Why Content Strategy Matters More Than Content Itself
Why is content so important? “I’ve got a Contact Us button on every page of my website, and that’s all I need, right?” Nope. “I’ve got a blog with a Subscribe button on it. That’s enough, right?” Nope, again. What’s in that blog? What content is on your website? How are you engaging the people you want as your customers – before they are ready to buy?
The Problem With “Hope Marketing”
Many marketers create content when a new offering or new product is released, or when more sales are needed in a certain area of the business. Blog posts are frequently sales pitches, telling the reader about something new and closing with a “get a quote now” or “call for more info” sort of call to action.
These approaches represent common content marketing pitfalls that many businesses fall into without realizing their impact. They then send an email to the list directing people to the blog post, or, if there’s no blog post, the email functions as the blog post with all of the info and a “call for more” call to action right in the email.
Sometimes I call this “hope marketing,” a term that describes how many people approach marketing – write something, send out an email, and hope that someone will respond – and maybe there’s a sale to be made.
Recently I spoke with an organization whose entire marketing approach is to send out sales promotion emails, multiple times a month. That’s a real case of hope marketing – hoping that the sales promo will land in an inbox (their first hope) at the exact time someone is thinking about buying what they sell (their second hope).
That’s also a great way to slowly kill off a list, but that’s a story for another day. Organizations facing this challenge need to transition from promotional blasts to strategic communication—implementing an email content strategy framework that nurtures relationships rather than just pushing sales messages.
Without Strategy, You’re Shooting in the Dark
Delivering content without a content strategy is taking shots in the dark, hoping to hit a target you can’t even see. That is just about zero fun, and has just about a zero percent chance of success. Building an effective content strategy frameworkis the foundation that transforms random content creation into purposeful customer engagement. But not just any content strategy will work.
Content Strategy Is Not Really About Content – Here’s What It’s Actually About
Here’s one key thing about content strategy engagements that few, if any, will tell you – perhaps because they don’t realize it themselves (?).
A content strategy engagement isn’t really about content.
Why a Content Strategy Engagement Focuses on Process, Not Pages
That’s right. The RESULT of a content strategy engagement has content in it, of course. We call it a “content pathway” in our content strategy presentations. The content strategy process itself, and all that goes into creating the content pathways, has NOTHING to do with content.
It’s About Their Buying Journey, Not Your Message
A content strategy is all about your perfect potential customer.
It’s about THEIR buying process, their journey, what they need to hear and see and read before buying. This requires implementing adaptive email sequences that respond to recipients‘ specific behaviors and interests rather than sending generic promotional messages.
It’s about breaking through noise, providing guidance and valuable information that will help your perfect potential customers make their buying decisions. It’s about building trust with your target audience.
If the content you create isn’t centered on your perfect potential customer, it’s going to miss the mark. This is why implementing a systematic content quality assessment process becomes essential to ensure your content truly resonates with your target audience.
Why “Perfect Potential Customer” Outperforms the Traditional Buyer Persona
You may have noticed that I’ve said “your perfect potential customer.” I’m not calling it a “buyer persona” at this stage, nor am I calling it an “avatar,” as others do. I’m calling it “your perfect potential customer” very much on purpose.
Why Most Buyer Personas Fail to Drive Marketing Results
Here’s why – the next thing that few, if any, will tell you – most buyer personas don’t work – mainly because the exercise to create them was focused on the wrong things. We see a lot of…
- Multiple buyer personas – creating competition for your focus
- Buyer personas that focus on generic information that may or may not be relevant to what you do
- A buyer persona that is so general you end up trying to talk to everyone
When you’re talking (marketing) to everyone, you end up talking to no one. That’s NOT what is going to help you get better results from your marketing.
Build Your Ideal Customer Profile Around One High-Potential Target
What we’ve learned is this: a rock-solid, results-generating content strategy cannot exist without a laser focus on your perfect potential customer. One profile. Only one. That one profile of your highest-potential target. That one profile of a person who has the highest likelihood of becoming one of your best customers. THAT is your ideal customer profile (ICP).
Your content needs to talk to THAT person. Everything you do needs to talk to THAT person.
This Isn’t About Who You Sell To – It’s Who You Market To
Will you sell your products or services to people who don’t fit that profile? Of course you will. This isn’t about who you SELL to; it’s about the people you target, the people you market to, the people you deliberately try to attract.
And once you attract them, website engagement optimization determines whether your site converts that attention into meaningful action.
But how do you know what will make people respond to you? That’s the third (and final) tip I’m going to share with you here – another thing that no one else will tell you.
How to Get Inside Your Perfect Potential Customer’s Head
A content strategy that performs for your business starts with getting into the heads of your perfect potential customers. You want to understand their opportunities, challenges, pains, and problems, so you can position your business as the solver, the fixer, or the enabler. This understanding becomes the foundation for brainstorming content ideas that directly address their specific needs and concerns.
When Content Strategy Speaks the Wrong Language
A quick story: one of our clients had done a content strategy with another firm before they found us. They spent thousands of consulting dollars and got a strategy that created absolutely zero results for them. Want to know why?
That content strategy was all about what they wanted to say to their audience. It had nothing to do with that that audience was able to hear. In other words, they were told to talk to the market in THEIR language, not in the language that their perfect potential customers were speaking.
The Real Cost of Speaking Your Language Instead of Theirs
That’s really the long and the short of it. A content strategy that speaks Portuguese to a group of people who speak French isn’t going to work. In that particular case, a content pathway about “business continuity” fell on deaf ears with an audience that needed to know what safeguards to put in place in the case of a natural disaster. Make sense?
Align Your Content Strategy With the Language Your Customers Actually Use
As you get clear about your ideal customer and what they want, you also want to consider our Why Chain methodology for perfect customer identification as part of your process to help you understand where you need to lead them with your content. If you do, your content will have a bigger impact, be more engaging, and get better results.
What language is your content strategy – if you have one – speaking? Is it speaking your language, or the language of your perfect potential customer? If your content strategy is working for you, then you’ve likely figured out the right way to talk to your audience.
If it’s not, or if you don’t have a content strategy at all, then you’re missing what could be the most critical piece of your marketing plan.
Three Tips, One Essential Plan
I’ve given you three big tips about content strategies at this point.
What a Properly Executed Content Strategy Actually Delivers
The critical point is this: a content strategy is a must-have, and a content strategy done properly focuses on engaging your perfect potential customers, providing valuable information, and guiding them down the path to becoming your customer. This is where implementing an email-blog integration strategy becomes crucial for maximizing the impact of your content efforts.
A Real Content Strategy Takes Time—But It’s Worth It
It’s a bit of a science, and I’ll tell you a secret – it can’t be done in a three-day workshop or a weekend or in an exec team meeting. It takes research time, conclusion-reaching time, conclusion-validating time, and likely a few revisions before you get to a content strategy that drives engagement appropriately with your perfect potential customers.
Having spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours decoding the process of content marketing, we’ve learned how to make content strategies work (and how to make them affordable) for small and mid-sized businesses, particularly those with modest marketing budgets who need and want to focus on results. If that’s you, and you’re ready for a content strategy that will work for you, we should talk.
Content Strategy Is a Must-Have, Not a Nice-to-Have
Regardless of how you get there, a rock-solid, results-generating content strategy is a MUST-HAVE, not a nice-to-have. It’s not a luxury; it’s a requirement. Not having one, or not fixing the one you may have already done, comes with one guarantee: if you keep doing the same thing you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting the same results. And if those aren’t good enough, it’s time to do something different.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why isn't my content strategy generating results?
A content strategy that speaks Portuguese to a group of people who speak French isn't going to work. That content strategy was all about what they wanted to say to their audience. It had nothing to do with what that audience was able to hear. In other words, they were told to talk to the market in THEIR language, not in the language that their perfect potential customers were speaking.
Why do buyer personas fail to improve marketing results?
Most buyer personas don't work - mainly because the exercise to create them was focused on the wrong things. We see a lot of multiple buyer personas – creating competition for your focus, buyer personas that focus on generic information that may or may not be relevant to what you do, and a buyer persona that is so general you end up trying to talk to everyone. When you're talking (marketing) to everyone, you end up talking to no one.
What is an ideal customer profile (ICP) and how is it different from a buyer persona?
A rock-solid, results-generating content strategy cannot exist without a laser focus on your perfect potential customer. One profile. Only one. That one profile of your highest-potential target. That one profile of a person who has the highest likelihood of becoming one of your best customers. THAT is your ideal customer profile (ICP). Your content needs to talk to THAT person.
What is a content strategy actually about if it's not really about content?
A content strategy is all about your perfect potential customer. It's about THEIR buying process, their journey, what they need to hear and see and read before buying. It's about breaking through noise, providing guidance and valuable information that will help your perfect potential customers make their buying decisions. It's about building trust with your target audience.
How long does it take to build a content strategy that actually works?
It can't be done in a three-day workshop or a weekend or in an exec team meeting. It takes research time, conclusion-reaching time, conclusion-validating time, and likely a few revisions before you get to a content strategy that drives engagement appropriately with your perfect potential customers.
