From plumbing merchants to second hand book shops, from French polishers to funeral directors – every business just had to advertise in the Yellow Pages. And as businesses competed with each other for share of voice, their ads got bigger and bigger – and the book got thicker and thicker. And it became more and more difficult to find the information you wanted.
So advertisers placed more ads in it. On the front cover, on the back cover and in full colour – happily spending more and more money as they went.
But the more businesses advertised, the less return on investment they (collectively) achieved.
And then the internet happened.
Whether or not they saw it coming doesn’t really matter – the Yellow Pages as we once knew it is now a dead duck.
There’s an analogy here.
Think of the big yellow book as a primitive search engine.
The Yellow Pages thrived on FOMO.
That’s where people are looking, so that’s where we’ve got to be.
My competitors must be getting business from it. Just look at the size of their ads!
If we don’t advertise bigger, we’ll miss out. They’ll win.
Same goes for Google.
We have to be visible. We have to rank high for keywords. And if we can’t, we’ll just have to buy visibility. Spend more money, outspend the competition.
Or create more content.
More, more, more.
Who wins?
The internet is fat. Staggeringly bloated.
Every single day, 4.4 million blog posts are published.
Every minute of every day, 500 hours of video content are uploaded to YouTube.
And the average person is exposed to somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 ads, daily.
The internet makes the Yellow Pages look like Kate Moss.
Your social media post is an infinitesimally microscopic speck of dust during a sandstorm in a vast desert.
And who really benefits from this much content?
I’m not naming names. But one of them rhymes with #uckerberg.
Media owners want there to be more content. They want it to be noisy. Not because they want you to be ‘social’. But because the noisier it is, the less you’ll hear.
And that means if you’re trying to tell your story on social media, very few people are actually listening, if any.
If you want to be heard, if you want results from social media content marketing, you have to pay. It’s not free advertising anymore – and it hasn’t been for a very long time.
Why your content marketing strategy isn’t working (and how to fix It)
So we spend countless man-hours on content. And more often than not, blogs gather dust, social posts go unnoticed, and leads? They’re nowhere to be found.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for content marketing. There definitely is. But you can’t simply turn content on and expect to see results. The reality is that most businesses underestimate the time, strategy, and investment needed for success, leading to understandable frustration and abandoned efforts.
So if you’re thinking about using content to support your marketing efforts – here are a few tips:
- Don’t expect instant gratification
Research from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) shows that only 29% of B2B marketers rate their content strategy as “very effective”. Why? Most give up too soon, not realising that content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. They assume a few blog posts or videos will immediately drive traffic, leads, and sales.
It doesn’t work that way.
If you’re gonna do it, you’re going to need some patience.
Set realistic timelines for results. Effective content marketing strategies typically takes at least 6–12 months to show any meaningful ROI. Instead of obsessing over instant traffic, focus on gradually improving key metrics like increased engagement, higher rankings, or growing newsletter subscribers.
- Make sure you have a strategy
Randomly publishing blogs, videos, or social media posts without a clear purpose leads to content that fails to connect with your audience.
According to Semrush, 40% of marketers don’t have a documented content strategy. Without a plan, it’s impossible to align your content with either your business goals or your audience’s needs.
So you need to develop a documented content marketing plan.
Be strategic. Identify your target audience and their pain points and create content that answers their questions at different stages of the buyer journey (awareness, consideration, decision).
- Focus on quality, not quantity
In the rush to “publish more,” many businesses churn out low-value content that fails to engage or rank.
HubSpot has found that increasing their content output by 78% year-on-year resulted in engagement per post dropping by 60%.
Simply adding to the noise doesn’t work – the competition for headspace is too intense, and the rise of AI-generated content has only made it worse.
Instead, prioritise fewer, high-quality pieces over sheer volume. Focus on evergreen content that provides real value and invest in thought leadership that builds trust and authority. A single, well-researched blog or video can have more impact than a dozen mediocre ones.
- Create content your audience actually wants to read
To follow on from point 3 above, many businesses create content based on what they want to talk about, or that they hope will rank well on search engines, rather than what their audience actually wants to read.
Since Google’s Helpful Content Update, websites are rewarded for featuring content that is genuinely helpful and informative. So make sure your content strategy is focused on what users are actually looking for – but don’t be tempted to choose a trending topic that you don’t really have the right to talk about. Be authentic and stick to your areas of expertise.
- Make sure your audience sees it
There’s no point creating great content that no-one sees.
If you’ve spent time and money developing a must-read thought leadership piece, you’re going to want to promote it.
As a rule of thumb, spend 20% of your budget on creating the content and spend 80% promoting it.
Think SEO optimisation and PPC to ensure your content is discoverable, social media promotion (both organic and paid) and email marketing to nurture your audience once they show interest.
- Measure everything you can
Businesses often abandon content marketing because they can’t directly link it to sales. It’s understandable, but the value of content can often lie in its indirect impact, like building brand awareness and trust.
So track metrics like organic traffic growth, engagement rates (e.g., time on page, social media comments and shares), lead gen metrics (e.g., form fills, downloads). If these are moving in the right direction you should start to see an increase in conversion over time.
- Have a proper budget
Content marketing is often seen as a cheap option, but the reality is that success requires significant investment in talent, tools, and promotion.
High-quality content production is essential. Blogs should be written by skilled writers and videos created by professionals. Don’t cut corners or you’ll get subpar results.
And to amplify your reach, you’ll need to pay to promote your content. It’s always worth talking to external agencies with proven expertise to get an understanding of what you’ll need to spend.
Good content marketing works. Poor strategy doesn’t.
Content marketing doesn’t fail because it’s inherently flawed. It fails because businesses often approach it with unrealistic expectations, poor strategy, and insufficient investment. Success relies on good strategy.
Get it right and content marketing (as part of a strategic plan) can help deliver growth. But it needs its own clear strategy, plenty of patience and a long-term mindset.
The question isn’t whether content marketing works, it’s whether you’re willing to do what it takes to make it work.
