Content is the key to effective marketing online. This is not new, but in many cases, there is still a tendency to create content that does not necessarily attract the right customers. Content that is not effective with your target audience is wasted content. Here are some tips to help you target all the content you create to make it more attractive to the people you are trying to reach out to.
In order to connect with the right customer you will need to identify your customer. This may sound like an obvious statement but it is pivotal to the whole practice of content marketing. Without a clear idea of the type of people you are communicating with, where they are, and what interests them, you will struggle to create content that attracts the right people.
Once you have established who your customers are, and where they are, you will know how to set the tone of your content and where to share your content so your customers will see it. The next step is to think about what your customers are asking for, what they need and what they are asking for.
These are three very important questions that need to have answered. By answering them you will be able to very accurately target your customers. Think of it rather like a virtual target. The more specific and precise you are, the closer you will be to bull’s eye!
Have a look at your competition. See what they are posting and where. Also take a good look at the language they are using and start to develop your own so that it compares favourably to these examples. But make sure you are looking at good quality content.
Once you have answered all these questions you will be able to develop content that is read by the right people, every time.
Here are some examples to illustrate our points and help you develop your own content plan for targeted, customer focused marketing communications.
An online women’s fashion retailer – Women, fashion blogs, Facebook, Twitter, 18 – 30 years, 30 – 50 years, favourite brands, trending fashions, Pinterest, Favourite music, leading magazines and websites.
Organic food retailer – Families, chefs, cooks, recipes, organic food blogs, recipe blogs, Facebook, YouTube cooking tutorials, food magazines, celebrity chefs, leading restaurants, top food websites. These are simple of examples of how you can easily build up a picture of what your customers like and where they can be found online. The beauty of this method is that it also gives you clear ideas and suggestions for the type of content to create. As you will see in the examples above, the types of businesses have customers interested in these subjects and found in these locations. So, if they create content for these subjects and post in these locations they will be targeting the right people.
By being very specific about who you are communicating with and really learning to understand your customers, your content has a much higher chance of actually being read by them. So many companies create wonderful content that is never seen. Don’t let your business content suffer the same fate.
If you effectively target all your content you will see results very quickly and the response rate in terms of visits to your website, enquiries and sales, will be significantly higher. In addition, targeting the right people will result in far more word of mouth and personal recommendations from customers.
The more you engage directly with your audience in this manner, the easier it will become. You will then be able to split your audience down into more specific sub-groups and make certain pieces of content even more niche.
It is a tried and tested method used by content professionals and it will work for you just as effectively as it does for them. Your content, to a reader, will seem as though it is talking directly to them, it will be more personal to them and have more meaning to them.
