I see many marketing teams in the same cycle: they believe in content. They keep creating. But you just don’t see the desired results. Add the CEO to ask why the competitor is “suddenly everywhere”.
Oh, and internally there is no real orientation about who you talk to, what you want to say or how you measure success.
This is usually when I get the call.
I am Devin Reed -Former content manager at Gong and Clari, who is now working with B2B marketing teams through my company. The shipowner. I helped scale brands of 20 million US dollars up to 200 million US dollars, and I worked with companies such as the term, Wiz and Floqast to build content engines that drive specific pipeline.
When I carry out a content audit, I don’t just run over the performance dashboards. I browse what is broken, what is missing and what it will take to transform content into a real growth lever.
In this piece I will carry you out how these projects usually start, the most common mistakes I see and which teams can do for a course correction.
Why companies achieve a content examination
Before I start with customers, a CMO or VP from Marketing had a long -term conviction that content is important. But you recently made it clear that it is no longer something that you can take easily. In other words, you know that you cannot afford it not to invest in high quality content marketing.
Usually a little spectacular has been wrong lately, or the CEO said something like: “It is time to bring our plot together.”
In other cases, you have found that there is no growth number that you can look at confidently and say: “See, it works!” And it is still a bigger strategic game, such as the introduction of new products, especially now with AI.
So the question is: How can we make our name and our product history outside that makes itself clear that we are different from our competitors?
Sometimes it’s just a competitive pressure. The CEO of her biggest competitor is active on LinkedIn. Your entire team posts. It feels like they are eating all the attention. So you think: “We have to do something.”
Here my content design process comes into play, which always begins with an exam. Because if I entered a company in the head of the content role, I would do exactly that before I would publish a single word. I would want (and need) knowledge:
- What did we do?
- What works?
- What is not?
- What do our competitors do and what seems to work for them?
From there we can build something out of their strengths, avoid weaknesses and, above all, create something that actually stands out.
The 5 most common content marketing errors that I see
I have carried out many of these audits and there are some mistakes that occur again and again, regardless of company size or industry. Here are the most common and most harmful.
1. You Have too many ICPs.
I think the biggest mistake I see is it too many Ideal customer staff.
There was so much noise (or insights, depending on how you look at it), how buying committees get bigger and the sales processes are more complex. So I see many marketing teams that feel under pressure for everyone as a result.
One day it is the Cro. The next day it is the CFO. Then it is the Sales Ablement team. Before you know, you have five or seven ICPs with which you want to speak. But here is: you cannot have seven “ideal” customers. If everything has a priority, nothing is.
You have to choose one, maybe two and prioritize accordingly.
The other version of this is: you only have one or two ICPs, but you don’t really understand you. They are not clear what their world looks like, what their real problems are or how they try to solve them.
These are the two biggest challenges: either they are too thin or they don’t go deep enough.
2. All your content sound the same.
When I do the audit, I always ask the customer to send me the last content, usually the things that you consider as “top performances”. (To be honest, they probably wouldn’t have hired me if it really had occurred.)
What I see most of the time is content that is informative but not entertaining. It’s no different. It has no perspective that has not yet been said a hundred times.
And I think that Used to be Fine. Perhaps the information before 2022 had more worth more. They had to have real experience, be a researcher or deliver something in between to say something useful.
But now there is information everywhere. You can use chatt and be a “expert” in almost everything very quickly. Only having information is not enough.
What Is enough? A unique shoot. One point of view. How do you see this trend? What is the connection? You see that others don’t? What is a story from your experience that makes this assignable?
Now information has less worth. Relativity becomes really important. The stories are important. That will remember more. That is what strikes the content.
3. You have no strong columns of content.
This is super common: Most people have no documented content strategy.
Your selection of topics will be reactive. It is product -oriented for a week. That means until the CEO takes over and says: “Hey, our competitor just made a podcast. How does we not talk about it?”
Now follow the competitors instead of taking your own direction.
And if you play this over time – like a year content – you have a calendar that is everywhere. Nobody will remember what they stand for. Nobody will connect your brand with a single idea.
We all have more busy life and access to more content than ever. You are lucky if someone remembers one Thing about your company. If your content is scattered, it never happens.
Instead, they want guardrails. This does not mean that you cannot lead to trends or jump on trends. But you have to play a beat all year round. A drum that indicates a core idea. And 90% of their content has to touch it.
4. In your team there is no strategy for sales and conversion.
I am currently working on this problem.
Someone has hired an SEO agency. You make great content. But what happens next? You publish the blog on your website. Maybe you make a company LinkedIn Post. That’s it.
Now you have all this good content in a place where people don’t actively spend time.
This is not a distribution strategy. You have to meet people where they are. Your audience May Go to your website. However, you must appear in your LinkedIn feeds, inboxes and webinarotations.
Otherwise, your team is investing 10,000 US dollars per month in content that does not drive traffic and no conversions. You have a great content for the sake to have it.
So take the time to take over your biggest hits. You spent an intelligent framework all the time and solved an urgent problem. Why not Do you transform this into 10 LinkedIn contributions? Why don’t you make it a webinar, a keynote or a podcast circuit?
We cannot assume: “If we build it, you will come.” We have to be as intended to distribute and implement how we can.
5. They focus on metrics, but not on the right ones.
The biggest gap I see are people who do not understand how working with the business results is associated.
Let’s just take webinars as an example. I will ask: “Why do you do it? Why does the number of registrations have to grow by 20% quarter-over quarter?”
Do you know your presence rate? Let’s say it is 25%. Cool. What is your MQL rate? How high is your conversion rate of MQL Opportunities? What is your ACV?
Most marketers don’t know this cascade. So just do more. That means more webinars, more content, more things – without knowing it Why Or what it drives.
If you carry out content that does not have a direct ROI, you are good. But you have to bind it, which I call the “CEO film”.
Every year the CEO gets up and says: “Here are the four or five strategic priorities this year.” Perfect. Tie your content to one of them. Then they share metrics that are shown some Form of impact. Growth over time. A shift in direction. Something that says: “This is important.”
How teams can get back on the right track
If you try to fix these problems, I would start here.
1. Create a coherent content strategy.
This is the first. You need a content strategy that organizes your entire decision -making in one place. You cannot align your team if you don’t have a single source of truth for what you do and why.
That deals a lot. There is a focus, clarity and a way to evaluate ideas beyond that: “Does that sound cool?”
2. Create content programs or channel playbooks.
You should have a step-by-step instructions for creating content with a high impact every time. This includes ideas, production, approval, sales – start to end. The entire process should be released.
In this way, as soon as you have a good idea, do not reinvent the wheel. You have a clear way to consistently and effectively take it from the idea to execution.
3. Define your metrics (and own them!).
This should also live in their content strategy. What are the three most important metrics that are important to you? And then they go deeper with the channel.
As I mentioned in webinars, ask: “How does the success look? What is the full funnel of this channel?” If your team doesn’t know, this offers you the opportunity to learn and develop.
And as head of marketing or content, you can teach this.
Make yourself clear before you create
If you consistently create, but still don’t see the desired effects, do not assume that the answer is more. Step back. Check what works, repair what is broken and build it up again with a focus.
As soon as you have understood where things are neglected, you can make more intelligent decisions, re -align your team and finally see the results that should only drive your content. And if you need more support, you know where to find me.