5 mistakes to avoid in content marketing

Insight

Quality content is the building blocks of a successful brand strategy, which is why investing in content marketing is key for businesses. It creates a strong online presence while bringing in traffic and leads that allow your brand to go further.

Despite the fierce competition for consumers’ attention¹ in the digital sphere, with the right approach in content marketing, you can still maximise every piece of content you publish.

To produce optimum results for your brand, avoid these 5 mistakes when it comes to content marketing.

Not defining your target audience

As a brand, you might be inclined to target everyone and anyone in hopes of getting more revenue for your business. But the mass marketing approach of trying to reach everyone will result in you getting very little quality leads.

Appeal to everyone and you’ll appeal to no one², this is especially true for digital marketing. Brands should be breaking down their mass potential consumers into segments based on different characteristics, such as their age, gender, cultural backgrounds, educational level, etc.

This segmentation method will definitely help your business with developing effective marketing communication strategies. More specificity in targeting³ allows you to reach your target audience and generate quality leads.

Setting up primary and secondary audience groups with different objectives will also help to create more relatable personas for the brand. For instance, brand campaigns usually target a wider audience, while social media content marketing requires a more niche target audience to engage with the brand.

Lack of marketing goals for your content

To keep track of your brand’s engagement and growth online, set an objective for every content you publish. Do you want them to know about your latest offers or sign up for your newsletter?

Having a clear objective provides a comprehensive vision of what you’re hoping to achieve for an ongoing campaign or individual ads. Once you have set clear intentions with every piece of content, it’s easier to map out a digital marketing strategy.

An example would be to utilise Facebook’s ad objective⁴ and label your content whether they’re meant for brand awareness, reach, traffic, or engagement, then boost them accordingly to reach more of your target audience.

The one-and-done approach to content creation

It’s no secret that content creation requires a ton of brain juices and time to execute. This is why the one-and-done approach to creating content isn’t a great long-term plan.

Make sure you plan properly ahead of execution with the intention to reuse and repurpose your content across different platforms to make the most of them.

For instance, shooting and producing video content is a costly and time-consuming task. It helps to be able to reuse that content more than once, so you can cut costs and maximise your returns⁵ with every piece of content.

Pro tip: Keep an eye out and get inspiration for your content by staying up to date with the latest trends. It’s a surefire way to garner attention and boost engagement online.

When the whole world was obsessed with Netflix’s Squid Game back in September 2021, Munchy’s was quick to hop on the trend to appeal to fans of the show.

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A post shared by Munchy’s Malaysia (@munchys.my)

In a similar manner, KyoChon Malaysia also followed suit when Popcat went viral last year to promote their SalSal Poppers to the hungry masses.

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A post shared by KyoChon Malaysia (@mykyochon)

Neglecting user-generated content

Commonly utilised by skincare and makeup brands, user-generated content (UGC) is any form of unsponsored content shared online featuring a product or service. They’re equivalent to the modern-day word of mouth in the digital era.

They are excellent for encouraging two-way engagement with your audience online. This helps build credibility⁶ and brand loyalty among your customers while fostering a sense of community for your brand.⁷

“79 percent of people say user-generated content highly impacts their purchasing decisions, while only 13 percent say content from a brand is impactful.”

This means that brands could leverage UGC for their social media instead of churning out branded content all the time. The best part is that they require minimal effort and resources⁸, with the potential to encourage conversions for your business.

New to UGC? It’s not too late to start using them to boost your presence online. Just use a simple CTA that urges your followers to tag your brand in their stories or posts, then re-share their content to your brand’s social platforms.

However, before repurposing any UGC content⁹ for your social media, be sure to seek permission from the original content creator and remember to credit them when you re-share their content.

Not using data to support your content strategy

Blindly churning out ideas for your monthly content? You might be missing golden windows of opportunities that will help you reach your audience more efficiently.

Set up a monthly meeting with your team to go over the stats and reflect on what’s working and what’s not. Look into the likes, reach, and engagement rates from both the page level and post level to evaluate the monthly performance of your content.

The next step is to come up with an improved strategy that turns these precious data into actionable insights¹⁰ for your brand. The key is to always stay on your toes and constantly adapt to the best practices for improved performance.

Conclusion

Content marketing is a life-long marathon for your brand, so slow and steady wins the race. Get the most out of your content and increase your return on investment (ROI)¹¹ when you avoid these marketing pet peeves.

Get in touch to see how we can help you.

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