How companies can capture consumer mind-space through content

Companies must compete with preset notions within the mind of the consumer. These notions might be a product of the competitive products or solutions. These notions can exist simply because they have always existed. People get used to the way they do something. Brands across the world either cater to these notions or try to break them. Breaking notions requires an investment of time and money in reeducating the consumers. It’s a high-risk, high-value strategy. It is often restricted to big enterprises such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon. They benchmark these notions. However, they began somewhere. They once broke their first notion.

It’s hard for companies to follow their strategy as it requires uniqueness and innovative thinking. But it is possible. If the value proposition of a company is unique, the strategy around breaking its first notion can also be unique. This is where occupying the consumer mind-space comes in.

A consumer (whether in a B2B or B2C market space) experiences countless advertisements and pitches. Each of their need can be fulfilled by at least 3 brands. However, the consumer would not spend evaluating their options each time they make a buying decision. They would rather make a short-hand to remember these brands.

The first brand to come to mind when they think of their need is what they remember. Google is Search. Coca-Cola is Soft Drink. Amazon is Online Shopping.

Some brands cater to a more experiential need, such as a Bentley or a Tinder. These needs can be utilitarian, aspirational, or societal. Each need is connected to multiple emotions. It’s easier for a company’s brand to first relate to an emotion they want to connect to, and then eventually build on 'owning' the mind-space of that need. Here, effective content management can level the playing field for them.

Identify brand or content identity

Map the business value of the company as it would be (and eventually, should be) perceived by the most desirable client. If the company offers a social networking platform, then identify where does this platform create value for the end-consumer.

Would the person use it for social or corporate interactions? Would it be a Twitter or a LinkedIn? In networking, would it be Tinder or a Shapr?

Identify the mind space you would want your company to occupy. It can be as simple as, “We help people share their daily insights and observations with the world”, rather than “We are a content posting and sharing platform”.

Define the brand just like you may have previously defined your product or service. Then create the perfect content structure or framework to communicate this brand value. Which channel would you use to reach your ideal consumer? Where and how do they spend their leisure time? How can your few words create their maximum impact? It would happen when your content and brand identity are simple and easy to digest. This is your introduction and it must be ‘perfect’.

When you state your brand identity, you are creating a perception and assumption in the mind of your audience. Moving ahead, your audience will view your conversation while they build on that initial assumption about your brand. (This is where content consistency comes in. We will talk about it at a later point.)

Create corporate language and tone

Once you identify the brand and content identify, the next step is to define the corporate language and tone. As a rule, always build your communication strategy around the end-consumer’s profile. Many companies create their strategy around what they want people to hear. Always structure it around what the end-consumer would understand.

Corporate language is inherent to the geographic and demographic cohort of your audience. If your audience is working millennials living out of New York, then your language would be easy and exciting which first engages them, then helps create a relationship, then delivers the message, and then closes it with actionable insights. These are some of the basic elements of content creation. They differ in context and placement with the change in the target audience. Other elements are to create proof points, create relevancy, deliver insights, etc.

The structure of these elements depends on the attention span and interest levels of your audience.

Corporate language sets these elements in place to make your brand identity and product value proposition clear and easily understandable for your audience. The method of communication also affects this strategy, but it’s still governed by the traits of the target audience.

Tone is the style and fluidity of your language. It is the best tool to make your content and information understandable. If you meet your prospect for lunch, the way you speak to them would be different compared to an office meeting. The nature of the meeting defines the tone. Similarly, the nature of the content interactions (for example, are they reading it while they travel, or are they searching for some specific information set). The idea is to make the content easily consumable without distractions or extensive skimming.

There is an easier way to understand the tone of content to use in a situation. Define how the information should be received.

Do you want a one-to-many information dispersion like a speech? Or do you want a one-on-one interaction, like a friendly conversation?

Do you want it to be like a presentation to your clients? Or Do you want it to be a motivational discourse?

What type of emotion do you want to infuse in the reader?

These are simple questions that can easily set your tone.

Ensure content consistency across communication platforms

As I pointed out before, content consistency is critical for your brand identity. Your tone can vary from one mode of communication method to another, but your overall communication strategy must be consistent.

What does it mean to be consistent with your communication?

Companies have multiple touch-points with their end-consumer: through marketing, sales, or fulfillment. If it is an e-commerce company, the content touch-points would be the advertisements; the information of the website; the detail of a commodity on a page; the payment information; the delivery information; the actual communication between the consumer and the brand (which has been bought), the website, and the logistics provider; the delivery authentication; the after-sales support; and the customer retention mechanism. The overarching message across all points must be consistent.

You are creating a brand. You must have a consistent voice for your brand. This voice is made up of the brand identity, language, and tone.

Don’t use multiple voices to communicate from different touchpoints. This would distract the audience. Even when you interact successfully, you are still losing out on creating a lasting effect on the consumer. They would probably forget about you or replace you with someone else. The reason is that you failed to build and capitalize on the mind space that you had initially created.

Engage audiences through multi-layered content formats

Everything you want to say cannot be said at one time or in one format. Break down your communication into pockets. These pockets can be used for your social media pages, your website, your presentations, your proposals, or your product manuals. Each pocket of information would have a purpose. A social media pocket would capture the attention of the audience, but it won’t necessarily convert them. The website pocket would educate the audience. The proposal would address a specific use case (and furthermore).

Multi-layered content also includes different types of content. It’s not just the written word. Now content is consumed in different styles. There are infographics, videos, GIFs, adverts, etc. Right now, one of the most important and smallest pockets of information is the push notification messages. These messages are a virtual pop-up in the mind. They have to generate direct value or else they would be blocked.

Multi-layered content formats give a diverse and credible picture to the audience. This is especially essential for companies.

This is just scratching the surface. The next part of content development is the business process end.

Content management can increase sales qualified leads, increase conversion rates, decrease sales cycles, and even increase the possible ticket size of the sale. Effective content management can bring a consumer from the level of basic awareness to brand evangelism. More on this later