When I first started writing online, I created a template in order to write my articles more quickly. I basically applied this template to everything I wrote, if I could even vaguely justify it.
While this helped speed up my writing, it often prevented my message from resonating with my target audiences.
This principle is just as true for content marketing. Strange as it may seem, your audience is one of your content marketing resources.
It is at least as important that you understand the customers you are marketing to as the product that you are marketing, sometimes more important.
Customer Segments
Imagine that you are providing marketing for a car dealership. Each car is different and offers different value propositions.
A truck, for example, has good towing capacity, while a sedan gets good fuel mileage. It is important to not only understand that value propositions, but to understand whether the customer segments that are in the market for that vehicle appreciate that value proposition.
Continuing the truck example again, imagine that the truck dealership is located in Saskatchewan. You have a customer segment that wants to buy a vehicle that is capable of driving well in heavy snow.
A truck offers this value proposition, but unless you market it that way, the customer may never be aware.
Using Buyer Personas to Better Reach Customers
One of the best content marketing resources available to you to make sure your marketing resonates with the right customer segment is a buyer persona.
A buyer persona details the current values of a particular market segment. By referencing your buyer personas, you know that Saskatchewan truck customers want weather resistant vehicles while Texas truck customers want vehicles with good towing capacity. This lets you use the right messages when marketing trucks in those locations.
One major trap with buyer personas is the tendency to create them and then assume they remain static. Buyer personas need to be constantly updated.
For example, if fuel prices suddenly spike in Saskatchewan, you need to temporarily add “good fuel mileage” to the traits that Saskatchewan truck buyers are interested in.
By maintaining good buyer personas and updating this personas with details from the news or your clients, you will more successfully resonate with your target market.
