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Many companies waste millions on content tools. Here are 5 mistakes costing them a fortune, from buying based on hype to overlooking integration problems, and show how correcting these will unlock the ROI so many companies leave sitting there.
An £180k mistake nobody expected
About 6 weeks back, a SaaS company reached out; their entire content operation came grinding to a halt. They were spending £15k per month on tools. Yet they'd bought the whole shebang: Jasper, Copy.ai, Surfer SEO, Grammarly Business, Canva Enterprise, SEMrush, etc. Production was 12 blog posts per month. But quality varied. It turned out that they'd done all 5 things I am going to outline below, and fixing them would have cost absolutely nothing other than some simple changes in how they used the tools they'd already purchased.
In twelve months, they were producing 60+ pieces per month. Quality had greatly improved. New clients acquired grew 340%.
Same budget. Very different results.
Mistake #1: purchasing tools based on marketing hype rather than workflow
Problem: There's always some shiny new AI-based content tool being touted around; fear of missing out (fomo) kicks in. You purchase, however, no one has ever asked the question, "Does this actually fit anywhere within our current content creation process?"
Cost: Unused subscriptions, confused teams regarding which tool provides what feature. Duplicate functionally across three paid-for platforms.
Solution: Document each step of your workflow. Map out each stage from when someone requests a piece of content through to when it gets published. Once you've mapped your workflow, then go out and find tools to fill the holes in that workflow.
This is something we did and realized we had four tools that provided the same level of service: AI-generated content. We canceled three of those subscriptions, so annual savings = £8,400. No adverse effect upon quality of output.
Mistake #2: using AI-generated content as final drafts
Problem: AI can generate large amounts of content very quickly. However, the temptation to take that content and publish it with little to no editing is huge.
However, quality of output typically suffers. The tone or voice of the brand disappears. There may be small errors or inaccuracies contained within.
Cost: Over time, if this continues, loss of client trust occurs slowly but surely. Clients do not immediately report dissatisfaction; however, they simply choose not to renew their contract. It's not until after you see several months of decreasing customer retention numbers that you realize why.
Solution: Use AI as part of your overall infrastructure rather than replacing humans entirely. Our ideal AI/human hybrid model utilizes 40% AI-generated content and 60% human-edited/refined content. While AI can handle the structuring and compiling of research for you, humans need to utilize their skills for critical thinking, branding, and fact-checking.
Neither is effective by itself. Both together create effective output.
Mistake #3: ignoring tool integration
Problem: Each individual tool performs well independently. However, collectively, chaos ensues.
Data does not move smoothly between tools. Members of your team duplicate efforts since tool a cannot communicate with tool b. Time spent manually moving data between separate tools accounts for hours lost.
Cost: There is a hidden decrease in team productivity. Your team spends approximately 6-8 hours each week duplicating efforts due to the inability to easily transfer data from one tool to another.
Using £40/hour as the average salary per hour of a member of your team, this equates to £960-1280 per week in duplicated effort. Annually, this adds up to £49,920–£65,760 in duplicated effort alone.
Solution: Optimize for integration above optimization for features. If a tool offers twenty different functions you'll probably never use, it is less useful than a tool offering five excellent features that seamlessly integrates with your current toolset.
After switching away from an all-inclusive toolset to using various specialized tools that communicated well via API connectivity, our team experienced a 35% increase in productivity within 60 days.
Mistake #4: buying subscriptions without providing training
Problem: You buy a subscription to Surfer SEO. None of your team understands how to correctly use its suggestions.
You buy SEMrush. Only ten percent of your team is utilizing its capabilities since none of your team invested time to learn the rest of its capabilities.
Cost: Underutilization of tools resulting in significantly lower ROI than expected. You pay for enterprise features yet only operate at a basic capacity.
Solution: Dedicate four hours a month to training your staff on new tools. Some consider this additional expense. The reality is that it significantly improves output quality and confidence amongst team members in using the correct tools for each job.
18 months prior to implementing this practice, we had a utilization percentage of 34% of available features. After implementing this practice, we saw this number jump to 76%. No additional tool purchases were required, just better usage of what we currently had.
Mistake #5: tracking activity instead of results
Problem: You monitor how many blog posts were published. How many social media posts were scheduled? How many pieces of content were created?
But you don't monitor if any of it produced tangible business outcomes.
Cost: You're optimizing for quantity when you could be optimizing for conversion. Your content calendar remains full while your lead pipeline remains empty.
Solution: Correlate your content performance metrics directly to business outcomes. Measure traffic leading to conversions on leads. Identify which types of content produce qualified opportunities. Eliminate anything that produces neither positive nor negative results, regardless of the amount of effort placed into creating said content.
For example, we had a client who was publishing 60 pieces of content each month with a conversion rate of .003%. We cut production down to 30 pieces, focusing solely on high-converting topics, and saw their conversion rate increase to 0.021%. Halving production resulted in 7x greater results.
What does all of this really mean?
Content tools are an investment in infrastructure. Like all forms of infrastructure, they provide an ROI when employed properly.
Most organizations treat selecting tools like shopping, comparing features, reading product reviews, and purchasing whatever appears cool.
- Better method: Identify your workflow and determine where there are gaps in your workflow. Implement targeted solutions to fill those gaps in your workflow. Train your employees properly. Monitor your results mercilessly. Same budget = exponentially greater results.
Almost all organizations can increase their content output quality by 2-3 fold without buying a single additional tool. Simply fix how they employ existing subscriptions.