How do you keep content relevant?

A marketer recently asked: “How do you keep content relevant? People get on to the next thing so fast and have lots of info thrown at them.” It’s among the?Top 100 Questions?on content marketing.

Americans see upwards of?5,000 ads per day.?Add that to the messages we see via text, email, television, social media, etc., and it’s an astonishing amount of information to absorb.

No wonder it’s increasingly difficult for marketers to create content that cuts through the clutter to gain, and keep, attention from potential buyers.

In good news, there are several things marketers can do to ensure their content is relevant and captures buyers’ attention.

Ensure your buyer personas are up to date

Most marketers have good insight into their buyer personas, but are those personas up to date? I’ve worked with several clients who, once they created their buyer personas, never thought about updating them.

Times change! Do your buyers still get their information from the same sources they used when you first created your buyer personas?

I recommend reviewing your buyer personas at least once a year. In fact, take buyer personas one step further and create a?buyer empathy map.

A buyer empathy map delves deeper than a buyer persona because it also asks where your buyers spend their spare time, what they watch, and what they listen to. This forces marketers to really get inside their clients’ minds, helping them create more relevant content.

Answer buyer questions

One of the best ways to keep your content relevant is to ensure it answers your buyers’ real questions.

If you know what your potential customers want to know, you can create content that exactly meets their needs.

Not sure what your buyers are asking? My partner,?George Stenitzer, offers 14 ways to capture customer questions in this?blog.

Once you’ve captured your buyers’ questions, you can prioritize them and begin creating content to answer them.

Hook your audience in 7 seconds

Now that you know which content is relevant to your buyers, you need to keep that content on track. Use a?one-page Message Map?to keep content clear, concise, and consistent.

With a Message Map, everyone on your team sings the same song and can create consistent content that’s relevant to your target audience. Use the Message Map to guide you to always?keep your content marketing on message.

Keep your content benefit-focused

As you create content, hook your audience and keep them by stating the benefit first. Everyone who views your content is thinking “What’s in it for me?” as they read.

For example, instead of “Click here to learn more” consider “For 3 ways we can help you, click here.”

To ensure your content is really hitting the mark with buyers, conduct?A/B testing.

It’s also a good idea to analyze your headlines to make sure they resonate with readers. In addition to telling you the emotional marketing value of your headlines, this free?headline analyzer?measures whether a headline has empathetic, intellectual, or spiritual appeal. This can help you create headlines that match your audience’s needs.

Keep your content fresh

Buyer questions tend to change over time, so design a regular process for updating your content. Sometimes that will mean updating a blog post or web page, and sometimes it will mean creating entirely new content to satisfy buyer needs.

Make your content easy to find

Make sure the content that tells your buyers what’s in it for them is immediately visible on your website. Can site visitors instantly tell what your company does and how you can help them?

Make sure the content that will best hook your buyers is not so far down on your page that viewers have to scroll down to see it.

Your empathy map should provide clues to where your buyers get their content, so promote it on the social media sites they use, the websites where they get their news, and through?search engine marketing?(SEM).

“How do you keep content relevant?” is one of the Top 100 Questions on content marketing.

You’ll find the answers?here.

For more tips on content marketing and communications, subscribe to our?blog.