One of the most common concerns I hear from fellow marketers and business owners first implementing content marketing in their efforts is that it doesn’t drive engagement. Even if the platform on which the content is published gets thousands or tens of thousands of visits, the content doesn’t drive the kind of shares, comments, and social signals they assumed it would.
The big question here is why? What makes one piece of well written, carefully researched content different from another that drives three times the engagement?
The B2B audience targeting.
A well written piece of content needs to do many things – but before you put a single keystroke to a Word DOC, you had better know exactly who that content will be written for. Good content without a clear target is vague. It’s generic and lacks conviction, and driving someone to take action when the content lacks energy is nearly impossible.
Questions for Ideal B2B Audience Targeting
So where do you start? How do you create something that goes above and beyond “101-level” introductory content and resonates with the specific audience to which you want to provide value?
One of the most important things you can learn from Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing training course is how to identify and detail out a buyer persona. This is a human embodiment of the ideal customer – a top to bottom description of who you are writing for and what they are concerned about. Here are some highlights to help identify who this person is:
- Who Are Your Best Customers – No one knows your customers better than you. Who are the best ones – the ones you would clone if you could? What do they have in common? Is there a particular industry, role within a company, or need they have that’s similar across multiple situations?
- What Are their Most Common Questions – From there, gather a list of common questions these people ask. These can be questions asked during the sales process or ones they ask after becoming a customer that you know you answer frequently.
- What Is the Single Biggest Pain Point They Face – From these questions, distil down to a single pain point you know they all share. What is the biggest worry, concern, or point of stress they deal with related to what you do for them?
- What Is Their Position within Your Target Company – Most likely, these people will share a position within the companies they work for. Evaluate job titles, roles, and positions and determine what you’ll be dealing with.
- List Some Basic Demographics – Other demographics you may want to consider in building your audience profile include age, education level, location, and income level. These will affect the language to which they respond and how best to address their problems.
Will this cover everyone who might be a good customer for your company? Absolutely not. But it will create targeted, engaging content that dives deep into what a specific segment of your audience needs rather than broad, generic content that you can find on a dozen other websites.
When you create this type of content, it resonates. And content that resonates, even with a smaller segment of potential readers, will drive more conversions and help you generate better leads in higher volumes.
What’s the Next Step?
Once you know who your target audience in the B2B space is and what they are looking for from content, you can start writing. But to better resonate and ensure your content hits the right mark with those potential prospects, you’ll want to speak their language.
From there, you’ll be able to speak their language and address their problems. This will almost certainly result in an increased rate of engagement across all of your content and becomes an integral part of your digital marketing plan.
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