Do you Know the Real Reason your Content Marketing Campaign Failed?
If you’re like many SMB owners today, you’ve wasted thousands of dollars on ads, time spent on social media, and hastily built some landing pages which resulted in no real leads, no real sales.
And to add insult to injury, it’s likely that your marketing campaign actually helped your competitors close the deal with your prospects. When you failed to impress and sell them, they bounced over to your competitors with more resolve to buy their products and services.
Given today’s marketing environment, it’s almost certain it’s a lack of full commitment — to design it, optimize it, power it up and ensure it’s firing on all cylinders. Prospects know whether you’re committed, sincere and stand behind your offer. And here’s the secret: they want to be sold!
There are other reasons too. Lack of marketing talent, lack of data insights, inflexibility, issues with the company’s value offer, and a trend to ROI-first digital marketing. Collectivel, it weakens results. However, with commitment, you can solve each of those challenges.
Transparent Truth: Weak Commitment Doesn’t Impress Anyone
The harsh truth? The businesses thriving today are those who strongly promote their company, brand and message of value online to match customer’s pains. They’re the ones telling the best stories, building authority and trust, consistently creating optimal pre-purchase experiences and capturing the minds and hearts of buyers. And they likely don’t have the best product.
It seems those companies that commit to it, and force themselves to design and execute a powerful content marketing strategy will win.
I’ve seen it in travel, real estate, marketing, transportation, entertainment, building products, software and other sectors. Your total value proposition needs to hit home, or else. That’s why committing fully to content marketing makes the difference — No weaknesses, gaps or disappointments in delivering a wonderful experience that takes them to a purchase.
A powered-up content marketing strategy features:
- research on targeted customers to identify the strongest needs
- a documented content plan/strategy with goals, assets, and execution
- laser clear value proposition and offer for the prospect
- high-quality content assets: blogs, graphics, videos, case studies, landing pages, product pages
- a pleasurable, satisfying content experience along with path to purchase (touchpoints covered)
- strong targeted promotion on social media and Google
- follow up to nurture the leads and stay top of mind
Overcoming Your Inertia and Skepticism
Companies using content strategy are succeeding. They’re the brands you see every day online. If I asked you about a brand you remember, you would cite these brands.
If you’ve ever said any of the following, you’re not alone:
- “I don’t have time for blogging”
- “We’ve tried that before, but it didn’t move the needle”
- “We spent a lot of money made some cool ads and got little back”
- “There isn’t anyone capable of creating the kind of authoritative content we need”
- “Content marketing takes too long to work and it costs money.”
- “We already post on social media—why do we need more?”
Confronting Reality and Being Confident
But here’s the reality: You must earn your relationship with prospective customers. They don’t measure you by content delivered but by how you present it. A sincere effort makes them feel wanted and confident you’re into this relationship.
Your competitors are reaching, educating and engaging your target audience before you ever talk to them. They’re conditioning their understanding of their needs, problems, and making themselves the most significant solution. It’s how you make competitors disappear. They’re controlling the narrative, visibility and perception of solutions. This is why you have low traffic and even lower leads.
If you’re not doing strategic content marketing, you’re not in the conversation and become irrelevant and insignificant.
Great Content is a Lead-Building Force
Great content isn’t just about blogging – it’s about presenting a useful, enriched, online experience that proves you’re the most significant and trusted provider. Content is the medium and it matches you perfectly to high-intent customers who are already searching for what you sell.
That Painful Void: Your Silent Revenue and Brand Killers
💥 You’re Invisible in Google Search → Your website is just a static business card and instead needs to be active and omnipresent on Google.
💥 Your Leads are Cold and Weak → People don’t know your company or trust you enough to buy. Content generates awareness, comfort and desire to purchase.
💥 You’re Losing to Competitors → They’re ranking more on the best keywords, are visible on social media, creating engagement, and becoming the go-to brand. You can do this too.
💥 Your Competitors Define Quality → They’re reaching your customers and changing their perception of who is the most significant provider/company. You need to regain control of the narrative.
Whether it’s Google search or social media posting, being visible is essential to control the narrative and position your company consistently as the most significant provider.
You can be there if you choose to.
The Profit-Driving Benefits of Content Strategy
✅ Effortless Lead Generation: Bring in ready-to-buy customers.
✅ Trust & Authority: When people trust you, they choose you—no convincing needed.
✅ Higher Conversion Rates: Warm, educated leads convert faster than cold ones.
✅ More Sales with Less Effort: Value of content increases long after you publish it—unlike ads, is cheaper, and old (updated) blog posts convert at a high rate.
Case Study: ManageCasa Software:
A small SaaS software startup company in the rental property management sector. I implemented a strategic content plan for web/social media, creating consistent relevant social posts with a 1000 views, kept top of mind with customers and raised their Website traffic from 200 to 60,000 visitors per month — with zero ad spend or extensive graphic design services!
Despite competing with massive companies with big ad budgets and massive ranking power, I established them for thousands of relevant property management keywords to property management audiences. Despite searcher’s use of tens of thousands of unique keyword phrases they enjoyed significant exposure.
Case Study: Delta Hotels
A major, business-class Canadian hotel chain. I optimized pages, crafted blogs, and created offsite content that made Google believe Delta was the best hotel for pleasure travelers and business class travelers. You couldn’t do a search for hotels in Canada, without seeing Deltahotels.com at the top of the page. Despite Delta’s room rates being twice that of other popular hotels, I doubled their website traffic from a rate of 1.2 million per year to 2.5 million per year for a good boost in bookings. I leveraged and improved on their current content (which was thin and promotional) and built their ranking power substantially. This work lasted many years.
The point to make is that if you’re enthusiastic and committed, there is nothing that will stop you. You have an advanced content strategist to help you be number one.
How to Start a Content Strategy That Actually Works
- Understand Your Audience’s Pain Points → What problems do they Google at 2 AM? What is their number one problem? We can solve this.
- Create your Comprehensive Content Plan → a topic/publishing strategy of how you’ll deliver the right fresh and durable content to the right audience to communicate the right message.
- Create Content That Solves Their Problems → SEO-friendly and information-rich blogs, social media posts, videos, and guides presented as a whole, achieves deeper impact.
- Distribute It Where They Hang Out → LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, email, and Google and Bing search engines.
- Turn Great Content into Sales → Design a comprehensive content experience that answers their concerns, peaks their curiosity, drives CTAs, exposes your lead magnets and feeds into your sales funnel and CRM nurturing sequences.
Discover more on content strategy for property management companies, content strategy for travel companies and content strategy for Realtors.
The Challenge to Business Owners: Take Action Now
If you’re inspired by excellent, profitable outcomes that not only last, but improve with ongoing campaigns, then content strategy is an affordable and wise choice.
Your customers are already searching for answers and good online experiences. Will they find you, or your competitors?
If you’re ready to stop struggling and start getting real results, let’s talk. Call me (Gord) now at 416 998-6246 to discuss the building of a very affordable custom content strategy to transform your business.
