It’s easy to slip into typical content marketing mistakes now and then, especially if you’re a business owner lacking a marketing team or content marketing know-how. While many errors are harmless, making one of these blunders can hurt you over time. Instead, enhance your content marketing by quitting these habits for good.

What’s one thing business owners should stop doing in their marketing content, and why?

1. Creating With Money in Mind

Business owners should stop focusing on profit when marketing their content. Instead, aim to assist your customers. Any content marketing strategy needs to strike a good balance between delivering value to your audience and promoting your business. People are perceptive and will quickly notice if you’re just trying to sell them something or if you truly care about their needs. – John Hall, Calendar

2. Thinking Too Broadly

I believe that business owners put too much emphasis on broad marketing campaigns. If you want to improve your conversions, build trust with your audience and see more traffic, personalization is the way to go. Create personalized campaigns for the various segments of your audience and stop sending out generic marketing advertisements that aren’t meant for any one person or group. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights

3. Sounding Too Self-Promotional

The biggest problem I see that many entrepreneurs make in their content marketing is developing content that’s way too self-promotional. Content marketing should be marketing focused but also solve a customer’s issue or resolve a pain point. – Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC

4. Writing for Search Engines

Business owners try too hard to make everything SEO-optimized. Although Google announced long ago that it values authoritative content over practices such as keyword stuffing and using spammy backlinks, you still see businesses writing for the search engines instead of the customers. It’s fine to target certain keywords, but then focus on your readers. This will be better for SEO in the long run. – Kalin Kassabov, ProTexting

5. Making Statements Without Data

Using facts and figures that are backed with data in your content can help you strengthen your argument and make it much more impactful. Such content can quickly improve your reach and boost your conversions. – Josh Kohlbach, Wholesale Suite

6. Prioritizing the Short Term

If you prioritize short-term monetary goals, then content marketing isn’t for you. Run ads instead. Organic search and social media conversations don’t get you sales in weeks or months. In fact, it could take years to fully reap the benefits of your efforts. Look at content marketing as an investment to find the best way to strike a relationship with your prospects. – Samuel Thimothy, OneIMS

7. Relying Too Much on Written Content

Business owners should stop putting all of their marketing content in writing. Many people read blog posts, but videos are also an effective way to grow your audience and keep customers engaged with your brand. The best part is you can take one of your top-performing posts and repurpose it into a highly engaging, shareable video. – John Brackett, Smash Balloon LLC

8. Trying Too Hard to Sell

If your product or service is solid and high quality, your customers will buy it. Therefore, you don’t need to focus on selling when marketing content. Instead, post educational stuff for your readers that will drive more of them to your product once you’ve added value to their lives through your content. – Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

9. Ignoring the Call to Action

Business owners need to stop ignoring the importance of an optimized call to action. Whether it’s for social media posts, blog content or landing page campaigns, you need to create CTAs that are strong and speak to your specific customers. Using action verbs, colors and different placements can be the difference between a customer who converts and one who doesn’t. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms