5 Step Formula to creating impactful content

At the core of any content marketing strategy is persuading your target audience to covert to sales opportunities. One of the popular formulas is “Attention — Interest — Desire — Action”. This a quite a popular formula, however it tends to underestimate the complex role of other steps involved in between.

So If we were to rewrite this persuasion formula for the new normal what would that look like?

First step is to understand who you want to speak to? What is that which matters most to them? What problems of theirs would you be solving with your content? So at the core of this step would be to develop “Empathy” for your customer.  

The next step would be to build a “Connection” with your audience. Focus on building a connection that fosters long term relationship. This can be achieved by combining content that speaks about the problem the audience care about which talking about it a position of shared values.

The third step involves building a content path that focuses on being highly “Useful”. It would help to ask yourself- What kinds of content could you create that your audience would find valuable? What problems could you solve? Are there any quick wins I can enable them with? What Objections could you address? What risks could you help them foresee? Focus on building thought leadership with your content.  

The fourth step would be to introduce few "Offers" that can encourage them to try your solution or offering. This could be free trials for limited period. If there are any assumptions, beliefs you would like to address for your audience, do that at this stage. Ensure your content builds a strong business case for your solution to solve the customer’s problems. This needs to be backed with solid research and understanding around what their key desires are and not what you perceive them to be!

Fifth and final step would be to focus on “Sustaining” the relationship. It’s always great to have your customers do repeat business with you and you both grow together. Towards that, focus on “Delivering value” over time and keep looking for new ways to serve that audience with your content.

So with these steps you can ensure that your content is capturing more mindshare and thereby more market share. Working with a content marketing specialist can help organisations gain better ROI for their content marketing investments.