As an entrepreneur or senior-level manager, it’s your job to know all of the ins and outs of your business. You know last quarter’s profit margins as well as you do your birthday. You know the time frames, reasons, research, and results for your processes. You know which of your customers is most likely to auto-renew or repurchase, and you also know who you’ll need to call on next month. Heck, you might even know how much coffee is left in the break room. Your diligence in learning and retaining all of these data points is part of what makes you an excellent business owner. It’s also part of what could make you a terrible content marketer.
Why would the person who knows everything there is to know about a business be one of the last people who should implement a content marketing strategy and calendar? Because you are excited about your business. As you should be. Sometimes, though, that sets you up to think like a salesperson, not a marketer. For example, when your company purchases a new machine that will streamline delivery for customers–great! But, how will you share that news online? And where? How will you monitor the success? What will be the first element you change in your messaging when you run A/B testing to attempt to increase organic, or even paid, reach?
That’s a pretty big list of questions when all you’re trying to do is share your excitement with your audience and potential customers. The reason you have to ask yourself those questions is because your first reaction to share excitement doesn’t matter to your customer. Sure, everyone loves to see someone express enthusiasm (it’s even been called contagious!) But that’s not enough. Your target personas want something more…something that matters to them
That’s the question you really have to ask yourself. What problem is my customer facing? Once you start investigating the answer to that, you will learn more about how you can offer information about your products and services in a way that educates and engages your customers. When you start finding trends, you can even start framing your business in a way that draws in other people that aren’t in your audiences or sales databases…more customers! That means that a new machine for your business can be turned into a video of you talking with one of your customers about how their business has benefitted from expedited design-to-delivery service. Framing it in this way- talking about your customer’s business and success rather than yours- completely changes the message.
All of this- the long process of identifying who exactly you’re trying to talk to and discovering who is engaging with your brand- is called inbound marketing. Done correctly, it is a powerful way of marketing your brand online that will bring potential customers to your door (or website), satisfy your clients, and then turn those customers into additional advocates for your business. That means each effort or dollar you spend in the beginning of the process has the potential to be amplified with each new client you obtain!