Content Marketing Challenge #1: Your company hasn’t adapted the content marketing culture
If there’s one thing we can ALL agree on – no matter what background you come from, religious affiliation or political views included – it’s this:
Most B2B content sucks.
It sucks not because the people behind it aren’t smart. Or good at what they do.
It sucks because they “talk past their customers”. (Click to tweet)
One study from market research giant McKinsey found that:
“Honest and open dialogue, which customers considered most important, was one of the three themes not emphasized at all by the 90 companies in our sample.”
NINETY companies completely left out “honest and open dialogue” from their content messaging.
Instead, they went on and on and on about ‘sustainability’, ‘corporate governance’, ‘innovation’, ‘synergy’, and blah blah blah blah blah.
“Content marketing is a culture that most companies still haven’t adapted. They look into the world from the perspective of their products or services, not from the customer perspective. This is not startling news, but still a fact in most cases”
How to Solve it: (Good) Buyer Personas
The curse of knowledge is one contributing factor. They’re so wrapped up in their own day-to-day mindsets that they forgot to put things in a different context that matters to customers.
It doesn’t help, when your company has a superficial understanding of your customers.
Case in point: take a look at your ‘buyer personas’.
Chances are, you’ve got GREAT stuff on demographics. You know all about their roles. Their income. Their educational background. (A/S/L anyone?)
Now, what about psychographics? What makes these people do the things they do?
What about purchasing occasions? And why do people buy?
THAT’S the stuff commonly absent from most buyer personas. And it’s a precursor for bad, 300-word blog posts about your latest feature XYZ (you know, the one collecting dust on your Twitter account that hasn’t posted in the last ~3 months).
Look:
It’s not uncommon for people to have 10 browser tabs open at one time. Despite the fact that only 2% of them can actually multitask.
That means if your content – which includes everything from blog posts and social updates to your latest email newsletter and About page – doesn’t resonate with a potential customer immediately, they’re gone.
The trick, instead of going straight for the solution, is to first focus on the primary customer problem or pain point that brought them there in the first place. Here’s how.
Your first goal is to get a basic understanding of what this person does on a daily basis. Their routines, their day-to-day tasks, their aspirations and responsibilities.
Next, you want to find out what the ideal goal or objective in their life (and role) is. What makes them do those things better, consistently.
ONLY after establishing these priorities up-front, can you begin to dive deeper into understanding why these things haven’t happened yet. Or what the most common issues and problems are.
This kind of information only comes from actually talking with people. While in-person or phone calls are always best, you can also expedite this time-consuming process with customer reviews or by incentivizing simple surveys.
For example, here’s one we use commonly with clients:
That’s it! Five-to-seven simple, open-ended questions. No complex ranking systems, likerts (whatever the hell that is), or other multiple choice questions that tell you little.
Starting with their goals and progressing into their challenges before touching on their purchasing motivations.
Here’s one example of the type of results we get:
A few things jump out:
- Permitting issues (which ‘building inspections’ relate to) are an issue.
- While time delays is arguably the biggest problem or concern in these people’s lives.
Makes sense.
Let’s come up with ways to solve those two issues for them!
No marketing ninja skills required. Now, instead of starting with something that goes on and on about your consulting services that’s interesting to no one, anywhere (well, besides your Board of Directors I guess), you start off with specific, concrete problems that your customers deal with daily.
Here’s another example:
Again, we see (1) timing or delays as a common theme here, along with (2) product selection as a possible reason for why these happen.
Sounds doable…
Again you’re starting off with what people just told you they struggle with before touching on the possible alternatives or solutions (that – coincidence! – you just so happen to provide).
Best of all, you almost don’t even need to mention your product or service explicitly.
If done correctly, the results should be obvious.
I could already hear people saying, “But Brad, what if we don’t have a large customer base to get insights from?”
Lo and behold, Benji Hyam to the rescue.
Benji Hyam:
1. Come up with a narrow focus for your target audience segment. Instead of just saying marketers, try to get as specific as possible, marketers who run growth at venture-backed startups with over $10M in funding.
2. Do research on LinkedIn, Data.com, or other data service to figure out companies and ideal people to contact. Try to identify people and companies that would be ideal clients for your product or service.
3. Cold outreach to the point of contact at the company you think would be a good fit asking if you could have 15-20 minutes of their time to talk about their company, and their current X strategies (mobile, marketing, retail) – whatever industry they’re in.
4. Ask questions about the challenges they face in their role, and/or the challenges related to the problem your product or service solves. Ask about who would make a decision to buy if they were to purchase a product or service like yours. The goal should be to get as much insight as you can about the buyer and the ideal company that would buy from you.
5. If your product or service is in prelaunch, then you can also show them mockups and ask for their initial impressions, see what questions come to their mind, ask open ended questions, etc.
[Via Grow and Convert]
Key takeaway: Is your content insightful, or just adding to the noise? If it’s the former, you’ll see leads, subscribers, press mentions, and more as leading indicators. If it’s the latter… go back to your buyer personas and do some more digging.