Do I Know You?

Hey Contentlandian,

This is my very first letter to you, and as such, it’s quite special (to me at least).

Truthfully, I don’t want to waste much breath telling you all the background details on why I created this newsletter or even why I’m doing it the way I am (and you’ll see what I mean as time goes on).

You need only know that Contentlandia is meant to hold all of the pieces you need to create your best content— the kind of stuff that brings in leads.

Practical exercises, templates, processes, video how-tos, and whatever else I can possibly create to make your content and content strategy smoother… it’s here.

via GIPHY

Now, the title does speak to the fact that you don’t know ME all too well. We’ll get there… But it’s really about the fact that a lot of companies don’t know their customers too well.

How do you know if you don’t know your customers well enough??

This isn’t meant to shit on anyone’s hard work. Seriously, I know companies that have gone through 2 years of interviews before the launch of their product, and they still didn’t have certain answers they needed to market effectively.

Why?

Because the questions they’d been asking were all centered around the product itself. They were developing the product still, after all, so they’d asked questions about the user interface and what features they desired…

While that’s great and all, it doesn’t tell you:

• Where your audience hangs out online

• What terms they’re using to search for solutions like yours

• What influencers they’re listening to

• What hesitations do they have when it comes to finding a new solution

• What workarounds they're using right now, and what trigger will make them start trying to find a real solution (people will live with a certain level of annoyance forever)

• What newsletters and podcasts do they listen to/ read

• What posts/ topics/ people do they engage with regularly

• What challenges they have surrounding your solution, finding it, and implementing it

• What are the questions they’re asking when vetting your solution

?????

That’s the thing… if you can’t answer half of the above, you don’t know your audience well enough.

(P.S. That isn’t an exhaustive list either. The questions will change, ± based on your product/ service)

When you have all of these insights, it’s incredibly easy to create a content strategy.

(Funny thing though, I see the opposite happening all of the time. Some companies have sooo many insights, but they’re scattered and they have no idea what to do with them. More on that in my next post.)

Okay, so that’s the background. Now we get into the really good stuff.

You might have a persona or a target audience, but do you have an ideal client? The cream of the crop? The BEST?

If you think about your client list right now… can you pinpoint 3 that are your absolute best?

Do they live up to your existing persona or the types of clients that you really hope to pull in?

If you can’t name 3 or they’re not quite the types of companies you hope to pull in, you need a reframe before you dive into the research aspect.

Why?

Personally, I don’t believe having a large audience segment is super helpful to most marketers when creating content.

Sure, he wrote the stories he had in him. He wrote the ideas he had and he’s stated many times that he often likes to write about the things he fears.

However, he’s always written with his wife in mind.

He knows what she likes.

Knows what she’ll laugh at.

What are the twists and tales that’ll appeal to her?

She’s his first reader. As such, he watches her reading to see if she laughs in the right places, or cries when appropriate, and so on.

I believe every content creator on a marketing team should have the same mentality. They should have one single reader.

You might think it’s extremely limiting to write for one company or one person, but what happens is that you write with such specificity that it rings down into their depths. They really feel like you understand them and their problems.

And let’s face it, we are all more alike than we often realize. So this kind of work still has mass appeal.

It’s why Stephen King is still so wildly successful.

So, to put it briefly: you need to base your ideal customer profile/ audience personas on a single company/ people.

How do you do that?

Well, it can be a lot easier than you might think. Let’s get into our practical exercise…

Practical Exercise: Narrowing down your ICP to a single company (max 3)

First thing first: you don’t need to do as much research as you think you do.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this edition, I worked with a company that spent 2 years researching their audience.

That’s fine on a product level, really… but when it comes to marketing for that audience, I actually find less is best.

That might sound totally crazy, and maybe it is, but all of the companies that I’ve worked with that have actually done audience research tend to overdo it.

They get in soooo many insights that they don’t know what to do with them.

Someone still has to sift through all of that information.

They have to find the topic patterns, and the pain patterns, and come up with the ideas out of those insights…

I’m sure there’s some tool out there that makes this a bit easier, but I haven’t found one that truly aids a team deeply enough in the content ideation aspect.

Sparktoro is the closest I’ve found, but I don’t find it to be a replacement for actually talking with your audience.

What I’d really like to find is a better way to store all of those insights… this is actually something I’m working on for the future… but we don’t need to dive into that right now.

(Side note: reply to this email if you actually do know of a tool. I’ll happily update this edition and maybe make a tech list for everyone)

Too many insights, and it’s far more difficult to sift through everything and find what really matters (and it’s just overwhelming).

(Another side note: I don’t think it’s wrong to collect more data from an abundance of customers. It’s still usable. But for the purposes of this exercise, we want to limit insights)

Here’s what you’re going to do…

Look into your client list and identify 1-3 of your very best clients.

If you can’t pick 3 from your existing clients, identify 3 companies that you WISH you could work with.

What qualifies them as the best:

• They will get the most use out of your product features/ services

• They’re low maintenance and require the least amount of input from you, either in customer service, technical help, etc.

• They stick with you for a long time

• They pay on the higher end, on time, and without issues

• They’re a notable brand that you’d like to be associated with and would like others to know they’re your client

• They talk about you. Either through reviews by sending you referrals, or just gushing about you on social

They don’t have to meet all of these bullets, but a majority is a good place to start.

My example from past clients:

Now that you have them, you’re going to identify your gatekeeper, or the person most likely to be searching for your solution.

Once you’ve laid this groundwork, you just need to speak to those three people

This is where the audience research really kicks off.

There are a few things to keep in mind.

1. You’re not just trying to figure out what makes these people tick and how to get their attention. You want to figure out how to reach them.

2. Think with distribution in mind.

3. The inane details like demographics are totally unnecessary unless you really need them for paid ads.

4. People shift jobs. All of the people above have and new people are in their place. That doesn’t negate what you’re building.

Here’s what you’re trying to determine from these people:

You can use this as your list of questions, or use it as a base to build on. Just add or change what makes sense for your product/ service.

• How did you find out about us? (It’s basic, but you do want to know, in any manner that you can, how they discovered you)

• How long have you known about us? (again, it doesn’t have to be so direct, but you do want to know how long it took to convert your best customers. How long did you nurture them?)

• When they were searching for your solution, what kinds of terms did they use?

• Where did they search?

• How long did they search?

• What source did they trust the most?

• How long did they vet their options?

• What were their vetting criteria?

• What was the decision-making process like?

• What were their hesitations?

• What was the trigger that made them actually reach out?

• What workarounds did they have before your solution?

• What would they do if they didn’t have your solution?

• What would they do if you took away your solution, now that they’ve had it for a while?

• What do they wish they knew about your solution before they made the leap?

• What questions did they have to answer when vetting you?

• What questions did they have when they were integrating your solution into their business/ workflows?

• What issues did they have with change management?

• What podcasts do they listen to?

• What influencers do they follow?

• When they engage on social, who do they engage with the most?

• What newsletters do they read? Blogs? Publications?

• How did they know you were the solution for them?

Some of this you can find out using Sparktoro. Some just scouring social media, using your intake forms (if you have any)…

But if you’re proactive, you’ll work some of this into sales calls, onboarding, discovery… etc.

Having a feedback loop might grant you more insights than you immediately know what to do with, but it might also make it easier when you’re investigating customers that later become your best.

But picking just 1-3 of your best as a frame for your content helps you maintain focus and be far more specific in your content creation.

You essentially turn your blog, social, newsletter, and email content into an ABM tactic.

How to employ this:

I have something for you.

I think it’s one of the best marketing gifts out there:

A template.

via GIPHY

Because I want you to actually walk away from this email with something you can use… besides that list of questions… I have my audience research template for you.

When you have the organized space and all the questions to ask, you’ll never struggle with insight overwhelm.

You’ll never spend years researching your customers only to find that research unusable for much of your marketing, either.

Let me know how it goes!

From your Contentlandia self-appointed Mayor…

And tour guide through all of Contentlandia…

Sarah (Colley) Taslik

When you’re ready and you know it, click a link:

• Get a 1:1 strategy and advisement call with Sarah to figure out what’s keeping your content from converting and what tweaks you can make to bring in leads.