Nowadays, the content marketing world is a lot like trying to buy a house. While it’s definitely possible to achieve homeownership, transitioning from renter to happy homeowner has become significantly more challenging than it once was.

Back when I began my content marketing journey, the term “content marketing” wasn’t even a recognized phrase. Today, it seems like everyone and their relatives fancy themselves publishers, brand storytellers, or something similarly ambiguous. However, the overuse of these trendy marketing buzzwords doesn’t diminish the importance of content marketing. In reality, it’s more crucial now than ever before. That being said, there are many obstacles that make content marketing a tough endeavor in the current media landscape. In this article, I’ll be examining 11 of these content marketing challenges and their implications for your content strategy – whether you’re developing B2C or B2B content – and providing some tips on how to overcome them.

Content Marketing Challenge #1: Limited Resources

Creating content is simple. Creating high-quality content is a different story altogether. Producing top-notch content on a regular basis demands time, skill, and effort. Many smaller businesses opt to handle their content marketing in-house, and for valid reasons. Nobody understands your business better than you do, making you the ideal candidate to blog about your area of expertise. However, consistently generating exceptional content can impede other important tasks, such as actually managing your business. Lack of time is arguably one of the most significant hurdles businesses encounter when it comes to content marketing. Another significant obstacle is budget constraints. If you lack the time to create your own content, paying someone else to do it seems logical. But here’s the catch: since crafting excellent content requires expertise, many aspiring content creators are confronted with what’s known as the project management triangle:

You can only choose two.

Solution

Whether you outsource your content creation or keep it in-house, there will be associated costs – one way or another. You either dedicate the necessary time to produce consistently high-quality content, or you invest financially and hire someone to handle it for you. Outsourcing may appear to be the more budget-friendly option, but it comes with its own set of risks. Firstly, you become reliant on another company to adhere to a consistent production schedule. Secondly, you risk publishing content that fails to capitalize on your expertise and industry knowledge or even meet your basic standards for quality, potentially damaging your brand. Conversely, opting to create your content in-house can save you a significant amount of money. However, unless you possess the extraordinary ability to juggle running a business and maintaining a blog, you might have to commit to longer working hours. It’s tempting to view content marketing as a “free” strategy, but that’s not the reality. Be prepared to address the actual expenses associated with content marketing before you even start writing your first post – or before you hire someone else to do it for you.

Content Marketing Challenge #2: Increased Competition

Whether your blog focuses on your small crafting business or enterprise-level IT hardware, chances are someone else has been blogging about it for a while. To make matters worse, the battle for your audience’s attention has never been fiercer.

Adding another layer to the first challenge, as competition for limited audiences (even large ones) intensifies, what can you do? Create even better content, which requires more time, money, or both. This creates a figurative arms race of who can produce the highest quality content, most frequently. Moreover, as the competition for audience attention escalates, your readers’ expectations also rise, putting you under even greater pressure to consistently deliver not just good content, but truly exceptional content. While I was doing research for this piece, I came across a blog post by Rand Fishkin on how content marketers have become their own worst enemies, published over a year ago. It’s worth noting that it was a comment by Jon Morrow that really captured the essence of content marketing’s present and future:

Jon makes an important point about the extraordinary success of TV shows like “Breaking Bad” in an oversaturated market – if you fall short, you get nothing. However, if you succeed, the rewards are almost immeasurable. The difficulty, of course, lies in the fact that actually creating content on par with “Breaking Bad” is incredibly challenging. Jon’s comment sparked a lively debate about content marketing, and it didn’t take long for someone to draw a parallel between content marketing and Darwinism; only the strongest will survive.

Solution

There are no guarantees in content marketing, but one thing’s for certain – if your content is subpar, failure is inevitable. Every single post you publish must be the absolute best it can be, and you need to maintain this level of quality for years if you want to cultivate and sustain a significant audience. It’s practically impossible to hit a home run every single time – even the best blogs occasionally publish mediocre content – but your goal should always be to achieve excellence. Additionally, you need to actively promote your content and give it multiple opportunities to succeed (for instance, republishing content on Medium and other platforms where it can reach new readers). However, there is some good news. The relentless rise in content marketing competition has presented both a unique challenge and a significant opportunity for astute content marketers, which is…

Content Marketing Challenge #3: Maintaining Consistent High Quality

As a content creator, reading constitutes a large portion of my workday. In a typical day, I go through dozens of blog posts, news articles, and in-depth pieces. And I’m going to share a little secret with you. At least half of them are terrible.

How the mighty have fallen. Out of respect (and a healthy dose of professional self-preservation), I won’t name names or point fingers at specific publications (aside from the jab at TIME, which they undoubtedly deserve). However, I am saying that even websites with massive audiences and large teams of professional writers and editors frequently publish downright awful articles riddled with errors, lazy writing, or factual inaccuracies. Why? Partly because they have to, and partly because they can. Some sites rely on their brand recognition and established name to get away with publishing mediocre content, while some of the most consistently impressive content I’ve come across recently has been on smaller, independent blogs managed by a small group (or even a single talented individual). This means that, thanks to the constant pressure to Always Be Publishing, opportunities to publish helpful, insightful, well-written content (you know, the kind readers crave) are readily available – if you’re up to the challenge.

Solution

It would be naive to assume that an article featured in a prestigious monthly tech magazine doesn’t carry more weight than even the most exceptional post on a lesser-known, up-and-coming blog. However, if you consistently strive for excellence, dedicate time to refining your writing, and only publish your very best work, it won’t be long before you’re producing content that surpasses at least half of what’s published online daily. Maintain this standard, even when it feels like no one is reading. Furthermore, avoid comparing your work to other publications too frequently. While it’s beneficial to be aware of overall editorial standards and content trends, your primary focus should be on making your latest post better than your previous post – not losing sleep over whether your latest article is superior to something you read in Wired last week. Conducting a content audit could be extremely helpful in this area! Utilize our content audit guide blog post (complete with free templates!) to stay on top of your content quality.

Content Marketing Challenges #4: The Shift Toward Paid Promotion

There are times when simply publishing excellent content isn’t enough. We’ve discussed the significance of content promotion before, but the content landscape is rapidly shifting towards a strong emphasis on paid promotion.

Of course, “organic” social media promotion still holds value, but with platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn offering an increasingly sophisticated array of tools to segment audiences and target the right people – at a cost, naturally – the focus is shifting towards paying to get your content in front of your desired audience. There’s no straightforward answer to this challenge. Relying solely on organic social media promotion might work for a while, but if your goal is to aggressively increase your reach and expand your audience, exploring paid promotion options might be worthwhile. Similar to budgeting for content creation, you may also need to allocate funds to ensure your content reaches a wider audience and achieves its objectives.

Solution

Numerous factors will influence the most effective social media advertising approach for your business, including:

• Budget
• Target audience demographics
• Your audience’s typical social media usage patterns
• Content format
• Content compatibility across devices
• Desired business outcomes We’ll delve into promoting content on social media with a limited budget in an upcoming post. For now, you might want to experiment with paid content promotion on a smaller scale to assess your campaigns’ effectiveness before committing to larger (and potentially costlier) promotional initiatives. Regardless of your content promotion budget, setting specific goals for your campaigns is crucial. Are you aiming to attract more followers? Drive more referral traffic? Gather email addresses for your newsletter? Acquire backlinks from industry publications? Before investing $50 or $50,000, carefully consider what you hope to achieve with your campaign.

Content Marketing Challenge #5: Impatience and Unrealistic Expectations

If you’ve ever had to present a compelling case for content marketing to your management team, you’re likely familiar with how daunting these challenges can be. Despite content marketing’s popularity for several years now, there are still many misconceptions surrounding its functionality and what management should anticipate from investing in it.

The first major challenge is impatience. Mention the word “years” in any pitch meeting with management, and you’ll likely be met with blank stares and awkward silences. However, the reality is that even with a large, skilled content marketing team, it can take several years for content to start delivering results. This isn’t a shortcoming of content marketing itself, but rather an issue of misaligned expectations. Many executives and managers are accustomed to the relatively quick returns of more traditional marketing methods. Asking them to not only finance content marketing projects but also potentially wait several years to see a return on investment can be a tough sell.

Solution

The first crucial point that you and other content stakeholders need to accept is that content marketing is a long game. Very few blogs achieve overnight success, and building an audience and establishing credibility requires time.

The graph above illustrates nexus-security’s traffic over a six-year period, from January 2009 to January 2015. Notice how long it took for our content marketing efforts to gain traction? It took over two and a half years for traffic to even begin increasing significantly, and we didn’t observe substantial traffic growth until early 2013 – four years after launching our content marketing initiatives. The second aspect that demands management is expectations. Establish realistic traffic and engagement goals instead of setting yourself up for disappointment by aiming too high too quickly. It’s better to set achievable goals and reach them than to dismiss your content marketing as a failure due to missing overly ambitious targets. If your content marketing campaigns exceed expectations, adjust your goals accordingly – just ensure you have sufficient data to justify any changes to your plan.

Content Marketing Challenge #6: Maintaining Demanding Publishing Schedules

The phrase “signal vs. noise” frequently arises in content marketing discussions. In this context, the signal refers to your content, while the noise encompasses everything else. Put simply, with the sheer volume of content being produced, the pressure to publish as much as possible (with the ultimate goal of breaking through the clutter of articles published daily) can be overwhelming.

Countless blog posts, white papers, and guides emphasize publishing at least once a day as essential for content marketing success. But what if you simply can’t maintain such a demanding publishing schedule?

Solution

Scaling high-quality content marketing is challenging. Increasing your publishing frequency requires investing more resources (refer back to challenge #1). Failure to do so will inevitably compromise your content quality. Therefore, it’s crucial to find a balance between quantity and quality, with a strong emphasis on the latter. Publishing one truly exceptional post per week is more valuable than five mediocre posts. With so many publishers vying for attention, the key differentiator in your industry will be high-quality content, and only you can determine your realistic publishing frequency. Consistently excellent content matters more to your audience than multiple daily blog updates. After all, who wants to trudge through five subpar posts a day when they can truly appreciate and learn from one outstanding piece?

Image via Content Marketing Institute’s ‘B2B Content Marketing 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America’ report Don’t fall prey to the content marketing myth that publishing less frequently than once a day will lead to failure. Prioritize quality over churning out filler content just for the sake of it.

Content Marketing Challenge #7: Overly Broad (or Narrow) Focus

One of the most common mistakes content marketers make is casting their nets too wide across a broad subject area, or focusing solely on a very niche topic. Even established, well-resourced content teams struggle with finding a balanced editorial focus. If your content targets too broad an audience, you might face an uphill battle establishing your brand or risk losing traffic to larger, more established publishers. Conversely, focusing on a very specific niche may seem like a good strategy (and it can be), but it could hinder your ability to expand your readership in the future, or even lead to a shortage of genuinely new and insightful things to say about your industry.

Solution

Begin with a broad category that aligns with your business, then brainstorm increasingly specific ideas for potential subcategories. However, keep in mind that the narrower your editorial focus, the more difficult it may become to grow your audience as your content strategy evolves. Allow yourself sufficient flexibility to generate engaging posts about relevant topics, but avoid targeting excessively broad subject areas.

Content Marketing Challenge #8: Risk Aversion (or ‘Content Comfort Zones’)

Content marketers, for the most part, are creatures of habit. We gravitate towards what we know works. If a particular type of post resonates with our audience, we’re inclined to replicate that “formula” for our next post, and the next, and so on. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, we genuinely want to provide our readers with content they find useful, actionable, and valuable. Secondly, to be frank, we’re hopelessly addicted to pageviews. Remember how I mentioned it can sometimes take years to cultivate an audience and generate consistent traffic from content marketing? Now, imagine you’ve found a strategy that consistently delivers tens of thousands of monthly pageviews. You’d likely be hesitant to try something drastically different that could potentially tank your traffic, right? This is why a significant amount of online content is bland, generic, and instantly forgettable. Every day, when I browse my RSS feed for the latest news and content, the majority of it looks and sounds remarkably similar. This is particularly common in marketing content (perhaps more so than other industries), but even well-known mainstream media brands often seem to be pushing the same content day after day; six surprising ways to complete this mundane task, 21 shocking facts about this everyday occurrence, why you shouldn’t be doing this thing everyone else is doing. Even this very post follows this pattern.

I dare you to call me out. Actually, you know what? Don’t. More often than not, the lack of originality in online content isn’t due to publishers’ desire to churn out mediocre content, but because the goals driving these content strategies demand results. The easiest way to achieve these results is to replicate previously successful content projects. The more successful – or reliable – a content marketing initiative is, the more challenging it becomes to deviate from it.

Solution

This particular challenge is arguably easier for smaller publishers or blogs with smaller audiences to overcome. After all, if experimenting with something new won’t cost you thousands of dollars in lost leads, there’s inherently less risk involved in branching out and trying new things. This doesn’t mean that larger, more established blogs can’t experiment, but it likely requires more justification that the potential benefits outweigh the risks. If you decide to experiment with new content formats, consider doing so alongside your existing successful strategies. This way, you avoid discarding what’s working while exploring new avenues. If your experiment is successful, consider expanding your new content formats to incorporate additional subject matter or trending topics. If it’s not, analyze the experiment and apply your findings to future projects.

Content Marketing Challenge #9: Long-Term Sustainability

As more publishers create more content, some experts are concerned that we’re rapidly approaching a breaking point in the sustainability of content marketing. Mark Schaefer refers to this as “content shock,” and while I don’t personally agree that the ever-increasing noise will completely drown out valuable signals, it does pose a challenge for content marketers. One aspect of Schaefer’s theory that resonates is the idea of content marketing’s financial viability in the future. In his article, Schaefer breaks down the costs of content production versus its return on investment (more on this shortly). For instance, he estimated that in 2009, he was essentially “paying” his readers $500 per week to consume his content, based on an hourly rate of $100 for his time multiplied by the five hours he spent weekly creating content. Schaefer posits that this figure is likely closer to $1,500 per week today, given the increasing time investment required to create content that merely maintains his blog’s current readership level.

Just one potential solution. Clearly, this model isn’t sustainable if current trends continue for the next six years. The benefits of content marketing must outweigh its production costs. If you’re facing the prospect of either dedicating more time to content creation or hiring additional staff – and grappling with the reality of diminishing returns – the sustainability of current content marketing practices becomes questionable.

Solution

This might never be an issue for some bloggers and content creators. For others, the sheer volume of content being produced might create additional challenges that necessitate alternative approaches. As valid and pressing as some of Schaefer’s concerns are, audiences will always seek out content they find relevant and valuable. While shifting media consumption habits will undoubtedly influence your content strategy, ultimately, you must determine when your content marketing strategy becomes genuinely unsustainable. While the sky isn’t falling just yet, these are important factors to consider before committing to a long-term content marketing strategy.

Content Marketing Challenge #10: Content Producer Burnout

Burnout is one of the most significant challenges you might encounter as a content marketer, yet it’s not a topic many of us are eager to discuss. I’ve previously written about the pressures of working in the content trenches, but I omitted the part where my 4,000-words-per-day workload (every single day, for three years) nearly landed me in the hospital. While my experience working for a content farm was invaluable in honing my skills and improving my craft, the cost was significant – almost too high.

Beyond the very real threat burnout poses to your physical and mental well-being, it can also undo all your hard work. Despite being bombarded with content daily, your regular readers are incredibly perceptive, and any noticeable dip in your content quality will be immediately and glaringly obvious. This can harm your brand’s reputation and cause previously loyal readers to seek out other publishers in your niche. Just as setting realistic goals and managing expectations are crucial to building a case for content marketing (see challenge #5), it’s equally important – if not more so – to prioritize your well-being or that of your content creators. Even the most skilled and dependable writers have limits, and consistently pushing them beyond their capabilities can have disastrous consequences. Of course, hospitalization and severe health issues are extreme outcomes of content creator burnout. More common symptoms include general dissatisfaction, waning interest in the subject matter, and careless mistakes, but these issues can still significantly impact your content. The work of a disengaged, cynical blogger can be just as detrimental to your content marketing goals as hiring the wrong person from the outset.

Solution

Be realistic about your publishing frequency and volume. Establish reasonable goals and deadlines. Be upfront about your quality standards and long-term objectives. Burnout is a serious challenge, and as the saying goes, prevention is better than cure.

Content Marketing Challenge #11: Difficulty Measuring ROI

In the words of Vanessa Williams, I’ve saved the “best” for last – accurately measuring the return on investment (ROI) of content marketing.

Demonstrating the effectiveness of content marketing was once a herculean task. Even today, with increasingly advanced analytics technology at our fingertips, it remains a significant challenge that even large, well-established publishers grapple with. Thankfully, with careful planning, it doesn’t have to be an ordeal.

Solution

First and foremost, you need to define what you hope to achieve with your content marketing. Is your blog intended to grow your social media following? Generate leads? Enhance the visibility of your thought leaders? All of the above? Without clearly defined objectives, measuring the ROI of your content marketing efforts will be incredibly difficult. Deciding how you’ll measure your content’s ROI is equally crucial. If your goal is to generate leads through blogging, you’ll need to ensure you have appropriate conversion paths and tracking set up in Google Analytics (or your preferred analytics platform) to demonstrate the effectiveness of your strategy. If your content goals are more social media-centric, consider utilizing tools like BuzzSumo or Twitter Analytics to monitor your content’s social impact over time (while remembering that correlation doesn’t imply causation, of course). Be wary of vanity metrics like pageviews and unreliable data like Time on Page, and consider tracking “attention metrics” such as scroll depth for a more accurate measure of reader engagement. Avoid simply starting a blog and hoping for the best. Define why you’re creating content, what you want it to achieve, and have a well-defined plan for measuring whether your strategy is working. For additional tips on measuring content marketing ROI, check out this excellent Whiteboard Friday by Rand.

Challenge Accepted

I sincerely hope this article hasn’t discouraged you, but rather provided you with some actionable insights into overcoming the content marketing challenges relevant to your business. While it’s true that content marketing has become more challenging than before, it remains one of the most effective strategies for business growth.