Where to start when you want to market your business using content

Congratulations, thinking of another step in the right direction for your business which is – Marketing using Content. You have a rough idea of what kind of content you want to build and and also a why you want to build that content. Yet, I do urge you to take few minutes to jot ‘Why’ down. Clearly understanding your why will further clarify your content production process.

And the ‘Why’ could fall broadly into three or more categories:

• Brand Awareness
• Customer Acquisition
• Customer Retention
• ‘Others’

Knowing where you want to play, the goal (‘Why’), (and could be all areas also) will help you think through next steps of Target Audience aka Personas (‘Who’) -> Topics (‘What’) -> Content Type (‘How’) and more.

Assuming you are now more certain of your ‘Why’, next step will be understanding the personas you want to target, the ‘Who’. The more clear you are on the persona, better your targeting effort will be. 

For eg: Chip Wilson, the man behind Lululemon, had a very clear target persona in his head while designing his brand. His target was a 32 year old female, employed, independent, and with aspirations of looking good, getting married, raising a family and into Yoga.

Similar to Chip, try to hone down your customer persona as a first pass. You can always re-look at the market to see who the actual customer is (and you should do this at least annually), but try and start with a clear idea of the persona.

To understand your buyer persona, look into your own user base to understand demographics, industries, functions within companies, buyer stature (who the purse holder is), events / occasions and more. If you do not have enough data, put out surveys, interview your customers (communicating with your customer is a great thing! That is how Figma overtook other companies by keeping a check on customer pulse) and prospects. Ask! Per my wise mentor – Without asking, you do not get much in life. Ask!

Ok, time for my next assumption that you are now clear on your ‘Why’ and your ‘Who’. Let’s discuss ‘What’. One great to place start is your own history, the content you have already published and what kind of traction that gained (Awareness, Acquisition, Returning customers, etc).

If you do not have any history, then start here:

• Research – Good ol’ research. Find topics of interest keeping your ‘Why’ and ‘Who’ in mind. You can do a long tail keyword search on Google starting with your topic in mind. I will let this guy explain long tail keyword search as he successfully applied it.
• In House Content – You might already have content, think what problems have you already solved for. Can it be converted to a Blog, Whitepaper, E-Book…
• Interviews / Mentors – Set out to gain more knowledge through others and disburse the same through ‘Guest Posts’, ‘Interviews’, ‘Round Up posts’ and more.
• Content Series – Heck, you could even start a series of content based on your expertise. For example – Let’s say I am self sustaining gardener, so I could think of putting out a series of posts around ‘Garden space design’, ‘Type of plants’, ‘Growth & Care’, ‘Harvesting & Replanting’, ’Recipes – From farm to table’ and more…One expertise and 5 posts!
• Viral – And finally time for bit of attitude change and you to adopt a trend ‘Clickbait’. Hear me out. I am not asking you to adopt the profession of ‘Clickbait’ but once in a while can be good for your brand, especially if it goes viral. See this example of a police force indulging in banter yet sticking to a cause.

Ok, assumption time again – You have your ‘Why’, ‘Who’ and ‘What’ kind of sorted so let’s dive in ‘How’. Here are the content types you can experiment with along with ease of production and how they might show up for you on Google.