Tips for learning what matters most.
We are living in fast moving, content rich, and information overload times. We can no longer message the way we have in the past. Look at your brochures and website, along with your sales presentations. It is likely loaded with “marketing speak” aka, “blah, blah, blah.” Personally most of us won’t read more than a bullet point to see if there is a competitive edge, yet we expect our customers to digest our long winded, irrelevant messages. Content marketing must have a solid message.
Besides loading up our content marketing with marketing speak, companies often will shout about what they are good at regardless of whether or not it matters to the customer. If you want to tout you awards and community involvement but the customer doesn’t care, you are not being relevant. Don’t bore the customer with what you are good at unless it is matters to them.
Content Marketing frequently uses an abundance of clichés. Beware
Do you claim to be customer focused, customer oriented, and customer centric? These clichés show up millions of times in Google searches. If a customer is considering you, then you better be customer focused. But saying so, doesn’t make it so. And saying so wastes a prospects valuable time.
The Antidote:
Find out what your customers really value with some voice of the customer marketing research. Learn what value proposition you must deliver to prosper. We have had countless clients tell us about wasted efforts on market research. Usually one or more of the following were ignored:
• Have ONE clear objective; don’t try to accomplish branding in an attribute testing survey. Content Marketing relies on learning top buying criteria.
• Be sure you are dealing with someone who understands the art and science of questionnaire design, you may be surprised the difference design can make in data outcomes.
• Provide good contact lists to expedite the process and minimize expense; bad lists take longer; for example, in a telephone survey because the phone numbers are no longer valid, dials are wasted.
• Make sure you get the data in actionable form. You cannot address your content marketing effectively if you don’t know what the numbers are telling you.
• Remove bias by employing double blind studies; if you want to sell a solid value proposition then make sure you are getting the true, not edited, feedback.
Make sure your content marketing is based on external data, not internal perspectives. Build your value proposition on what the voice of the customer tells you, not on what your internal team thinks it is. Companies are wrong about how their customers define their own value proposition more than 90% of the time. Where are you? The ROI for this information is tremendous.
Shorter attention spans today demand your content be succinct in communicating value.
