Are There Any Downsides to Content Marketing?
Let me say this upfront: I’m an avid practitioner of and spokesperson for content marketing. I think it’s hands-down one of the best marketing strategies you can use to promote your — and that statement applies to almost any business in any industry. At the same time, it’s a relatively new concept for many marketers, due to its only recent increase in popularity in the online marketing space, and I can’t blame those unfamiliar with the strategy for thinking it’s a fad or a gimmick.
I want to address that skepticism by posing the question — are there any real downsides to content marketing that might deter you from the strategy?
The Pros
First, to set the stage, I want to cover some of the biggest strengths of content marketing:
· Cost Efficiency. The cost efficiency of content marketing is unparalleled, thanks in no small part to the fact that most content marketing tactics can be executed for free (or cheaply). It requires some serious investment of time — which I’ll touch on later — but overall, the return you see is far higher than what you put into it.
· Interdisciplinary Benefits. Content can support your business in a number of areas, including but not limited to SEO, social media, email marketing, customer service, and can even stand alone as a means of generating revenue.
· Reputation and Visibility. The main goal of most content campaigns is to attract more traffic and conversions, but there are also some strong peripheral benefits in increasing your reputation and visibility as a brand. The indirect value here gives your brand a broader reach and higher likelihood to secure conversions.
· Acquisition and Retention. More obviously, content marketing helps you both in customer acquisition (generating new traffic and conversions on your site), and customer retention (making your existing customers happier with provision of new, valuable information).
· Long-Term Viability. One of the greatest advantages of content, it’s a long-term strategy with compounding payoffs. Over the months and years, you’ll likely see higher and higher ROI, as your previous efforts remain in play and your new efforts become stronger and stronger.
That being said, there are some downsides to content marketing.
1. It’s Very Difficult to Build Momentum
One of the biggest strengths of the strategy — its long-term viability — also leads to one of its biggest weaknesses: the amount of time it takes to generate momentum for your efforts. When you first start out, you likely won’t see any return on your investment; your site won’t have much authority, your blog won’t have a reputation, and your social media following will be practically nothing. It takes weeks, months, or sometimes years of heavy effort to start generating momentum, and months beyond that to start streamlining your return. Compared to traditional advertising, which can net you results almost instantly, this can be considered a disadvantage.
2. The Learning Curve is Extremely High
There’s also a learning curve when it comes to content marketing, as you can’t just write blog posts blindly or based on instinct and expect to see meaningful results. In fact, there are a couple of layers here; first, you need to make sure you understand the basic “best practices” for content marketing (and act on them), and second, you need to actively monitor your campaign for effectiveness, gradually changing your strategic approach to best fit your target audience. It takes time to learn these things, which means you need to be committed and patient, with an understanding that the first iteration of your strategy may not be successful.
3. It Demands a Lot of Time and/or Money
Though the monetary costs are potentially very low, content does demand a heavy investment. You can’t get away with writing one post a week if you want to see results; instead, you need multiple, high-quality posts (which demand intensive research and planning), and you need to support that content through promotional activities such as link building, relationship-building, and syndication. It takes many hours of work every week, or enlisting the help of freelancers or an agency as a substitute.
4. It Can Be Very Difficult to Measure
Though there are some clear best practices for measuring the effectiveness of a content marketing campaign, the reality is, these practices aren’t always precise. For example, you may be able to calculate your increases in organic traffic (traffic that comes in from search engines, which is influenced by the rankings your content supports), and from there estimate the value of your efforts, but there are too many variables and gray areas (such as other sources of traffic, “true” traffic value, peripheral benefits, and “actual” costs of the strategy) to calculate ROI concretely.
5. It Changes Rapidly
Content marketing is an area in constant flux, with new trends and technologies influencing what you should and shouldn’t do in the game. The field is highly competitive, and you can bet your competitors will be paying careful attention to these trends as they develop. If you want to remain competitive and relevant to your audience, you need to stay plugged into the latest news and more importantly, ready to adapt at any moment.
As you can see, there are some downsides to content marketing that prevent it from being a perfect online marketing strategy — but no marketing strategy is perfect. When comparing content marketing to traditional advertising methods, the downsides are fewer and less significant, and the upsides are far more attractive. Understanding the weaknesses of content marketing allows you to compensate for them, paving the way to an even more effective, efficient strategic execution.
