Well, one place to start is with the work of psychologist Abraham Maslow. Depending on your industry, you may or may not have the opportunity to help your audience meet these basic physiological needs. Examples: Top 5 Reasons People Un-Follow You on Social Media What You Need to Know About Retaining Customers How to Avoid an IRS Tax Audit Level 3: Love and Belonging Needs Okay, here’s where it starts to get fun. How can we as content marketers meet this need for love and belonging? In the last level we addressed our needs for love and belonging. As content marketers, we can help our audiences meet their need for esteem by showing them how to set themselves apart, to earn a level of respect reserved for the best of the best. I have no designs on ever playing beyond the confines of my little room, so I don’t do it for love or belonging (Level 3), and certainly not for esteem (Level 4). Okay, now that’s something we content marketers can work with. I’ve shared a lot of ideas with you and presented you with a whole new way of viewing our mission as content marketers. This doesn’t mean you need to change everything about your content marketing or start over from scratch.
Have you ever hopped over to an enticing piece of content and asked yourself, “Why am I doing this?” Maybe you were hoping to pick up some tips on hiring a new content writer. Maybe you wanted to get current on the latest trends in your industry. Or maybe you just wanted to kill some time watching a stupid cat video or twelve.
Believe it or not, each of those reasons — and any reason we engage with content — boils down to one simple motivation: filling a need.
Yes, believe it or not, even those stupid cat videos serve a higher purpose: alleviating boredom, giving you a break from work, or maybe just making you smile on a gray Monday morning.
As content marketers — the folks who create and publish all this wonderful content — we need to be aware of the needs of our audience, and how our content is meeting those needs. Where do we start? How do we even begin to wrap our arms around the plethora of human needs that our content can and should be addressing?
Well, one place to start is with the work of psychologist Abraham Maslow. Back in the 1940s, Maslow posited a theory that every action human beings take, from noshing on chicken wings to launching rockets to the moon, is taken in the name of meeting certain needs. And we have tons of ‘em.
Of course, not all needs are created equal, which is where Maslow’s now-famous pyramid comes into play:
Now if the sheer magnitude of this mission freaks you out, relax. We don’t need to run out and start pursuing a psychology degree to be effective content marketers. But we can do what we do more effectively if we’re conscious of our mission to meet the needs of our audience.
So let’s take a closer look at Maslow’s hierarchy, slice by slice.
Level 1: Physiological Needs
We all need to breathe. We all need to eat, hydrate, sleep, and go to the bathroom. If we’re not meeting these basic needs, nothing else much matters, right?
In most modern societies, getting these basic needs met is not a problem, and for that we can be grateful. Most of us have ready access to safe food, clean water, and a place to grab some shut-eye.
Depending on your industry, you may or may not have the opportunity to help your audience meet these basic physiological needs. If you sell drill bits to oil-and-gas exploration companies, you can probably skip over this stage. But if you’re in the medical, health, or wellness area, you can serve your audience by helping them meet these needs in healthier, more effective ways — not just for themselves, but for their families and loved ones as well.
Examples:
- 5 Superstar Breakfast Foods to Fuel Your Day
- How to Set a Reasonable Bedtime … and Stick to It
- 9 Sneaky Ways to Get Your Kids to Drink More Water
Level 2: Safety and Security Needs
Once our basic physiological needs are met, we move up to the next level: needs around protecting ourselves from harmful or hazardous forces.
Our cave-dwelling ancestors met these needs by covering themselves with animal skins, seeking defensible shelter, and guarding against predators. In modern society, our view of security needs is a bit different: we want to make sure we keep our jobs, have enough money in the bank, guard ourselves and our families against disease, protect our property from theft and destruction, keep ourselves safe when we drive our cars — the list goes on.
If you’re in the insurance field or any industry that addresses security (including cybersecurity), meeting safety needs is a no-brainer. But nearly any industry — B2B or B2C — can tap into its audiences needs to feel safe.
Remember the tagline “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM?” There’s a reason why that tagline is still famous today: it’s a no-bones-about-it appeal to the modern need for security, writ large.
And our 21st-century version of meeting safety needs goes far beyond fear of unemployment, even on the B2B side. We don’t want to lose customers. We don’t want to get in trouble with government or regulatory authorities. We don’t want to lose market share to our competitors. We really, really don’t want to look bad (and in today’s environment, we have less and less direct control over that image).
As content marketers, we need to ask ourselves this question about our audiences: “What are they afraid of … and how can we help them address that fear?” Then look for ways to answer that question through powerful, engaging content.
Examples:
- Top 5 Reasons People Un-Follow You on Social Media
- What You Need to Know About Retaining Customers
- How to Avoid an IRS Tax Audit
Level 3: Love and Belonging Needs
Okay, here’s where it starts to get fun. Now that we’ve addressed our basic bodily functions and…
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