Most businesses use content marketing as part of their advertising strategy. In fact, some estimates suggest that as many as between 77 and 94 percent of all businesses use content marketing regularly. However, I’m willing to bet that only a small fraction of those companies are getting significant results from their efforts.

You see, although content marketing can undoubtedly be a great way to drive traffic and make sales, most companies are making rookie mistakes that stop them from seeing success. So, if you’re using online marketing and it isn’t helping you as much as you think it could check out these common reasons why it might be failing for you:

You Have No Strategy in Place

You can’t just create content and expect people to flock to your website, blog or store – you have to have a strategy in place. You need to experiment, see what works and what doesn’t and put a plan in place to make things better. Just having a plan in place could make all the difference between content that converts and content that goes largely ignored.

You Haven’t Invested in Your Website

No matter how good your content is if you haven’t spent the same amount of time investing in your website, whether by purchasing your own domain from www.wizzhosting.co.uk, developing an attractive theme, or making your website simple to use, you simply aren’t going to get the kind of results you’d expect. So, as well as investing in content, spend a bit of money improving your website, and you may be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Your Content Isn’t Inspiring

Just writing any old content, even if it features all the right keywords to, in theory, drive traffic your way, isn’t good enough. If you want to not only drive more traffic to your website but encourage more people to buy your goods and services, your content needs to be good. It should compel, inspire, inform or entertain your readers so that they’re convinced to make a purchase and more than happy to come back and read some more or sign up to your newsletter.

You Don’t Promote Your Content

If you’re already running a hugely successful business or you’re posting content on one of the planet’s top blogs, you might not have to do much to promote your content, but for everyone else, it is vital. Post links on Twitter and Facebook, write guest posts, send out emails and do anything else you can to spread the word about your latest piece of writing if you want to see spectacular results.

You’re in a Difficult Niche

Sometimes, you might not be doing anything wrong at all. It might just be that you’ve chosen to operate in a difficult niche where the number of people who’d be interested in reading your stuff is limited, or your target audience doesn’t get online much. If this is the case, you’ll have to work a lot harder to break through and get lots of readers, perhaps by combining your niche with a more popular related one, but it is possible, so don’t give up.

You’re Competing Against a Giant

Again, if you’re doing everything right, your content could still fail if you’re forced to go up against a huge competitor. For example, say you were to start producing your own brand of cola. How do you think you’d fare against Coca Cola and their billions? Probably not that well, UNLESS, you can offer something unique. So, if this is a problem you’re facing, don’t be afraid to be quirky or market your product from a  new angle. Maybe you could highlight the superior ethics of your product or the fact that you use organic ingredients. There’s always a market for things like that; it’s just a matter of working out what your USP is and emphasizing it in your content.

You Haven’t Been Marketing Long Enough

Even some of the biggest internet marketers like the owner of https://problogger.com/ weren’t overnight successes. They had to do the work and then wait patiently for the results to roll in. The thing about content marketing is that it takes time. It can take months for your content to get attention, so you need to be patient. If you keep doing all the right things, it will happen eventually, and you will see your bottom line begin to bulge.

Your SEO Knowledge is Poor

If you don’t know how to optimize your content for search engines, no one is going to be able to find it, and that means, no matter how good it is, you won’t see any results from it. So, either learn SEO or hire an expert if you feel that could be where your problem lies.