We’ve all tried on clothes only to realise they weren’t designed for our particular size and shape. The designer, it seems, was thinking of someone else wearing their clothes and the same thing can happen with B2B content – if you don’t focus on your audience.
I’m 5ft 2 (on a good day) which means a lot of clothes are too long. I don’t buy clothes that don’t fit well.
But it’s not the clothing designers fault. They can’t make every garment suit every size and shape. They develop their designs for a brand’s particular target customer base – their size and tastes.
As consumers, we find the brands that target us; we get to know which ones generally offer clothing to our dimensions and style. We buy from these brands because they offer us what we want and need.
And that’s the space your B2B content needs to occupy. Your content marketing strategy needs to target a specific audience and speak directly to them. One size fits all isn’t going to get you the results you want.
Clarity on your audience
Which means you need to be clear on who your target audience is. And it is likely you will have more than one target audience depending on what you want to achieve.
For example, a house builder or developer might want to target potential investors and joint venture partners. But they will also want to target house buyers or occupiers.
These two audiences have different needs and your content needs to be conscious of that.
The more specific you can be about your target audience the easier it is to create content which delivers on your content marketing strategy.
What your audience wants
Once you’ve defined your target audience then you can focus on what they want to know.
Think about the questions they normally ask, what matters to them, the problems that you solve for them or the benefits of your offer. Or think about what information you can pass on that might be useful or interesting, what might help them.
You need to ‘design’ your content for your specific audience, it needs to be something they care about. Scrutinise your ideas by asking ‘why would my audience care about this?’ or ‘how will this benefit them?’.
It’s important to remember that what you find interesting isn’t necessarily what your audience finds interesting.
Language choice
Once you’ve got your topics then write as if you are talking directly to your audience. Use the words they use, write in a way that they understand.
Every industry has its own terminology, abbreviations and lingo which is fine to use when you are writing for an audience from within the same industry but not if they aren’t.
You want your target audience to understand what you are saying easily and clearly. Potential clients won’t invest time on content that takes a lot of effort to understand. There is always something else for them to focus on.
If you know who you are talking to, what to talk to them about and how to talk to them, then your content will be a much better fit and people are more likely to work with you or buy from you.
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