Too often, brands don’t put enough attention on the needs of their customers. Their marketing becomes more about rattling off their product features than creating content their customers will respond to, let alone read.
Think about it this way. You wouldn’t want to go on a date where the other person went on and on about themselves in an effort to show off and convince you how cool and likeable they are – just as you wouldn’t want to learn more about, or buy from, a brand that did the same. A good date would get to know you and then bring up topics that interest you, in an effort to begin building a relationship.
You can use this same approach to create content that will build a relationship with your ideal customers.
1. Identify your personas
Before you can know what kind of marketing messages your ideal customers want, you need to get to know them. What is their average age range? Their gender? How do they like to receive their information? Where do they spend the majority of their time online? What reservations do they have surrounding your product, service or industry? How much do they know about your brand, industry, or products? What things do they consider before making a purchase?
All of these questions, and more, must be answered in order to create a clear picture in your mind of who your ideal customers are. Once you have this picture, meeting their needs through marketing becomes simple.
2. Identify their needs
Through your buyer persona research, you should be able to draw some general conclusions as to what kind of informational needs your customers have before making a purchase.
Most likely, your buyer personas will want answers to their common questions and concerns surrounding your product. For example, if you’re a weight loss surgeon trying to attract new patients, a common question could be, “What makes someone a good candidate for weight loss surgery?” Once you identify the type of information your buyer personas are seeking before they make a purchase, you can create content in response.
3. Create content that meets those needs
As you create content to fulfill the needs of your buyer personas, you need to keep a few things in mind. The most important thing to remember is this: your buyer personas have real problems and questions, and what they need are solutions.
This means that you need to create solution-based content that provides quality, useful, relevant information. Eventually, they will need content about the benefits and features of your product/service, but if you shove this information on them from the get-go, they’ll just be turned off.
Another thing to consider is your content delivery. Based on what you know about your personas, you need to make decisions about the length and writing style of your content. Generally, with online content such as blogs, audiences prefer things be kept short and simple with large chunks of content broken up by subheadings, bullet points, and graphics. You should also consider how they’ll be viewing this content. As the number of mobile internet users increases, the need for responsive websites has grown.
By getting to know your buyer personas, considering their needs, and then meeting them, you’ll be rewarded with brand growth and new customers. Get more out of your marketing with a free Digital Marketing Discovery Session.
