Content marketing, at its core, has one central goal: to engage and retain a clearly defined market segment that would ultimately result in desired customer action. Whether it’s brand recognition or lead generation. But too often, companies invest heavily in content that speaks to the products and services they are offering to market. Simply put, content and editorial pieces revolve around offerings and fail to address the most important aspect of a good content strategy: audience. Your product may be great for you, but how do you translate it for your customer and say it in their language?
It pays to invest time and resources in identifying a clear, relevant and profitable market segment that you want to reach and then learning their language to communicate effectively. Let’s look at some of the critical aspects of successful audience engagement.
1. Identify your audience:
Who does your business serve? Where are they looking for solutions? What inspires you? What are your values, lifestyle patterns, and attitudes? These basic questions must be answered so that your business can clearly define your target audience. Understand your audience: their demographics, geographic location, psychographic patterns, buying behavior, likes and dislikes, and spending patterns. Simply put, you need to articulate the buyer persona of your target audience. The more you know about your audience, the better you can create impact and meaningful content that engages them.
2. Know how they consume information:
Understanding how your audience consumes media and content is crucial to creating an effective content marketing strategy. Your company needs to know which channels your customers use most frequently to obtain information and which platforms they use to interact with each other and with other brands. Various digital exchange platforms and forums are available today as a means of media consumption; however, not all of them may be relevant to your audience. It’s a key aspect of your content marketing plan to identify the platforms your audience uses most often, so you can make your content available on those platforms.
3. Post the right type of content:
Easier said than done! If you have a good understanding and analysis of your target audience, and have a good grasp of the nuances of your market segments, you can easily include content themes that will keep them engaged and interested in your brand. One of the hallmarks of a poorly constructed content plan is posting boring, repetitive, and uninteresting content. What you want to communicate may be essential, but if it doesn’t reach your audience, it’s useless. Provide your audience with content that adds value and enriches their knowledge so that they see you as a go-to person for their information needs.
4. Speak in audience friendly language:
You may have a comprehensive content plan that has identified the right audience and the right media to reach that audience. However, there is a chance that your content will fail to create the desired impact. This could be attributed to inappropriate use of language. Understand if your potential client consumes content formally or informally. Whether they prefer simple sentence construction or want something more complex. What is accepted internally at your company as a common term may not be a familiar word to your prospects. In general, it’s best to avoid using too many jargon or technical terms. Simple and effective communication generally works best between multiple user groups.
5. Use the correct formats:
In addition to the language, the format of the content is also vital. Your audience may prefer content in different formats: text pieces, blog posts and pitches, infographics, images, video and rich media, and even audio. Additionally, you can post content in a combination of formats; It is always good to present a multifaceted image to your audience. Interactive media and formats also work well, as today’s audience likes to engage in conversation rather than listen to monologues.
The main step in reaching the right audience is to identify the segments your brand is looking to target and build the audience while simultaneously working on building your brand and reputation. Invest in creating content that is audience-influenced rather than product-influenced. The more specific and personalized your content is, the more it will evoke the right response from your audience.