Why Are So Many Content Marketers Failing? MalContent vs. MegaContent (Part 1 of 3)

Recent data indicates many marketers are dissatisfied with content marketing. But if content is one of the most powerful ways to attract, engage and influence customers, why are so many marketers failing to see results?

This content marketing blog series will try to answer this question. It’s geared toward helping dissatisfied marketers get more out of their content marketing at every stage of their content workflow. This series will also present new ways of thinking about this ever-changing industry that you might not have considered previously.

In this post, I discuss content marketing’s hype cycle and factors that determine your content marketing’s effectiveness. In my second post, I detail seven reasons your content marketing may be ineffective. Finally, my last post will describe seven ways to make your content marketing more effective.

Content Marketing’s Hype Cycle

Remember the hype around “Big Data” a few years back? What about “Internet of Things” and “Data Science”? According to Gartner, these terms were all over-hyped. Gartner even branded a name for these psychological ups and downs revolving around new technologies—Hype Cycle. It’s our collective sentiment and experiences regarding a new technology that initially reach extremes, but plateau over time. This leveling off tends to coincide with best practices being developed and eventually productivity being realized.

Content marketing is moving through its own hype cycle. One can argue that content marketing has dropped from the “peak of inflated expectations” to the “trough of disillusionment” for many marketing departments.  According to a CMI and MarketingProfs report, 93% of B2B technology marketers use content marketing to attract and retain customers. However, 66% believe they are ineffective. Based on this data, one could conclude content marketing does not work for most. That may be a big reason why content marketing adoption rates have peaked and, according to CMI, are declining.

Two New Content Marketing Terms

The content marketing industry is at a crossroad. Ineffective content marketers must evolve to compete and succeed. It’s possible that many of these same marketers are using ineffective content marketing strategies and techniques. These could even be strategies and techniques that were effective previously, but due to the constantly changing digital marketing landscape are now deemed ineffective.

Applying ineffective strategies and techniques is what I call MalContent Marketing due to poor results and negative sentiment. Such marketing needs to adapt and evolve. I will explain in a moment seven ineffective content marketing techniques that yield poor results and need improving.

Alternatively, some content marketers are effective and actually are experiencing positive results. What’s their secret? It varies, but in my next post I will present one path to successful content marketing that I call MegaContent Marketing. This grandiose term crystallizes the multiple actions required to compete and succeed. The term also speaks to the positive sentiment an effective content marketer.

Content Marketing’s Path to Effectiveness

I believe a content marketers effectiveness  is directly related to two key factors: volume and quality. In general, the more high quality content assets you publish and the more high quality social channels you promote on, the more effective you will be. This is no surprise to most, but the devil is in the details. The remainder of this two part series will provide the details describing how to improve volume and quality throughout the content marketing workflow. For now the visual below is merely an overall view of content marketing’s path to effectiveness.

A Typical Content Marketing Workflow

For the sake of this article, I am defining a content marketing workflow as follows:

Plan Content Strategy > Capture Content Ideas > Produce Content Assets > Promote Content Assets > Analyze Content Performance

MalContent Marketing has inefficiencies and ineffectiveness at every phase of this workflow. In my next post, I will highlight seven reasons why your content marketing is ineffective and thus yielding sentiments of malcontent.

Read part 2 here.