The 5 Ps of Kick-ass Content
According to TrustRadius research, 87% of buyers go solo on part or all of their buying journey, and 57% make decisions without talking with a vendor. That means you need to show up every step along the way with spot-on content that inspires and motivates them to have meaningful conversations with you.
Inspired by my recent LinkedIn post where I shared Ally Financial being name Best Content-driven Website and Best Use of Interactive Content at the 2020 Content Marketing Awards, it got me to thinking what it takes to publish value-based content today that your ideal buyers can rely on throughout their journey.
Here are what I believe are five key essentials for content that educates, engages and converts.
1. Planning
Benjamin Franklin was brilliant when he said, “If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail.” Random acts of content don’t serve anyone. I get that your marketing and content teams are pushed to the max, leaving little time to plan anything. But investing time to complete a content or campaign brief on the front end can make all the difference on back-end performance. How can you strike a chord with your target audience or even know an asset is successful if you don’t know who you’re really talking to and what you’re trying to accomplish with it?
Here are three key planning steps to give your content a fighting chance:
For each new asset, outline who your audience is (key challenges, goals, desired outcomes), why they’re looking for a solution, what problem they have, what they need to know, what’s a logical next step and what action you want them to take, and where they would likely search for and see the content
Continually monitoring trends and social conversations to inform your on-going calendar and keep your content fresh and relevant
Think through how your content can provide a logical path to your products and solutions
2. Priorities
Marketers have more distractions than ever at a time when teams are leaner than ever. Look to see how you can get your team out of react mode and into proactively defining priorities that focus everyone on the top key projects. This includes getting buy-in from cross-functional leadership on your priorities, so your content calendar can be based on a solid strategy and plan that support your business goals. Having clear priorities also helps you maintain your boundaries when you get those one-off content requests.
3. Personalization
Seeing the world through you ideal customers’ eyes is key to creating content that speaks to their needs and goals—in their language. I’ve worked with a lot of clients that don’t actually know why their best customers buy from them—often times because they’ve never asked them. So, if you can send out surveys, or have client success managers or marketing team members interview your current customers—go for it! Their thoughts and perspective as to why they needed your solution, what alternatives they tried and how they fell short and, most importantly, why they chose you—these nuggets are pure gold.
Understanding not only your target customers but also their buying journey are essential to delivering what they need, when and how they need it. Customer journey maps are invaluable to this level of personalization. Convince & Convert’s Jenny Magic describes a journey map as representing the intersection of buyer needs and your organization’s calls to action. “It’s thinking about what they need, what we need, what do we want them to do, and why would they want to do it. It helps content marketers get out of their own heads and see their brand through the eyes of customers,” she says.
Jenny shares that a journey map is a visual representation of the customer journey that defines:
All the points where customers and prospects interact with your brand
What they want to accomplish at each one
The path they take from point to point as they move toward a purchase
And, as marketers, we know that buying journeys are no longer linear. The goal is to show up with a range of content that speaks to all points along their journey. Content hubs are a great way to let potential customers stay in control of their experience and engage with assets based on where they’re at in their journey. And let’s not forget about your goals. These assets can (and should) include CTAs that lead them to your solution pages. Ally Financial shared that someone who reads a piece on their data-driven content hub and visits an Ally product page is two times more likely to convert into a customer than someone who just goes to a product page.
4. Perspective
Creating valuable content requires living in your prospect’s head. Why? So you can serve up information and value that aligns with, and is organized by, the way they think, their goals and their lifestyle.
There are two key mistakes I see companies make when it comes to looking at things from their customers’ perspective. The first is that, while marketing teams like to look at performance results by channel, their customers want—and frankly, expect—a consistent seamless experience no matter where they engage with your content and brand. The more you can make engaging with your brand feel effortless, the better.
The other mistake—which is huge—is creating content filled with all the great things their products can do rather than focusing on real problems they’re custopmers are trying to solve and goals they’re looking to achieve. It’s fine to talk about your solutions but it needs to be focused on how they help your customers be the hero.
5. Partnerships
Are there complementary types of companies that your target audience engages with? These provide great opportunities for co-branded distribution partnerships to reach more of your ideal customers. Perhaps you can create a mutually beneficial arrangement where you each create content that directs folks to the other website or content hub. Or invite them to create content for your hub in exchange for them promoting you on social media. You may even uncover a joint value proposition that enables you to deliver more value to your customers. There are plenty of ways to get creative in coming up with mutually beneficial partnerships.
Content is what creates the connection and sparks the conversations with your potential customers. But for it to have a real impact for both you and your prospects, it needs to be intentional, relevant and valuable as seen through the eyes of your ideal audience.