monetary cost was worth it.

Measuring content ROI is key for content marketers, yet it’s a complex task. It involves evaluating investments in platforms and people, plus the time spent creating various formats. The goal? To see how content moves the business needle. Directly linking content to results is tough, but focus on how content engagement leads to conversations, leads, and relationships. Monitoring these interactions can illuminate content's influence on the sales pipeline and deal-making. It's not just about immediate sales; it's about building lasting relationships and trust, essential for long-term business success. This broader view helps in understanding content's true ROI.

A good strategy to keep up with content trends is to spend 15-20 minutes per day exploring your feed. Follow top creators in your industry and study their top performing content from the past weeks. Most of the time you'll be able to identify common threads or patterns you can apply to your own content.

Keeping up with content trends is tough. Recently, we came up with a 'content trend radar' system. This gadget keeps an eye for new trends and smart tactics in the world of content marketing. It's more than just being in the know; you've gotta be quick to change and bring new ideas to the table. We mixed this tech into our game plan, aiming to make our content pop and unique. It worked wonders, letting us blend in fresh trends effortlessly and shine in a tough market. Sure, it's a hustle, but it's key if you're a content marketer wanting to stay on top and make a splash.

Keeping up with what's popular in content is tough. You need to change with new ways people like to see things. Example: I saw how using short videos became popular. A company started making these, and more people liked and shared their content.

Posting content that aligns with current trends can be a good way to create content, however far too often you can see brands oaring their way into a trend that doesn't really relate to their persona and feels forced. If you're a resource poor team I wouldn't focus on keeping up with every single content trend, I would focus on the trends that have legs and have been around for a while, such as 'a day in the life' or 'get ready with me' for example. Precious time can be lost trying to shoe horn branded content into flash in the pan trends when it would be better spent researching and planning longer term content goals.

Interesting ways copywriters are using AI-assistance is a growing trend. This combined with Google clarifying that don't penalize AI-assistance. They really look for helpful, authoritative content.

WEBINARS are a huge part of content marketing. Marketers need to really think about the smallest details when pushing WEBINARS because it adds up to a dramatic registration improvement by doing so. Examples of some small things that have big impact on webinar performance: 4 Easy Things to GET MORE PEOPLE TO SHOW UP to Webinars: ‘DAY OF’ Send Email sent within 4 hours of EVENT increases ‘Show Up’ rate by 24% FRIDAY for Webinar Last 90 Days: FRIDAY ‘Show Up’ rates have increased 35% 30 Minutes or Less Webinars promoted as ’30 Minutes’ have 31% higher ‘Show Up’ rate TOMORROW vs THURSDAY 'TOMORROW' in subject line increases open rate by 19% vs. 'DAY NAME'

Beyond strategy, goals, creation, distribution, optimization, ROI, and trends, content marketers face challenges related to audience engagement, evolving algorithms, platform changes, and the need for personalized, authentic content. Keeping up with dynamic consumer preferences, maintaining consistency across channels, and navigating privacy concerns also pose significant hurdles.

Effective time management is one of the biggest challenges with content marketing today. Demand is increasing. Consumers turn to content now more than ever before making purchase decisions. This means there is a need for a consistent flow of high-value content. Content marketers must have well-structured processes and leverage project management tools to stay organized and on track. Otherwise, the demands of creation along with analysis, optimization and keeping up with trends can be overwhelming.

Hiring for the new era of content marketing is extremely important. Whereas in many aspects of business and in marketing, hiring specialists is preferred, I think in 2024 more businesses should look to hire a role that exists out in the ecosystem but often incorrectly gets carved up by companies to be several disparate roles. In ‘24, we should see the rise of the title “Content Creator” at organizations. A multi-faceted quick-thinking individual who can conceive of, produce, edit, deploy and analyze their work…. making rapid fire adjustments based on data and optimizing for views and engagement. Do it like the YouTubers and IG stars —- more iterating, and less bureaucracy (read: people who aren’t in touch making content decisions)

As marketers, we must consider AI as a challenge, whether we love or hate it. Don't get me wrong here, AI is a powerhouse tool that can amp up efficiency and output. But too much of anything can be fatal. So, if you love AI, the challenge will be not to overuse it. The web is already flooded with generic, robotic content, and it's neither converting nor engaging. If you hate AI, the challenge will be to learn how to love it (in appropriate amounts). Because, with all the tools that entered the market this year, there's no point in refusing it. AI is here to stay, so let's make the best of it. Bottom line: use AI, but don't be overly enthusiastic about it. Try to find a good balance. The value-first approach is still very much alive.