Content isn’t King; Customer-centric Content is King
Hey, marketers: you know how storytelling is all the rage these days? Everyone’s got a story to tell, and everyone is just dying to hear it, right?
Well, not *exactly*.
Yes, you have a story to tell, and it might be a good one. And your customers would love to feel like they’re enjoying cozy campfire conversations with you, sipping craft beer, and swapping experiences. But that’s not what most online content sounds like today.
In some sectors (we’re talking to you, SaaS), the storytelling craze has gone the wrong way. For starters, quantity still seems to be the marketer’s leading strategy over quality. Intellectually, everyone knows quality and good storytelling matter more, but they get sucked in by the promises of SEO and Google — that more content means more visibility.
On top of that, companies are just so excited to put themselves in the middle of the plot—to effectively dominate the conversation without any interest in listening to what their customers have to say. Instead of hanging with pals, suddenly, your customers are in a dark hall staring at a stage with the spotlight solely on you, and all they hear is:
“Look at what we’ve built. Gaze upon our awesome technology. Check out all our features. Hear about our future plans and all the challenges we overcame to get here. Listen with rapt attention to the lengthy history of how we came to be!”
Warning: this self-centered trash is only interesting to the company presenting it. Everyone else is rolling their eyes.
April Sunshine Hawkins, a workshop facilitator and podcaster, summarized it well: “Everybody wakes up the hero of their own story. Your customers, the people you’re trying to draw in…the story needs to be about them.”
In other words, no matter how shiny and graphic-laden and buzzword-filled and heavily branded your content might be, it won’t matter to your buyer if it doesn’t have anything to do with them. It’s your story, not theirs. So why should they care?
The answer is: they shouldn’t. Until your customers can find themselves in the center of the story, they’re much less likely to turn the page.
So…what is customer-centric content?
Customer-centric content speaks in a deep and knowledgeable way about every facet of the customer journey. It asks questions like:
• What are your prospects’ and customers’ business challenges?
• What are their day-to-day pain points?
• Where are their industries headed, and how are they affecting them?
• Who are their stakeholders?
• What trends, technologies, or regulations are disrupting their business processes — for better or worse?
• Who is making the decisions in their organizations, and on what criteria are the decisions being made?
Customer-centric content doesn’t stop here. Once a prospect becomes a customer, you need to ask yourself:
• What’s their actual experience with your products or services?
• What problems aren’t being solved yet?
• What solutions exceeded all expectations?
• Have your customers seen a return on investment, and at what point?
• How can you best address their future needs?
You can answer these questions in virtually any format you want — case studies, email campaigns, eBooks, videos, or web copy. The style doesn’t matter nearly as much as the substance.
Your content should help prospective customers recognize themselves in your world, feel a visceral need for your products or services, and feel genuinely smarter because of the knowledge you’re sharing.
Here’s where to start:
• Offer useful insights that can be adopted immediately
• Recognize that your target audience is well-informed and speak to them accordingly
• Limit the self-promotion (remember: it’s not about you)
• Lead with quality — no fluff, hype, or endlessly recycled soundbites
• Give a clear call to action
Why is customer-centric content valuable?
Digital content marketing exploded in the early years of this century. Everybody and their sister began banging out volumes of content through blogs, ebooks, articles, and later podcasts, webinars, and videos.
With everyone so eager to establish an online presence, it became obvious early on that to stand out from the crowd, you had to produce content — and produce a lot of it.
But things went south in a hurry. Remember keyword stuffing and all-but-plagiarized blog posts?
More recently, marketers have realized that the best way to stand out and provide truly relevant perspectives is to write with the customer’s voice in mind.
Content marketing that can rise above a company’s own ego and speak directly to the customer — in a language and style they understand — continues to deliver the greatest impact.
Seventy-four percent of companies claim content marketing increases lead generation. And leads are good…but leads that like what they read and get actionable, relatable insights from your content are even better. Now expand that customer-centric content throughout the buying process, so prospects are exposed to the proof of your product’s value every step of the way, and you’ll increase the likelihood of a sale — and the likelihood of a dedicated customer to boot.
The message is that customer-centric content doesn’t just convert prospects into leads; it builds brand loyalty, customer engagement, and profit. It helps buyers understand their challenges, the options available to them for solving them, and examples of other companies solving them with your product or service.
In Part Two of this series, we’ll focus on the trap of brand-centric content and how to transition away from it.
In the meantime, if you’d like to launch a full-scale customer-centric content strategy, we can help. Schedule a consultation.