Audience first. Instead of targeting your audience, shift your thinking to who, specifically, you can best help. Your opportunity lies with your core audience – the specific group of people you want to help. In short, get as specific as you can about who your audience is – and create a program for its specific needs. Instead of saying: “We’re going to ‘do content marketing because everyone else is doing it.’ ” Ask: “How can we help people in a way no one else is?” I guarantee you a terrible reason to have a content marketing program is because you – or the executive team – think you should. We are champions for healthy, happy lives.” This branding evolution ties in directly with its mission and supports everything Lifetime does, from the in-club experience to the print magazine, to products it sells and more. TIP: If your brand’s “why” is not clear, consider this question from Michael Jr.: “If you didn’t need to make any money, but you wanted to help your customer, what would you give them?” Instead of saying: “We need more leads!” Ask: “How can we focus on building an audience which wants to hear from us?” Riddle me this: Who is an audience who wants to hear from you? Instead of thinking of your audience members as leads, think of them as subscribers. Think about those things you subscribe to – or those things you look forward to. TIP: Not only do you need to shift your mindset to think about subscribers instead of leads, but you also need to make it easy people for people to subscribe.
Audience first.
Are you tired of hearing this mantra? I am.
But, here’s the thing: Too many marketers say and even think they are all about the audience, but when you dig into their programs, you see it’s still all about them.
While it’s not easy to make a genuine shift, here are four twists in perspective to truly make sure your audience is at the center of everything you do.
Instead of saying: “We’re going to target this audience.”
Ask: “Who are the people we can help?”
The notion of “targeting” an audience is like nails on a chalkboard. It sounds like an unwilling participant you want to coax using less than savory means. I don’t want to be someone’s target, do you?
Instead of targeting your audience, shift your thinking to who, specifically, you can best help.
If you are like a lot of marketers I know, you think, “Well, there are so many different people I can help.” While you have many use cases for your product or service, that thinking isn’t helpful. All those possible segments are your total addressable audience, but that is not very useful from a content marketing perspective. You need to be specific.
Your opportunity lies with your core audience – the specific group of people you want to help. Or, as I recently read in a newsletter from Doug Kessler at Velocity Partners:
If you’re going to focus on anything, it should be figuring out precisely who your best prospects are and then slavishly serving them everything they need to become your best customers.
And, here’s the thing. This group doesn’t need to share demographics or psychographics. It could be an audience of those who have a similar experience or challenge.
For instance, take MassMutual which hosts Society for Grownups, a “learning initiative aimed at helping people get more adult about their money and lives.” The core audience isn’t based on an age group but on a state of mind. It’s those people who realize, “Now I’m a grown-up,” which may have been sparked by anything from living on their own for the first time to getting married or having a new job.
Once you have this frame of reference in mind, it’s easier to see how you can create content that can help them.
If you’re thinking, “OK, but I really do have several distinct audiences,” don’t fret. If your product or service caters to many audiences, then it’s your job to cater your content to them.
Take BabyCenter (a great content marketing play from Johnson & Johnson). This is a digital bible for many new parents because the information is specific to their needs. Subscribers are asked to identify the age(s) of their children, to calculate their due date, or to indicate if they are trying to conceive. Then, Baby Center tailors the information for each subscriber.
While I haven’t been an active subscriber for a while, I keenly remember looking forward to the emails when I was pregnant with and then parenting my first daughter. I wanted to know how big my baby was when I was pregnant (she’s the size of an avocado this week!) or I looked forward to reading about various stages in her development.
In short, get as specific as you…
COMMENTS