There are so many potential benefits to deploying a content marketing campaign. Your brand gets increased visibility. You build loyalty, trust and authority with consumers. Your site gets more traffic and, hopefully, conversions. Of course, those are the benefits you’ll see when your content campaign is crafted well and implemented successfully.
But content marketing isn’t an “if you build it, they will come” proposition. It’s more than just posting articles on your site and hoping they eventually attract attention. Your campaign is a tool — one you need to sharpen and hone. There are nuances to creating content that drives traffic, and you do need to use that content effectively. If your content marketing campaigns haven’t boosted traffic or met your goals, it’s important to determine why — and what you can do about that.
Why Do You Want Traffic?
Simply put, high-quality site traffic generates leads. Lead generation results in more business and more sales. Without traffic, you can’t convert in the first place.
Think of traffic like the first domino in a line. Knocking it over initiates a chain reaction that fells more dominoes — meaning it propels consumers to take more actions that create conversions. Utilizing a well-executed content marketing campaign is one key way to tip that first domino over. Plus, even after you start getting more traffic, good content can also directly help consumers convert during later stages of the buyer journey.
Why Isn’t Your Campaign Gaining Traffic?
There are ample reasons why your content campaign might be failing to increase traffic. Your new marketing intern might be busy watching TikTok clips instead of studying target audiences, sure. But before you go searching for another college student, review these three common reasons why content campaigns often don’t see success.
You Don’t Have a Strategy
A content marketing strategy is what determines the direction of your content. It serves as a roadmap for the entire campaign and includes elements like:
- Information about your audience members, including their problem
- The ways your content can solve their problem (and why your company is uniquely positioned to do so)
- Your goals with the campaign
- The types of content you’ll use
- The ways you’ll choose topics and produce the content
- Where and how you’ll publish the content
When you don’t have a strategy, you don’t have anything guiding your decisions. You won’t know how to create content or what to create. You won’t know what to measure to see if your campaign is successful at driving traffic. And you won’t know if your content is even working for you.
How to Fix That: Well, you’ll need to implement a strategy. Start by figuring out your goals for the campaign, defining your audience and creating brand personas. Decide what types of content to produce, who’ll create them and how you’ll organize and publish them. Figure out how you’ll measure the ways in which the content is helping you achieve your goals. Then, follow this strategy to know what marketing activities to undertake and when.
Don’t be afraid to adjust your strategy if it isn’t working — remember that success doesn’t happen overnight. It’s okay to do a little experimenting to figure out what’s ultimately going to help you hit your KPIs.
Your Content’s Irrelevant
You want to see $$$s, not ZZZs. If your content doesn’t pique your audience’s interest by helping them or engaging them, it’s not going to drive traffic, either. Your target market wants to know that you understand its challenges — and have the solutions.
Maybe your content focuses too much on a product’s pricing. Or, perhaps it looks or sounds like a cheesy infomercial. Giving your audience a hard sell can feel insulting, and that doesn’t create positive brand association.
How to Fix That: Provide content that teaches your audience and shows you recognize their needs as valid. Focus on their problems and the solutions, not your product. If you’re in the initial stages of attracting consumer attention to drive traffic, position your company as trustworthy and understanding. You’ll have time down the line to tout all the benefits of your product, but avoid it at this key stage. This might be the first time a consumer interacts with your brand, and you want the initial impression to be a good one.
You Forgot SEO
What’s that? You already have a lot of content, and people are just ignoring it? That might be because you’re ignoring search engine optimization, or SEO.
SEO means you’re including certain words in your written content so that it appears in prominent spots on search results pages. When consumers perform searches using your keywords, they’ll see your content early on — when it’s optimized. This helps your content appear trustworthy and makes it easy for readers to find your site and click through to it. When your blog posts and landing pages aren’t optimized, consumers can’t find them, which means nothing’s directing traffic to your content.
How to Fix That: Determine which words and phrases are relevant to your industry and your content. Look at your current content, and decide what topics it covers or themes it has. Use a keyword-research tool like Google Keyword Planner to discover which specific words and phrases related to your topics/themes have high rankings. Formulate your SEO strategy, and start incorporating relevant keywords into existing content. And, please, remember SEO in future campaigns too.
