People are always focused on finding the types of content marketing strategies that work. But when experts claim they’ve found “the next best thing,” forward-thinking companies are often quick to implement these new strategies without considering whether or not these strategies will work for their company.
Types of Content Marketing Strategies Everyone Hates
Many of the ideas I often see touted as best practices are the exact things that annoy me the most. I know I’m not completely alone in my hatred for the following techniques because I’ve heard others complain about them. Do you use these types of content marketing strategies? Could they possibly be turning your customers away?
1. Chatbots that Don’t Go Away
Chatbots can easily answer a lot of basic customer questions, and as AI gets better, so do customer interactions with this technology. I get it. Chatbots can be helpful sometimes. But sometimes, they’re just annoying.
Take for instance my recent shopping experience. I was shopping for a new-to-me car. You may know what a giant pain this process can be. You search on a website, but then you want to look at each car’s individual page for the details. This is especially important when you’re shopping for a used car because there can be a lot of variation in mileage, cost, and features. You’re never comparing apples to apples.
On one of the websites I was browsing, a chatbot popped up asking if I wanted help. I closed it, and clicked on to the next page. On each page that I went to “Josh” popped up asking if I had any questions and assuring me that he was ready to help. Each time, I had to click to close it. Even worse, this particular style of chatbot was so large that it was hiding all of the details about each car, so I couldn’t simply ignore it. And don’t get me started about the extra time it took to load the page because of the chatbot feature.
Needless to say, I was annoyed.
Think about your customer’s experience. When a site starts to annoy a customer, they will be more inclined to leave. If you are going to incorporate chatbots on your website, you need to make sure that they don’t disrupt the visitor’s experience or pop up so often that they start to get annoying. Also, you’ll need to provide a quick and easy way for the visitor to minimize the chatbot window if they want to.
2. Meandering Content
Most of the time, people land on your website looking for quick answers to their problems. Most visitors are not planning to spend an hour perusing all of your great content. That is why Google’s featured snippet has become so important. With the featured snippet, Google pulls a portion of your text to answer the searcher’s question so they don’t even have to click on your page. Instead, the answer appears right at the top of the search results.
Yet some websites still make you work really hard to get to the information you want.
Recipe blogs are perhaps the worst culprits. All you want is a copycat recipe for Olive Garden breadsticks, but you have to go through a story of the blogger’s first date at Olive Garden, 25 stylized pictures of the blogger preparing the recipe, and details on why the blogger recommends a particular type of bread flour that you can only buy online before the recipe even shows up. And then you find out it includes an ingredient you don’t have, so you have to do it again.
While most businesses are not guilty of creating content that meanders quite as bad as the recipe blogger, they aren’t always as concise as they could be. When creating content, make sure that visitors can easily find the information they want on your site without having to click around too much.
3. Video for Video’s Sake
Video marketing is the big thing that everyone’s talking about. And most experts agree that if you don’t have a video content strategy, you’re missing out.
While this may be true, it’s also clear that in the race to get video content up, some companies are missing the mark. While they have plenty of video content, the videos they create just don’t provide any real value to customers.
Some of the greatest offenders are real estate companies that create automatic video slideshow tours of homes, often without any narration. This type of video doesn’t provide much value because it isn’t offering anything that you can’t get from looking at photos of homes. And at least with photos, you can stop and take a closer look at certain images. With an video slideshow, it becomes difficult to pause on the images you most want to see.
On the other hand, creating a video walkthrough of the home, complete with the realtor’s narration can be an effective way to highlight the aspects of the home that make it unique. In this case, videos can be used to show things that images alone don’t often illustrate, such as the home’s layout.
The moral of the story is – don’t just make videos for the sake of making videos. If you’re going to invest your time and money into creating videos, make sure that you’re adding value with the video content.
4. Clickbait Titles that Don’t Deliver
Titles are important. Step-by-step guides walk you through the various formulas that you can use to get people to click on your articles. And while I’m conscious of the “tricks” being employed, I can’t say that I’m immune to the phenomena.
However, these “click-worthy” titles often create a problem – the author is not delivering on the titles they’re writing. While the title is catchy and promises a lot of great insight, the content itself is sub-par. For instance, the title might promise “industry secrets,” but the content only delivers common knowledge.
Clickbait titles for boring content that is not valuable can instantly turn away leads and customers. If they can’t trust you to follow through on the content, how can they trust what you’re saying about your product or service?
Types of Content Marketing Strategies: Final Thoughts
When it comes to the different types of content marketing strategies, you need to choose the strategies that work best for you. And once you decide to implement these strategies, you need to go all in. The goal is to provide your site visitors with a positive experience and provide them with something that adds value. This is the best way to set yourself apart from the competition and build trust with your leads.
Content plays a vital role in building that trust with leads. But like any content strategy, if you’re going to write blog posts, send marketing emails or post to social media, you need to make sure that what you are writing offers value to your clients.
WriterAccess can help connect you with talented writers who know how to craft high-quality content that connects with your audience and provides value. Want to learn more? Request a demo today.
Shannon T. has been writing professionally for over 10 years. In addition to the thousands of articles, blog posts, and web pages she’s ghostwritten, she has bylined work that’s been published on sites like Headspace.com, ModernMom.com, Chron.com, and Fool.com (The Motley Fool). Having earned the HubSpot Academy Inbound Certification, she’s able to craft pieces that satisfy the needs of both readers and search engines.
