3 of the Most Common Content Marketing Mistakes That Destroy Businesses - and How to Avoid Them

A massive 8 out of 10 businesses fail within their first 18 months of existing (according to Bloomberg). 

That's crazy. 

And I'm sure if you're a new business, that's quite disheartening to read.

And you know what the frustrating thing is? 

It's that most of the mistakes made that contribute to the failures are actually avoidable. 

So here are 3 common content marketing mistakes that are made, and how you can avoid them to make it past that 18-month milestone. 

1). Your Content Marketing Goals aren't Linked to Your Business Ones (Or You Don't Even Have Goals at All)

This has to be the most frustrating one - but it is also the easiest to sort. 

Just like how you set financial goals for your business (and if you're not, how about getting serious about your business eh?), you need to set goals for your Content Marketing campaign.

After all, how will you know the content you're putting out is even relevant to your business?

And not just any goals. These goals have to be SMART and aligned with your business objectives. 

SMART goals are goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

So if you sell business intelligence software, like Sisense, an example of this would be:

?Writing four quality, authoritative content pieces on the important business intelligence a month, to become a thought leader in this area, to generate X amount of traffic to our site to result in X amount of leads.

So as you can see with the above, the content marketing goals for the business are to write four quality and authoritative content pieces.

This leads to the business becoming a thought leader in the area. 

Resulting in the business goals being met - which are to generate X amount of leads.

And just like that, content goals are aligned with business objectives.

Every content marketing element should have a clear benefit to your business.

This means your time, effort or money isn't unnecessarily wasted.

And if you're struggling to know what goals to set for your business, content or staff, KPILibrary can help you.

2). You Don't Strategise

Similar to the importance of having content goals, it's equally important to spend some time strategising your content marketing efforts.

If you're a new business, you might be thinking, "what the hell does that mean?"

But have no fear. In our case, it won't just be a marketing buzzword. Nor a thing to worry about.

Now that you've outlined your goals for your content shenanigans, the next step is to create a realistic schedule for this content.

Why is there such emphasis on realistic? And why is this even an important step to correct in the first place?

The worst thing for any of your staff members are not having any clarity with their job roles.

In fact, teams where individuals know exactly what's expected of them and others in the team, perform better.

On top of this, creating regularity of content in particular long-form pieces (2,000+ words) aids your chances of ranking on the first page of Google (according to Backlinko).

So how can you eradicate this problem?

Create a content calendar.

A shared content calendar can be both informative and strategic, just because you've documented exactly what's expected of you and your team and for when.

The best ones have the most detail without being too ambitious.

For example, if you're only able to write four content pieces a month, don't document you're going to do twenty next month.

If you're looking for a great project management tool that's simple to use and great for content scheduling, the Monday app is perfect for this.

Or if you're looking for a more cost-effective solution, check out this list courtesy of Curata, where you can find an epic selection of free templates to get started with.

If you don't plan, you're planning to fail.

3). You Don't Measure Your Successes (or Failures)

So now that you've outlined the goals of your content and mastered the art of strategising what you're going to do, you'd think the next step would be to measure the value of those content pieces, right?

Well, that isn't always the case.

Unfortunately, too many of us make assumptions.

"People’s deep confidence in their judgments and abilities is often at odds with reality," - Michael J. Mauboussin, Harvard Business Review.

Okay, so what do I mean by this?

For example, most people regard themselves as better-than-average drivers (me being guilty as charged with this one for sure).

And this tendency toward overconfidence also extends to business. 

Anyone remember JayZ's music app Tidal?

Yeah, me neither.

And everyone thought a music application, owned and operated by one of the industry’s most successful artists, would never fail.

On top of this, check out this case study by Stanford University below.

The managers of a fast-food chain, recognizing that customer satisfaction was important to profitability, believed that low employee turnover would keep customers happy.

“We just know this is the key driver,” said one executive.

Certain that their intuition was right, the executives focused on reducing turnover as a way to improve customer satisfaction and, presumably, profitability.

But that's not what the data showed.

The executives were surprised to discover that the data proved them wrong: Some stores with high turnover were extremely profitable, while others with low turnover struggled.

People’s deep confidence in their judgments and abilities is often at odds with reality.

And that could be the same for the content you put out.

It's critical for your business that you're measuring regularly what you share with the world.

How is it directly contributing to your business growth?

Don't be certain that just because a video you produced looked the part that it contributed to business growth.

Did it drive conversation?

Did it increase visitors to your site?

And most importantly of all, did it contribute to more business opportunities?

If you don't know the answers to these questions, now is the time to find out.

Google Analytics is a great starter tool to measure data in relation to your web related activities. It's not too difficult to install either (but if you do struggle, just watch this great tutorial here).

Whilst Sproutsocial is awesome for measuring your social activities.

And of course, this article wouldn't be complete without offering the free solution to solving the social tracking problem.

So check out this great roundup post from the guys at Hubspot, to see which free social tracking solution tickles your fancy.

Conclusion

When starting out in business, it's easy to get carried away with doing the tasks that are most exciting. We all love a bit of glitz and glam.

It can be even more difficult to reassess your content marketing structure when you're more established.

As an old mentor once said to me, trying to lay the foundations during growth periods can be like trying to refuel mid-air.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

The first step is acknowledging that things need to change. And knowing that it's never too late to make the required changes.

Then it's creating the methodology to track the value of your content output.

Following these 3 steps can be a quick way to do this.

What are the biggest content marketing no-no's you've come across?