Top 7 Content Marketing Myths: How Unscrupulous Copywriters and Agencies Lie to You

Since 2016, everyone has been talking about content marketing. Simplifying, this is the generation and distribution of useful, necessary and interesting content for your potential audience.

Despite the demand for this marketing tool, every year there are more and more myths about it. We have selected for you the top 7 myths that will help you understand if copywriters and agencies are lying to you.

Myth #1: Content marketing is the fastest way to increase sales

Content marketing is an effective, but certainly not the fastest route to sales. If you are promised a rapid increase in the number of sales, do not believe it – this is a long game. Even apart from the fact that any marketing tool is only part of the sales funnel, in this case, the return time is even longer.

Remember: content marketing is necessary, it “warms up” the audience and prepares it for the subsequent sale, but in most cases it does not sell on its own.

Myth #2: Any copywriter can handle content marketing

Useful content is not just custom-written text on your topic. The basis of useful content is a clear understanding of the needs and interests of your target audience, in other words, answers to questions:

• What’s bothering her?
• What is she interested in?
• What problems does she have?

That is why, if you decide to do content marketing, you should not trust its authors and agencies that do not specialize in this.

It will be a good sign for you to receive a request from the author or agency to fill out a checklist before starting work. It should contain questions about your company and its customers. This means that the content strategy will be built with a clear understanding of the needs of your audience.

Myth #3: Content marketing only needs text

Due to the fact that text materials are the easiest format to create, many people have the impression that content marketing is only about texts.

But do not forget that in content marketing, the main thing is content, and its format can be anything. Therefore, it can be called a good sign if your agency offers you not only articles, but, for example, videos or podcasts.

It is also worth remembering that even texts should not be monotonous. To keep the audience interested, your contractor should use a variety of formats: shorts, step-by-step instructions, long reads.

Myth #4: Content marketing is cheap

This myth stems from the previous one: texts are relatively inexpensive content. But it is worth considering that a good text cannot be cheap.

The author needs not only to be able to write well, but also to understand your topic. This is already an expertise that increases the value of content and makes it really useful, interesting and engaging.

Therefore, forget about 50 rubles for 1000 characters that you saw on copywriting exchanges. For such a price, you will receive, at best, a competent text that definitely cannot be called part of the content strategy.

Myth #5: Content Marketing = SEO

The confusion in this myth arose due to the fact that in both cases it is mainly about texts. But the difference between SEO content and quality content is huge.

The difference lies even in the very purpose of writing these texts:

• In the case of SEO text, the main goal is to write material that is as relevant as possible to search queries with a large number of keywords for search robots in order to bring the site to the top of Yandex or Google.
• In the case of text within content marketing, the main goal of the material is to bring maximum benefit to the reader and create the right image of the company in his eyes.

Therefore, if you are offered content marketing services by agencies that previously specialized in SEO, be sure to check whether they correctly understand the essence of your task and the desired result.

Myth #6: Content is effective on its own

Usually, this means that it is enough to write good material and the audience will find it themselves. Of course, this is not so.

• Minimum program: content must be placed on the maximum number of sites: on the company website, on social networks, on partner sites.
• Program maximum: You may need paid placement or promotion of material. If your content is really good, then it will undoubtedly be appreciated, but first you need to show it to the maximum number of interested audiences, and often it is easier to do this using paid tools.

Good news: if your material is really useful and interesting, there is always a chance that it will “go viral” or be noticed by major publications and published for free. But it will not work to predict such an effect, so keep in mind that even with very high-quality materials, only a few will “shoot”.

Myth No. 7: Content is needed to talk about the company

Remember that the main purpose of content is to be useful. He can be so because he solves some problem, or maybe because he entertains.

If in your materials you just talk about the goods or services that you have, such content is unlikely to be of interest to a large audience.

But this does not mean that you do not need to talk about your company at all. Be sure to tell, just do it not separately, but in conjunction with a topic that is interesting to your consumers.

Summary

Check the author or agency for compliance with all points. If none of these myths are being broadcast to you, then they at least know what to do and how to do it. Better yet, just contact us at the agency. Write to the chat on the right and our manager will answer all your questions.

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