Content marketing is really just using your expertise to create interesting, relevant and compelling content that your customers and prospects will want to read. Though getting started on creating content can be intimidating. Here are some things to consider as you get started.
Who are you talking to?
It is easy to write a letter to a friend because you know so much about them. The same applies to your customers and prospects. The more you know about them, the easier it will be to write interesting content. Begin by profiling your customers. You want to take your customer base and divide it into segments. You can determine how you want to segment your customers, but you should have more than one segment. To get started, you may want to start with 3 segments. Try to keep the number of segments below 6 segments as it will become hard to manage the multiple customer groups.
Not all segments are created equal
Now that you have created your segments, profile those segments. You want to look for real differences between the segments. How many of us still remember the classic ad slogan,”Tastes Great — Less Filling,” for Miller Lite beer? It is a great example of putting consumers into groups based upon what motivates them to buy the product. Once you have your customers in your segments, then you need to profile the segments to understand who they are, what motivates them, what makes them unique and different.
Where can you find information on your segments?
- Talk to your customers – capture ideas from your conversations with customers from each of your segments.
- Create surveys – pop-up surveys on your website, email surveys after a purchase or customer service engagement, conduct ongoing surveys of each of your segments
- Social Media – engage your customers through social media and listen to what they have to say. Also, follow your competitors and others in your industry so you can stay involved in the most current conversations and social media trending topics.
- Clone your customers – append data to your customer database so you can profile your customers and look for demographic, attitudinal and behavioral differences in your segments.
Once you can describe, in detail, each of your segments then you can begin to create content that is designed uniquely for them. Write down your topics for each of your segments and put the topics on a calendar to keep you generating content throughout the year.