Overcoming Content Overload: Strategies for Marketing and Sales Professionals

The internet has no shortage of blogs and other content, giving interested customers innumerable opportunities to learn about brands and products to make the most informed decisions. But there is too much of a good thing, and at this stage, the internet has hit a high saturation point.

As more people and companies vie for limited keywords or position themselves to hit a specific niche, it leaves many blogs and content pieces untouched and unread.

People everywhere (and probably yourself included) experience a sense of stress from too much information or content. 80% of workers have experienced it, and that will only grow as more content gets posted online. In 2020, the Internet 4.5 billion gigabytes of data per day, and 90% of the world’s data was created in the last few years.

That shouldn’t deter you from making content, though. It’s still an incredibly valuable source of information and an opportunity for sales enablement as a tool to reach your customers. Content marketing  improves consumer trust and increases the long-term effectiveness of your company. You can work around these challenges and constraints with a little bit of strategic thinking.

In this post, we’ll review some tactics you can use to create content and match it to the people you want to reach. Reaching likely customers is more beneficial than trying to reach everybody.

Tips to Overcome Content Overload

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when starting a blog, video series, or other content venture. Your single blog post feels like a drop in a bucket in the big expanse of the internet.

However, we’re also in a period where more people and companies have access to greater opportunity, even if there’s less likelihood of being the biggest thing around.

Here are some tips you can use to reach your customers and carve out your content niche.

1. Create Content for a Specific Goal

Think about how people search for stuff online. Usually, it’s because they have a specific goal in mind that they either need to solve or are searching for information to explore further. But because there is so much content available, if they can’t find it immediately, it can be a lot to parse through.

However, when they find what they need – and if they can find it quickly – they’re more appreciative of the source of help. Don’t be afraid to make content highly specific when you create content. You want to show how your company can help people, and if you’re not providing guidance, someone else will probably make a YouTube video on how to do it that they’ll find instead.

As a company, you know a lot about what you do, and using your resources and expertise to share that at granular specificity shortens the lengths people need to go to when resolving their issues.

2. Achieve a High Level of Quality

As the internet reaches further saturation with content volumes, search engines like Google and Bing are prioritizing those that achieve high quality levels. That also speaks well for your company because customers will recognize something informative and well-written, especially if the tone resonates with your target customers.

In many ways, quality is also subjective. If your company is highly technical, using straightforward language with visuals and diagrams communicates what you need it to. How technical you make it will depend on whether you’re trying to reach fellow professionals in a B2B setting, or consumers in a B2C setting.

3. Concisely Answer Questions Quickly

People want information, and they want it quickly. Front-loading answers at the top of blogs, then guiding people through more details helps them find what they need with speed and choose whether to continue reading or come back to it later.

Doing this positions your company as helpful, which puts you in better graces with customers. It also helps you stand out on search engines, as they search for concise content for things like featured snippets or with their new AI-generated descriptions. That can help your website get linked to the top to show people what they need to know and give you additional exposure.

It also helps you teach your customers to empower them to make informed decisions and feel smarter as they resolve issues.

4. Consistently Create Content that Stands Out with Consistency

Consistency with content development is a multi-pronged term. Yes, it means creating and posting content regularly (you have to feed the algorithms), but it also means achieving a high standard over time.

If you provide quality at regular intervals, your customers will keep reading, sharing, and benefitting from your content. The more people you have who do that, the more you’ll be able to grow your readership base. As that continues, your readership will eventually increase exponentially. That takes time, investment, and hard work, but over a period, it can pay off.

5. Measure Analytics to Track Customer Attention

Creating content into the void is a wasted effort. As you develop content, it’s crucial to maintain relevance, and the best way to do that is to use analytics to gain insight into where customer attention is. Measuring analytics tells you which posts and content pieces perform the best, which will give you insight into what people like to consume. You can lean into those topics to know what to create more of.

Researching competitor sites to see what they’re making and sharing will also give you key insight into people’s attention. Social media is a great resource, too, as sharing posts (whether yours or you’re watching a competitor) and seeing where people engage and interact will tell you what more you need to invest in to create more content.

Monitoring this over time helps you continuously create content that’s relevant to your growing customer base and empowers you to grow with it.

6. Strategize Content Creation to Overcome Overload

Yes, there is an incomprehensible volume of content online, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find success with your own content. Developing content can improve the effectiveness of your other marketing and sales efforts because it gives people tangible evidence of your ability.

If someone finds your brand through a different ad and it breaks through, encouraging them to click on you, an active, informative blog can encourage them to stick around or become a customer. A salesperson can share blogs to nurture relationships with prospects, giving them an excuse to stay in contact and show that you think of them.

Conclusion

Content has many benefits and is significantly valuable to your company. By making quality materials, you can forge your own space in your industry and develop long-term customer relationships.