Content marketing in boring industries: What should you know and how to transform your weaknesses into strengths?

In a time where the competition is very vast and strong, it is highly important to know how to properly behave in order to be successful.

Companies that are into content marketing have to be aware of the positive and negative sides of it. This is very important since as time passes, traditional marketing is starting to be used less and less, and although it probably won’t become obsolete in the near future, on its own it can be not enough for these highly competitive markets, and those in perceptibly boring industries.

That is why content marketing is getting more and more popular as a strategic marketing approach that focuses on creating and distributing real valuable and relevant content with which it attracts the audience. So there is no pitching for product and services, but the high-quality content provided is inspiring the customers to get more involved with the company. Every company should be involved in content marketing in some way, even if you are in some boring industries.

Why is content marketing in boring industries important?

According to a study, the vast majority of marketers are using content marketing as their marketing strategy. Many big-named companies such as P&G, Cisco systems, Microsoft and others use this type of marketing in their business models. Since it works for them, many small and medium businesses are also getting into content marketing. The reasons behind the high usage of content marketing are increased sales, cost savings, and more loyal customers.

Moreover, content marketing can be used to improve brand reputation through building trust with the customers. This is one of the most important things that content marketing provides and it’s often the reason why businesses decide to incorporate it into their overall strategies. We are aware that we live in a very busy digital time which is why is crucial for businesses to build trusting relationships with their customers and what a better way to do it then offer high-quality products to them.

Another important thing is consistency. If your target audience sees that you consistently put out high-quality content, the loyalty is almost guaranteed. Some statistics connected to content marketing are:

• It provides conversion rates approximately six times higher compared to other digital marketing methods.
• 61% of online consumers in the U.S decided to make a purchase after reading recommendations on a blog.
• Content marketing has increased leads by 74% or companies that were surveyed in terms of quality and quantity.

Strengths and weaknesses

Content marketing has both its strengths and its weaknesses. In order to be able to turn the weaknesses of being in boring industries into strengths, you have to have a clear picture of what those disadvantages are in the first place. Let’s start with the strengths first.

• Content marketing is cost efficient— it can be executed for free in many ways or for very low costs. However, it does require investing time in it for analyzing and reviewing the results. Overall, the return is often much bigger than the initial investment.
• Content marketing increases visibility and improves the reputation— most of the campaigns that come from content marketing have one goal in general and that is to drive more traffic and conversions to the website. Other benefits are increasing the visibility of the brand and improving its reputation.
• Content marketing can reach an audience that avoids ads— many people are avoiding the channels of traditional advertising and using content marketing in instances like these can be very helpful since it can reach all those people. There are many ad blocking software nowadays, and reaching audiences like that might be problematic.
• Content marketing helps out with acquisition and retention—it helps out in generating new traffic and conversions on your webpage and it’s making the already existing customers happier via providing new, valuable information for them.
• Content marketing is great for supporting other marketing tactics—a good content marketing strategy is supposed to support the success of the other marketing strategies within the business. Some of them are SEO, social media and PR.
• Content marketing provides long-term viability— this might be one of the top pros of this type of marketing. As time passes by, the likelihood of you seeing a higher ROI is very high. The reason behind this is that your past efforts are still in play, and you’re adding to that the new ones making your strategy stronger with time.

Like everything else in life, content marketing has also some shortcomings that are very important to be in touch with if you want to turn things around.

• Content marketing demands a lot of time and possibly money—although the money investment is almost always very low, a lot of investing is required in other forms. You have to write posts regularly, pay attention to the quality and know how to detox bad posts out, do extensive research for the posts, support the written content with different promotional activities (link building for example), etc. You have to invest a lot of time and work into it if you want to see the results.
• Content marketing’s success can be difficult to measure—seeing how effective your content marketing strategy is can be very tricky to do. There are too many variables and gray areas that play a part in the overall results that you can’t always know. That is why using some tools for help can be a smart thing. More on this you can read later in the article.
• Content marketing is changing very fast—it is an area that is influenced by new technologies and new trends which are everyday changing and upgrading. Competition is very rich as well which makes things additionally difficult. If you want to remain competitive, you have to follow the latest news, trends, and technologies and what’s more important you have to be able to adapt to them very fast.
• Content marketing’s results are not immediately visible—this strategy can be a long process and the results can be visible in a while. You have to have a period of trial and error and to find out which things work out the best for your business and your audience. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try different things to see which trick is accepted more by your audience.
• Content marketing’s has a high learning curve—it takes time to learn how to produce meaningful content that will have great results. You have to be open for new things, actively monitor the results that you get, and work towards finding the best approach for your target audience. A lot of patience, commitment, and determination has to be put into this process.
• Content marketing can be challenging—sometimes it can be tricky to constantly come up with great ideas and high-quality content for them. This can become easier with time as you learn to analyze the impact of your past content and see what the audience responds to the best. You also have to be aware when you need outsourced help in case of infographics, videos, or outer skills that you don’t possess or you’re not the best in.

Tools for assessing your content marketing strategy

You may have some content marketing strategy in place but you surely want to improve it. At least, that is the expected mindset of every business that wants to be successful in the long run. However, sometimes it’s hard to implement improvements if you don’t know the current situation and how customers respond to it, especially when in boring industries. That is why, we will recommend some tools with which you can assess the current content marketing strategy and see where you’re standing.

• Social Crawlytics— this tool is a free analytical tool for backlinks which you can use to track the distribution of your content across several platforms. It will show you which posts are the most popular and you can see the growth in shares for anything that you have posted.
• Buzzsumo— this tool works on a similar principle as the previous one with a difference that it has its focus on finding topics on the interntet or precise places such as Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest, Twtter, etc. You can dig deeper with this tool; you can even find out who shared the content. You can also measure the position of your strategy and compare it to other companies that are competing with you. Based on this, you can see how good your strategy is in comparison to your competitors.
• Quick Sprout— is another awesome tool that is able to produce a report for a certain address of domain. It works on a principle which inspects the website address and produces three different reports like website analysis, social media analysis and competitor analysis. Within these reports you can find a lot of useful information about the state your website is in and the market in general.
• Eloqua—is a tool under Oracle that is created to help out companies in all the stages of the content marketing strategy. The tool makes planning, creating, publishing, promoting and analyzing their posts easier and much more organized.

Having a good content marketing strategy takes time and effort. Knowing what you’re offering and knowing your target audience is of crucial importance. However, paying close attention to publishing high-quality content and content which your followers want to see more of is what will give that extra spark to your success even in boring industries.

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Mary Walton is a professional editor, content strategist and a part of NCSM team. Apart from writing, Mary is passionate about hiking and gaming. Feel free to contact her via Facebook.