- Toyna Chin, San Francisco, CA
Why Content Marketing Shouldn’t Become Your Entire Focus
If you’re looking to grow your brand’s online presence then there’s a good chance that you’ve been thinking about content marketing as an alternative to typical marketing options. Its’ one of the best ways to grow your brand organically and it can create some real value for your customers. However, it’s getting to the point where companies are starting to actively avoid other forms of marketing in favour of a completely focused content marketing strategy.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing and for many types of brands and industries, this could be the best option. However, for most regular businesses, focusing too much on a content-heavy strategy could become your downfall. Here’s why.
Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/RSc6D7bO0fA (CC0)
Content marketing doesn’t offer immediate results
One of the issues that people don’t often realise is that content marketing doesn’t offer immediate results. As an organic way to grow your brand, you have to realise that content marketing takes a lot of time and effort. You need to consistently be creating content and you have to maintain a high level of quality if you want to garner some attention. When working with a PPC agency, you don’t need to constantly make new content–you can just set up a campaign and watch as your audience discovers your brand and shares your website.
Content marketing is time-consuming
Content marketing can be a difficult process because it’s so time-consuming. The process of actually making content takes a long time and you’d be surprised at how long it takes to actually write a good piece. Other forms of content such as video production can take even longer since it requires a lot of equipment and staff. As such, you shouldn’t try to utilise content marketing until you’re comfortable spending more time on it.
Content marketing requires good ideas
Of all the online marketing strategies you could use, content marketing probably takes the most effort purely because you need to consistently come up with good ideas all the time. If you ever have a bad idea, then it could be a gigantic waste of time and resources. Depending on how much you invested in that idea, this could be a catastrophic problem for your business. If you’re going to invest in content marketing, then you need to have good ideas lined up and you need to realise that half of them are going to be duds that will never work.
Content marketing can backfire
Content marketing also has a chance of backfiring. If you create a campaign that is completely out of touch or post an opinion that doesn’t resonate with your audience, then it can lead to a huge backlash that might end up toppling your business if you’re not careful. Content marketing requires you to understand your audience which takes an incredible amount of research and commitment. If you daily to make your content relatable, then it can alienate your audience and even cause them to seek out other brands that understand them better.