When it comes to providing value for your audience, you’ve likely already heard that content marketing—specifically creating content for your ideal customer—should be a big part of your strategy. And luckily, there are many ways you can do this—from writing blog posts, to video, and finding new opportunities on social media. And so you make an effort for a couple of weeks posting new content consistently all while trying to remain hopeful that you’ll soon see the uptick in traffic or engagement from your audience that you’re looking for.
But instead, it feels more like you have no idea where your content is even going. And every time you click that “Publish” button, it kind of feels like all of your hard work is being posted into some giant black hole.
Sound about right?
So here’s the thing— this is super common, I promise. And everyone who creates branded content for their business—myself included—knows this feeling. It’s the feeling of not knowing whether you are nailing your content strategy or not. But there is a way to zero in on your content sweet spot and it requires taking a few steps back and implementing a simple 3-step framework:
- Understand who it is that you are creating for
- Cater to their interests
- Connect your content back to your own zone of genius
This 3-step framework seems almost too simple, right? But it’s key in creating purposeful and meaningful content for your ideal customer that hits every time. Here’s everything you need to know:
#1: Develop a Deep Understanding Of Your Ideal Customer
Whether you’ve been in business for a hot minute or for years, you’ve probably heard of the elusive, secret key to your success: digging deep into who your target customer is. In fact, you might have already created an ideal customer profile for your business. Or, at the very least, thought about who exactly is consuming your content, buying your product, and following along.
There are a few different approaches to finding your Ideal Customer Avatar (or ICA). The most common one perhaps is drilling down to the nitty-gritty details from socioeconomic status to favorite podcasts to income level…no detail is too small or specific.
The important thing is that in the end, you’ll have developed a deeper understanding of who makes up your target audience so you can gain a visceral awareness of what they truly want.
Part of knowing who you are creating for means understanding what their goals are, their frustrations, as well as their needs, wants, and desires. Once you understand these key factors, you can then create content for your ideal customer that touches on, discusses, and explores those details.
That being said, it’s not your job to appeal to everyone. So niche down and don’t be afraid of specificity. When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.
#2: Create Actionable Content
Once you have a better idea of who you care creating for and who will be seeking out your value, it’s time to connect it to something real. Ask your customers exactly what they want so you know what kinds of topics to write about.
These validation efforts will help you avoid that dreaded feeling of posting your hard work into the black hole of the internet. Instead, you’ll feel confident that you’ve created something that your target customers actually need or are interested in.
And if you’re on my email list, you know that we do this all.the.time. That’s because creating content takes some real effort! So I want to make sure that anything we create is landing where it should. That’s why I like to check in regularly with my audience and ask them things like, “I’m planning some really exciting content for the upcoming months, what do you want to see?” or “Hit reply and tell me something you wish I’d talk about in my next email.”
The thing is, a lot of the times we think we know what our people want… but then, with a little digging, we’ll find out that it’s not at all what our audience was really looking for. If you’re going to go through all this work to provide value, don’t you want it to resonate and stick from the very beginning?
So the solution here is to ask, ask, ask! Survey your email list, poll your Instagram audience, ask your Twitter followers, and request feedback from your clients.
Speaking from firsthand experience, the answers just might surprise you.
#3: Connect Your Value Back To Your Skills Or Expertise
Once you’ve really nailed down who you’re serving and what they want, it’s time to connect that value to your own zone of genius. In other words, the skills or area of expertise that comes most effortlessly for you. Why? Because helping your audience make the connection between your content and your offerings is essential in converting them from visitors into customers. Even if they’re devouring your content, they still might not know exactly how you can help them achieve their goals.
I recommend doing a massive skill dump as it pertains to your offer (product or service you are selling). You can grab a pen and your favorite journal and start by making a good old fashioned list. This will help you frame your audience’s content interests in the context of your business, creating a more direct line to sales.
Putting It Into Action: Creating Content For Your Ideal Customer
If you’ve read all of this and are thinking, “Whew. Okay. So, where do I start? What would this look like in my own business?”, I’ve got you. I
Let’s say you’re a business coach. Your niche is helping wellness professionals launch their brands, and you’ve been really successful at it. You have a powerful email list, and you love sending them content, usually pertaining to building email funnels. After all, that’s what they want, right?
Then, you poll your clients and your audience… only to find out that they’re wanting to learn more about unique branding and standing out visually when it comes to having a business in the health and wellness space. Really, they don’t care about funnels.
While your initial thoughts might be, but I’m not a brand designer or specialist. That’s fine! Your audience doesn’t necessarily expect you to be an expert on the visuals piece; they expect you to be a business expert in the wellness space. So, you do a skill dump. You’re wondering how the heck you can connect branding and visuals to business coaching, right?
You make a list, and you realize that the things you really love and are good at are things like marketing tips, email funnels, business plan creation, and creating frameworks and roadmaps. Now that you’ve honed in on that, you start thinking about using that to create a content sweet spot. Instead of creating emails about funnels that your audience is bored by, you pivot to content that drills into the phases of launching brands for wellness professionals, really helping your audience understand that important piece to the puzzle.
Then, that teeny little poll of your audience leads you to pairing it with implementation support, freebies, and 20-minute consultation calls. Just like that, you’ve opened up an entirely new stream of income.
It’s like magic, right?
Nah. It’s just marketing genius, and I know you’ve got it in you to create that content sweet spot and add new value to your business. Now that you know what you need to do to uplevel that content strategy of yours, download my ideal customer checklist to really hone in on that dream client.
