5 signs your content marketing strategy stinks

The point is that no one likes a boring website (or boring anything). So, don't be boring. Change things around, shake things up and diversify your content.

There are many content forms beyond the written word. For instance, consider illustrating your services and difficult concepts through graphs, infographics or videos. Not only will your website be more visually appealing; it will enable higher click-throughs and call to actions (CTAs). By doing this, your website will foster better engagement with its users and that's always a plus.

3. You favor quantity over quality. 

This issue ties back into my point about advisors who think they have content marketing all figured out by sending out a few tweets or blogging occasionally. Of course, tweeting or blogging more often can help, but the real problem lies in the quality of content. It really isn't enough to do content marketing: It's about doing it right. 

If you want to have a competitive advantage over other financial advisors out there, what you have to offer must cut through the clutter and stand out. Because people are not only reading your content, but continually critiquing it, taking it apart and dissecting every single part of it with immense judgement, you really have to bring your A-game. So focus on producing high quality content, rather than merely appreciating that it exists. 

4. You create dead-ends. 

You've created an awesome library of content. Great! But then you have either forgotten to include — or worse, completely avoided including — calls to action.

In the wonderful world of websites, people expect a request for them to take some form of action after reading content. After all, this is the whole point of marketing: to entice people to do something with the content they just received.

Whether it includes signing up for a newsletter subscription or filling out a web form to receive a free eBook, readers should not feel they've reached a dead-end. Instead, your blog posts should help promote your newsletters and these newsletters should help promote your eBooks … you get my drift.

5. Can anyone find it? 

If no one finds your content, then no one can read it and, in turn, your ability to drive profitable customer action can be significantly lower. A lot of today's marketing involves sharing content on social media because nearly everyone is on a social network.

Pushing your content out to Twitter, for instance, not only branches out your content to a wider scope of audience, but also helps you establish connections with the right people. 

You probably feel less proud about your current content marketing strategy right now and that's OK. The point here is not to rain on your parade or crush your ego, but to address which content marketing strategies are working and those that are not.

So go ahead, throw out the bad and welcome the good because, really, who has time for content marketing strategies that stink?

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