I don’t know one content marketing journey that has succeeded without a few dreadful content marketing mistakes.
The thing is that they are inevitable and worst of all, they cost you time, money, and sometimes credibility.
But they are part of the process. These failures help you learn and grow in your journey as a content marketer for your SaaS business.
There’s a lot to learn about content marketing, but understanding what doesn’t work will save you a lot of headaches down the road.
You might think “Well, who doesn’t make mistakes in their business life?” That’s true!
However, there are mistakes that do not cost a dime while there other mistakes that can drain days, weeks, and even months of your resources.
Let’s find out what are the most common content marketing mistakes you should avoid as a SaaS business owner.
7 Content Marketing Mistakes Every SaaS Should Avoid
1. Not Reviewing Content Marketing Performance
Creating content is good but measuring how your content performs is best.
Content marketing performance analysis is something many new businesses or new content marketers hate to do.
As a marketing manager are you measuring the performance of your blog posts and email campaigns? Or do you just assume that if it looks good, then it’s probably a good piece of content?
Truth is that your content may be gorgeous, but if no one reads it and engages with it, what’s the point?
The success of a blog post or a social media post is what you’re reaping out of it, i.e, engagement, leads, or sales.
So, that’s why it’s crucial to measure how your content is performing in the search engines or on the social media platforms you’re using to promote your content.
If your business is spending a lot of money on quality content creation without measuring results (or without any measurement plan in place), I have bad news for you: you are making a costly mistake.
Measuring your KPIs will tell you a lot about how your content is performing and when you know what’s happening, you can make better decisions and adjust your content strategy.
So, how do you measure the performance of your content:
2. Your Content Doesn’t Have a Purpose
One of the worst and biggest content marketing mistakes I made in my early days as a digital marketer was publishing content just for the sake of having lots of content on my site.
But when I realized that most of my articles were just sitting there on my website without bringing any traffic, let alone sales, I knew I had wasted some much time and effort.
I immediately understood that my content didn’t have a purpose and was just a bunch of articles on the web. Yikes!
You see every single piece of content you create has to have a clear, defined purpose.
For instance, if you can write only 50 articles and each of them contains a clear purpose, then I guarantee you can bring in much more money than someone with thousands of articles that lack purpose.
So, before even writing a single word, ask yourself:
“What am I going to get out of this piece of content?” or “how will that article help move the needle for my SaaS business?”
Why are you creating content in the first place? What is the goal of your content marketing campaign?
Content has to give and bring something to the table, otherwise, it’s just a waste of time.
Does your content have a purpose? If not, then try coming up with strategies that will help you create more purposeful content and stay away from publishing just for the sake of publishing.
3. Not Identifying Your Target Audience
It’s shocking how many companies don’t build their content strategy around a clear target market profile.
If you don’t know who your customer personas are, it’s simply impossible to bring your SaaS business to shine.
Take some time to create your customer personas in order to better know who is your ideal target audience.
Knowing your target market will help you create the right piece of content, period!
Many new businesses start out by talking about what they do and the value of the product to a broad audience. It may sound like a good idea, but it rarely works out.
Why? Because your content is not relevant for 80% of people in your target audience. And that 20% of that audience, might be the wrong people.
Start by researching your target audience online and try to figure out what their main pain points are, as well as their biggest goals and challenges.
Use this information to create content that will speak to them about the things they care about most and not about you or your company.
4. Focusing Solely on One Traffic Channel
You know this saying by heart; “Do not put all your eggs in one basket”.
You will see many content marketing coaches or agencies that encourage businesses to focus only on SEO traffic because social media traffic is unstable, does not convert as well as Google traffic bla bla bla.
To some degree, it’s true. A good chunk of online marketers spends more time doing search engine optimization than social media marketing when it comes to online content.
And I’m one of them!
Google traffic converts better because the website visitors coming from Google are the ones looking for your products or services online.
They are already in that purchasing mindset, unlike on social media where you have to interrupt them to get their attention.
But to say that including social media in your content marketing strategy is a big mistake is so untrue.
Certain niches have very different traffic behaviors and many niches perform extremely well on social media simply because their audience hangs out there.
Take the food niche for example. People would rather watch a recipe video than read a long blog post about how to cook a dish.
With that said, if you sell B2B software, you are more likely to get more sales leads through Google than on social media platforms. But that doesn’t mean social media cannot help.
There are tons of freelancers or businesses on social media and this means that they could benefit from your B2B product or service.
And if you don’t want to get involved in social media marketing, then you would be leaving money on the table.
Adding 1-2 social media platforms to give a boost to your marketing efforts can really pay off.
But you need to know if your audience is hanging on these platforms otherwise you’ll be wasting time.
So, one of the most common mistakes to avoid is to promoting content via one distribution channel only.
5. Not Using Visuals in Your Content
Next on the list of the biggest content marketing mistakes is failing to use visuals in your content.
Let’s face it, you can have the best articles on your blog but if they are 100% text-based, people will find them boring and will leave your site.
A visually appealing content will always get more shares and traffic than a plain 10,000 words article. Why?
According to Hubspot, people following directions with text and illustrations do 323% better than people following directions without illustrations.
Studies prove that visuals make up for 90% of information transmitted in the human brain.
And it is biological fact that since our brain is made of visual neurons, more than 50% of the surface of the brain is committed to processing visual information.
That’s why visual content is now the backbone of any social media or written post.
Content with visual elements will definitely spice up your copy and will influence your reader to engage with it.
6. Not Testing Different Content Formats
Remember this: your audience may have the same pain points and seek the same solutions but the way they consume content can vary from person to person.
That’s why the importance of producing different types of content formats (videos, infographics, quizzes, and more) cannot be overstated.
Each of these formats has its own style and its own way to convey information.
That’s why you should never limit yourself to one type of content.
Of course, if you’re just starting out and you don’t have a huge budget to dedicate to hiring lots of content creators, it’s impossible to create every type of content that exists.
What you can do is start with 2-3 types of content such as written blog posts, social media posts, and/or case studies.
After you’re seeing some traction and start generating good traffic, you can start creating short-form videos to explain how your product or service can solve your audience’s problems.
Educating your audience through different formats of content marketing will never be a bad idea.
By doing this, you will know which type of content resonates best with your audience and then you can start to double down on it for exponential growth and engagement.
7. Not Thinking About The User Experience
Most marketers are so stuck in their strategy that they forget about the user experience.
A great content marketing strategy will never leave out a great user experience.
It’s all about the customer journey and what they want.
Creating a great user experience is making sure your prospects are getting what they need in one place, without any confusion.
That’s how you can easily bring them into your sales funnel.
A bad user experience and a converting customer have never existed yet!
A few questions you might ask yourself after publishing a piece of content to test out the quality of a user’s experience:
These are a few questions you can answer yourself to determine if your user will have a great experience when landing on your posts.
Always keep in mind that user experience can make or break your content marketing campaigns.
8. Not Creating an Editorial Calendar
One of the worst content marketing mistakes that can cost you a lot is inconsistent publishing.
This happens when you don’t have a content workflow or an editorial calendar in place.
Failing to create a content calendar will make create content once in a blue moon, spend a lot of time researching what to write about, not knowing where you are heading to…
In this busy content marketing landscape, there is so much competition that if you don’t have a well-planned content calendar, you will lose ground to other businesses who are producing content consistently.
Content marketing is all about creating content that provides value for your audience on a regular basis, otherwise, you are going to lose the race.
What is the purpose of having a content calendar?
It’s all about planning, organization, and long-term strategy.
The first thing all great artists do is draw an outline, or sketch of the finished result before they begin to paint.
So you should use a content calendar to plan your content and make sure you are tackling the right problem with the right solution, through amazing content.
Also, it’s common sense that every piece of content should be well planned, not just one but a whole bunch of them.
When you have a plan, it becomes easier to manage and keep track of your content marketing efforts.
Planning a content workflow a few months ahead can definitely save you a lot of time and unnecessary effort.
As a B2B SaaS company, you cannot afford to release content when you’re in a good mood.
It should be a regular and consistent activity.
You don’t want to give the whole cake to your competitors, right?
Having a content calendar for your business is the best way to stay on track, not only in this critical aspect but in all the others that makes up a great content marketing strategy.
Wrap Up
Content marketing is a very profitable strategy, but you should know that it requires consistency, dedication, and especially avoiding those content marketing mistakes mentioned above.
It might take some time to fix those common content marketing mistakes, but once you do, your results will definitely improve.
So don’t wait any longer. Just identify what is holding you back and fix it immediately so you can focus more on generating leads and sales for your business.
When creating content for your business, remember to think about the end user.
Really analyze what your prospect wants and what is the best way to deliver it.
Take care of every detail, from structure to typography, so that you can produce a piece of content that people will love and they will keep coming back for more.
These content marketing mistakes are a normal part of the learning process, so don’t be discouraged if you made a few of them.
Just keep on learning and refining whichever strategy you’re using and your results will continue to improve.
I believe there is always a way to make something work, so it’s only when you find the right solution that you’ll see success in content marketing.