How to Avoid Content Marketing Fatigue
As a business owner, you know you have to get your brand in front of as many potential customers and clients as you can and that the best way to do that is through online content marketing. From Facebook to your company blog, you’re constantly publishing and posting information to market your product, service, and brand. Your time is spent coming up with new ideas, creating new blog posts, posting to social media, researching keywords, and deciding among various types of content. All that work doesn’t include what you do in the rest of your day-to-day professional life.
At the same time, consumers are inundated with ads, blog posts, email offers, coupon codes, and more information than they’ll ever be able to consume. It eventually overwhelms the senses and creates a sense of confusion. To save themselves, customers delete or ignore what doesn’t look interesting or important, disregarding much of the content thrown at them on a daily basis. All of this adds up to one thing—content marketing fatigue.
What Is Content Marketing Fatigue?
You know that exhaustion you feel when your email inbox is filled with special offers from companies you want to hear from as well as those you don’t? That’s content marketing fatigue. It’s also the overwhelming feeling customers get when trying to sift through all the information online to find what they really need.
The time and effort business owners put into marketing their business and creating content can lead to fatigue as well. When you follow the common wisdom to continually publish new social media posts, emails, videos, blog posts, audio content, and whitepapers, it’s inevitable that you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of exhaustion, desperately wondering when you can get off the content train and take a break.
How To Avoid Content Marketing Fatigue
To solve the content marketing fatigue problem for yourself and your customers, there are several things you can do. Choosing any number of these will likely help everyone. Depending on what’s causing the most fatigue and stress in your marketing, you have a few options to make your life easier, including:
1. Do Something Different With Your Content
If your blog content is filled with “X Ways to Use This Product” type of posts, you’ve probably bored both your audience and yourself. After a while, it’s easy to believe there’s nothing left to write about. In reality, what you need to do is get out of your content rut. Use quotes from other people in your industry. Share a personal story that relates in some way to your business or your customers. Go “off topic” from time to time to show the human side of your business.
2. Hire or Get Help
Small companies will have different resources from large companies, so you have to find what works within your budget but get yourself some marketing help. Hire a freelance writer or content creation company who can help you create ideas or share a fresh perspective on what you’re doing. Allow others in your company to come up with topics and ideas for your next social media strategy or email newsletter. You’ll not only get a fresh perspective on your marketing, but you’ll also get a much-needed break.
3. Be Helpful
Part of the problem with a lot of the content that people are inundated with is that it’s got one message: “Buy this thing I’m selling!” Say it often enough, and your customers stop seeing or hearing your message. Instead, focus on making content that’s genuinely helpful. Answer a question, solve a problem, and share your knowledge. Be there when people really need help, and they’ll pay attention to what you’re selling.
How To Help Customers Avoid Content Marketing Fatigue
If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting the same results. Not only are customers exhausted from the amount of information available for them to consume, but they’re also largely ignoring it. It’s time to try something different to get and keep their attention.
1. Provide Real Answers
It’s easy to get focused on a new product launch or generating leads for your business. Ultimately, you need to make sales in order to stay in business and grow. But people already know you have a product to sell. What they really need are answers. Help people solve their problems, and you’ll earn their business with fewer emails and less pleading for their attention.
2. Publish and Post Less Information
While the common wisdom says that you need to touch a customer about seven times to see results, that doesn’t mean seven times in seven days. Lower that number a bit or space out your marketing touches to a more manageable amount. At the same time, increase the quality of your content to provide good information. If you’re being helpful and providing real answers, there’s no need to email every single day or even blog every day. Good information works long after your initial publishing date, giving you more attention with less effort.
3. Change Your Message
Tired of begging a customer to buy something? Your customers are tired of being begged, too. Change the message. Focus on the benefits to your customer and less on the sale price. Use content to talk to them instead of at them. Ask a question instead of making a declaration. Reach out to your customers like they’re people and not “potential leads,” and you’ll get their attention.
You might not realize it, but you and your customers want the same thing—less noise to get in the way of the information that really matters. By putting out higher quality information in a way that speaks directly to your customers, you’ll make a bigger impact with less work. When customers realize a business can offer genuine help with their problems without yelling at them on social media or in email, they’re more likely to pay attention.
Building a customer base and turning one-time customers into repeat business requires that you foster loyalty. You don’t get loyalty by adding to the noise coming at people like water from a fire hose or by exhausting people with content. You do it by being strategic, helpful, and genuine. When you find that balance, both you and your customers will see the benefit of content marketing.
CopyPress writer
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