If you don’t have a solid, company-wide content strategy, you’re probably not hitting your top goals as effectively as you could. We’re talking about key stuff like:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Pulling in new customers<\/li>\n
- Growing your business organically<\/li>\n
- Making your sales and marketing more productive (and cost-effective)<\/li>\n
- Getting the kind of data that powers smart, data-driven decisions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
And let’s not forget about giving your customers a consistently awesome experience.<\/p>\n
When companies really nail their content strategy at the business level, the results can be game-changing. We’re seeing better content quality, more relevant and engaging material, faster delivery, and lower costs. Plus, it’s a big win for staying ahead of the competition<\/a> and making customers happy.<\/p>\n
So, where do you start? The first step is understanding your audience. We call it the ‘Understand Audiences (Buyers)’ framework. When our clients get this right, they see what they’ve been missing in their content strategy. This post is going to give you a rundown of this crucial first step.<\/p>\n
Quick Takeaways<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
- \n
- Understanding your audience transforms your content strategy from generic messaging to targeted communication that resonates with their specific needs and desires.\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- \n
- Identifying and segmenting your audience into distinct groups or ‘content constituents’ is crucial for developing a content strategy that addresses diverse needs and maximizes engagement.\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- \n
- Effective content strategies require well-developed personas that go beyond basic templates, incorporating deep audience insights to guide content creation.\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- \n
- Adapting content strategy to align with the buyer’s decision-making process is essential for effective marketing and sales alignment<\/a>.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
How Understanding Your Audience Defines Your Content Strategy<\/h2>\n
You and I both know that ‘understanding your audience’ isn’t just some fancy marketing jargon we throw around to sound smart. It’s the bread and butter of what we do here at Marketing Insider Group.<\/p>\n
Why? Because getting into the heads of your audience is what makes or breaks your content strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Think about it. When you really know your audience \u2013 and I mean really know them \u2013 you’re not just shooting arrows in the dark hoping to hit something. You’re targeting exactly what your audience needs, wants, and laughs at (or rolls their eyes at). It’s about crafting messages that speak to them, not at them.<\/p>\n
And we’re not alone in this approach. According to the Content Marketing Institute, a whopping 73%<\/a> of B2B marketers and 70% of B2C marketers use content marketing<\/a> as part of their overall strategy, underscoring the universal importance of understanding your audience.<\/p>\n
![\"graphic](\"https:\/\/marketinginsidergroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/understanding-your-audience1.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nImage Source: MRB IT Solutions<\/em><\/p>\n
Now, how do we create the right messages? First off, we listen. And not just ‘nodding your head while thinking about lunch’ listening. We dive deep into their world:<\/p>\n
- \n
- What are their pain points?<\/li>\n
- What gets them excited?<\/li>\n
- What keeps them up at night?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
This isn’t just about demographics. It\u2019s about getting down to the nitty-gritty of their daily lives.<\/p>\n
Then, we use what we learn. We tailor our content to fit their needs like a glove. If our audience is craving easy-to-digest, practical advice, we’re not going to bombard them with highfalutin language and complex theories. Instead, we keep it simple, straightforward, and useful.<\/p>\n
But here’s the kicker \u2013 understanding your audience is not a ‘set it and forget it’ kind of deal. Audiences evolve<\/a>, trends change, and what worked yesterday might be old news today. So, we stay on our toes, constantly adapting and tweaking our strategy. It’s a never-ending dance, but hey, that’s what keeps our jobs interesting, right?<\/p>\n
In short, ‘understanding your audience’ is the cornerstone of everything we do. It’s what guides our content strategy, shapes our messages, and, ultimately, drives our success.<\/p>\n
First: Who<\/h2>\n
Remember, the first thing you need to do is think about who: your audience. Consider the many groups across your business, and their audiences, for whom content is important. We refer to these as \u201ccontent constituents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Content Constituents and Segments<\/h3>\n
The starting point for business level content strategy is to list each constituency. We suggest meeting with them to identify their primary audiences and sub-segments.<\/p>\n
The primary use case requirements for each function and audience segment should be discussed and documented. Use Case Requirement definition is the third competency in our framework. This work must be conducted at each functional level.<\/p>\n
Business level content strategy<\/a> reviews functional requirements to determine opportunities for content synergy, content priorities, and investment decisions.<\/p>\n
When the list of all customer engaging constituents, audiences and personas is aggregated it often produces surprises, and usually identification of overlooked or under-served requirements.<\/p>\n
Ideal Customer Profile<\/h3>\n
Each group should define and document the profile of their most important audience segments. This is similar to the critical selling tool, ideal customer profile.<\/p>\n
![\"graphic](\"https:\/\/marketinginsidergroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/understanding-your-audience3-1024x538.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nImage Source: Smarketers<\/em><\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t have an ideal customer profile documented for your target buyers, do this immediately. Lack of a documented ideal customer profile is an indication of low maturity, or lack of process discipline in this work.<\/p>\n
Personas<\/h3>\n
Despite all the discussion and activity around personas, we often find them weak resources to inform both an effective content strategy and quality content.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to appreciate that templates that instruct \u201cwhat to do\u201d do not equate to effective, \u201chow to do it\u201d execution. We find people often know what to do, but lack the competency and discipline to execute effectively.<\/p>\n
An example and symptom is when personas are developed exclusively by internal people. Even worse, when they are developed exclusively by external consultants. We have found the best results require an experienced external facilitator, with good frameworks and processes. This resource represents the audience or buyer perspective<\/a>. They must challenge internal biases that naturally arise.<\/p>\n
Since this is such an important requirement I\u2019ll provide a few examples of categories we often find missing or inadequately built out in Personas we evaluate:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Beliefs. <\/strong>What are the key beliefs each persona holds that relate to the business problems you address, urgency factors related to those problems, solution options available to them, and decision process\/criteria (among others)? Beliefs are a primary decision driver.<\/li>\n
- Value Model.<\/strong> How does each persona define value, for their role, as well as personal tendencies?<\/li>\n
- How to Capture Attention.<\/strong> This includes identifying problem symptoms and triggering events that would be evident for each persona. It also includes language that will resonate.<\/li>\n
- Data to Collect.<\/strong> What data do you want to collect about each persona that will help you better understand them, improve your strategy, and better target your content and engagement methods?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"graphic](\"https:\/\/marketinginsidergroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/understanding-your-audience2-1024x784.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nWhen you aggregate the lists from sales, the sales channel, business partners, marketing and customer service, you will see commonality of requirements across all constituent groups.<\/p>\n
The implications of each siloed function independently trying to develop and execute content strategies should be clear after completing just this first phase of this first competency.<\/p>\n
Next: Why<\/h2>\n
Business Problems and Causes<\/h3>\n
Document the business problems your products, services or solutions address.<\/p>\n
By bridging the gap between the customer’s challenges and your solutions, you can create content that resonates<\/a> on a deeper level, driving home the real-world impact and value of what you offer. This elevates your content from informative to transformative, directly addressing the ‘why’ that motivates customer decisions.<\/p>\n
Impact<\/h3>\n
Developing methods to measure the impact of problems on business, functional and persona performance and outcomes is usually completely missing from content strategies we see.<\/p>\n
The CEB Challenger Customer work does an excellent job highlighting the importance of helping prospects quantify the cost of their status quo, relative to those business problems. Most organizations focus on the gain customers will realize after buying their solution. CEB explains why helping buyers quantify the cost of the status quo is important.<\/p>\n
Then: How<\/h2>\n
Despite the rhetoric and general awareness of the \u201cbuyer journey\u2019s,\u201d this is usually another weak input to content strategy.<\/p>\n
There are many culprits here. Using generic buying stages is a way to get started quickly, but it really should be research based to provide the best insights<\/a>. Either way, the details at each stage must be relevant to your specific buyers. These details include buyer: information requirements, activities, questions, decision criteria and decisions.<\/p>\n
Too often the people doing this work don\u2019t have the right experience, access to buyers, or research resources. Even the sales organization usually isn\u2019t helpful here. They desperately need a better understanding of how buyers buy.<\/p>\n
For complex, considered, or value sales (not transactional), many buyers may lack a formal buying process. B2B sellers have to \u201ccreate opportunities\u201d in as many as 90% of their prospects. By definition, there is no formal buying decision process to start!<\/p>\n
Even as buying teams move into an active buying process, functional buyers may never have purchased anything like what you are providing. Buyers may not even know internal, standard purchasing requirements.<\/p>\n
We recommend shifting language and thinking about the B2B buying process from a \u201cjourney,\u201d to a \u201cdecision process.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"graphic](\"https:\/\/marketinginsidergroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/understanding-your-audience4-1024x449.png\")
<\/p>\nImage Source: Adience<\/em><\/p>\n
Start by defining your buyer\u2019s \u201cproblem-solving decision scenarios\u201d that your products and services address. Calling this a buying decision process naturally raises two helpful requirements:<\/p>\n
- \n
- You must identify the decisions buyers must make at each stage of the process.<\/li>\n
- To make decisions, buyers need answers to key questions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
In short, buyers buy when all of their primary buying questions and interim decisions are adequately addressed.<\/p>\n
Everything you do should align to your buyer\u2019s decision process. For example, a primary \u201cjob of content\u201d is to address buyer questions<\/a>. Also, by identifying stage based activities and questions, marketing and sales people have a way to locate prospects in their decision process.<\/p>\n
In The Context Of Audience \/ Buyer Options<\/h2>\n
Audiences and buyers have options. How have you documented and assessed those options for input to your content strategy?<\/p>\n
Buyer options result in additional questions and decisions that must be addressed. This is especially important for the options \u201cremain with status quo,\u201d or \u201cfix with internal or less expensive approaches.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leading companies consider and treat content as a product. Content is the first product your customers \u201cacquire\u201d through their engagement process. They should use your content throughout the entire \u201ccustomer lifecycle.\u201d<\/p>\n
- \n
- What is your competitive strategy for positioning your content?<\/li>\n
- What are your competitors<\/a> creating?<\/li>\n
- How will you avoid investing in and creating undifferentiated, \u201cme three\u201d content?<\/li>\n
- What content will you curate rather than create?<\/li>\n
- Remember, competitors are not just direct competitors, but anyone who is producing content that competes with yours.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The same considerations apply to the functional capabilities of direct competitors. If competitors feature strong or unique capabilities, your conversations, messages and content must address this challenge. If they are missing capabilities you have, you want to focus heavily to exploit those capabilities.<\/p>\n
How To Execute<\/h2>\n
Just like the business budgeting process, this work must be conducted on two levels.<\/p>\n
Universal and foundational assessments that apply to most functional groups should be developed first, as a business level, strategic initiative. Examples include:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Buyer business problems<\/li>\n
- Decision process<\/li>\n
- Value models<\/li>\n
- Competitive assessment<\/li>\n
- Many elements from the other five strategy frameworks<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Think of this as building out the \u201ccore foundation\u201d for all content and customer engagement <\/a>activities.<\/p>\n
Then, universal foundations can be leveraged at each functional level. Functional and tactic groups can identify differences or additional elements that they require.<\/p>\n
Content strategy should be a continuous and evolving process. A common framework, and strong foundation focuses each function on capturing and documenting incremental, changing and deeper insights.<\/p>\n
Without a comprehensive framework, good execution processes, and professional external facilitation, internal biases inherently weaken the final results.<\/p>\n
Your content strategy will inform and direct your investments and activities in marketing and sales, as well as for content development. It will impact marketing and selling performance and efficiency.<\/p>\n
- Value Model.<\/strong> How does each persona define value, for their role, as well as personal tendencies?<\/li>\n
- Beliefs. <\/strong>What are the key beliefs each persona holds that relate to the business problems you address, urgency factors related to those problems, solution options available to them, and decision process\/criteria (among others)? Beliefs are a primary decision driver.<\/li>\n
- Adapting content strategy to align with the buyer’s decision-making process is essential for effective marketing and sales alignment<\/a>.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Effective content strategies require well-developed personas that go beyond basic templates, incorporating deep audience insights to guide content creation.\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Identifying and segmenting your audience into distinct groups or ‘content constituents’ is crucial for developing a content strategy that addresses diverse needs and maximizes engagement.\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Understanding your audience transforms your content strategy from generic messaging to targeted communication that resonates with their specific needs and desires.\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n