10 December 2020|Latest Posts, Marketing, PR, Promotion, Resources
By Louise Burke. If you don’t communicate with your target audience with relevant content, they won’t hear you, see you or ever buy from you. When I say content, I mean everything you say or share with them. Content is powerful when created correctly. According to recent research 70 per cent of people would rather get information about a company or learn something from an article or blog post rather than from a traditional advertisement. That’s just one reason why getting your content right is essential if you want to grow your business. If this sounds daunting don’t worry, I’m going to show you how.
Who is your target client?
One of my favourite words is relevant . You must be relevant if you want your target audience to take notice of you. You must think about who you are talking to. Who is your ideal client? What challenges are they facing? What do they need? How can you solve that problem? Why are you better placed to do it than anyone else? You need to be able to answer all these questions. So that when you start showing up your ideal client will know that you’re talking to them and they will be drawn to you.
Create your ideal customer
The best way to define your target audience is to create your ideal customer and bring them to life. Think about your current customers. Who is in your sweet spot? Who is most likely to buy from you and continue to buy from you? Draw a picture of them and give them a name and as much detail as possible. Information should include what they do for a living, where they live, their situation, interests, what problems they are looking to solve and how you can help them.
To be able to visualise who it is you’re talking to is imperative so that you resonate with relevant content. Your idea customer is the centre of your world.
Research
The next step is to research the market. Arm yourself with as much information as possible. Is there a market for your business proposition? If there are companies doing something similar to what you do that’s a good thing because if there’s a market, it’s a viable proposition. Look at what others are doing and what their key messages are. What are you doing differently? What could you be doing differently or better?
Next, find where they hang out, think about events, albeit virtual, they attend, what they read, popular blogs, TV shows they watch, podcast they listen to. What’s their favourite social media platform? Create a list.
The importance of going through these processes is the key to making your content sell. Don’t overlook them in your eagerness to start creating content. If you have more than one audience, you’ll need to go through this process for each one. My advice is to aim for one when you’re first starting.
How do build your key message
Often companies try to roll too many different messages into their content marketing. This is confusing for your target audience. They need to clearly understand what it is you’re offering, how you can help them, be reassured that you are the right person and then ultimately buy from you. That’s why you need to create your one special thing. It doesn’t have to be forever and once you have their attention you can share some more. It’s your way of attracting them.
Go through absolutely everything you offer, think about where you have the most success and add the most value. Think about what you enjoy and where you can generate the best revenue. It’s now down to you to decide which one you want to be known for. Once you have decided to create a short sentence which includes your target audience and what it is you do for them and what results they can achieve. You’re now ready to create your content.
Avoid jargon filled content
When creating content avoid using too much jargon. You need to be clear that your service or product solves their problems. Don’t overload them with jargon as they will switch-off. Always think about your audience when you’re creating content and remember that they not experts in everything so use easy to understand language that appeals without the jargon.
How to generate ideas for your content?
Generating content ideas is one my favourite aspects of a content campaign but you need to set aside some time to do it and let those ideas flow! Use the following questions to map your ideas:
· What services do you provide?
· What challenges can you help your customers solve?
· What industry insight can you share?
· What client examples do you have? – testimonials, soundbites
· What personal stories can you share?
Creating a theme
You’re now ready to start creating your campaign. If you’re confident at creating the content the next step is to get writing. If not, you could always enlist the services of a specialist copywriter to help you. Having a theme to your content makes it a lot easier to generate content. Your theme could relate to the different challenges or problems your product or service solves.
Rotate through to the next theme every couple of months. Having six themes a year is easier than continually generating new themes on a daily or weekly basis.
Content Campaign
Next, it’s time to decide what vehicles you’re going to use to share your content. There are many ways in which you can share content but if you’re creating a campaign then you want it to flow so that it all links together nicely. If this is your first campaign, start small and you can always add to it later.
Hero Content Top Tip
The easiest way to create a content campaign is to write a piece of long-form copy which details the story of your content. Once you’re happy with this all content can be a version of it. There are many different types of content that you can create to attract and appeal to your target audience including email shots, blogs, articles, guides, competitions, videos case studies, social media posts.
And finally follow the steps, do the research, and do what is manageable. Above all keep your target audience at the front of your mind when creating content and they will be drawn to you.
About the Author:
Louise Burke, founder of Zapp Communications is a highly experienced PR and Marketing professional with over 25 years’ experience in both consultancy and in-house roles. She works with small and start-up businesses supporting them with PR, Marketing, Content and Social Media. In 2020 she founded Get Yourself Noticed, a Facebook community focused on providing free PR and Marketing support and resources to small and start-up businesses.
