The “Secret Sauce” Behind Customer-focused Content

You’ve got a great product or service. You have a strong understanding of the problem your organization is trying to fix, and you know there’s a need for it. Now you just want to share this with your audience. So how do you do this effectively??

Content is great, but there’s a lot of it. Creating content for your customers, as opposed to just selling your product or service to the masses, helps it reach an already-engaged audience.?

One way to create customer-focused content is to personalize it for different audience segments. AI personalization can be a great tool for this, helping to curate product or service suggestions to people based on data. But AI only gets you to a certain point. You have the power to add some “secret sauce” to create content that really resonates.?

What is this “secret sauce,” you ask? It’s simpler than you think: knowing your customers.?

Learning about your customers

What do you truly know about your customers and leads? Probably the company name and industry, the name and title of your contact person, and the product or service they are buying (or potentially buying).?

And your team may use AI to gather data points such as what they look at on your website, which emails they open and how and if they interact with your brand on social media.?

But what do you know about them as people? What gets them excited? What do they care about? Where do they live, and how does the location impact them? What current industry events or issues are relevant to them?

Spend time talking to your customers and getting to know them. Not every interaction has to be a sales pitch. Once you get to know your customers and leads on a personal level, you can segment them into groups contextually instead of doing so by generic user attributes like title and role.? This is particularly important for B2B companies, who can learn more about individual leaders behind larger organizations.?

Personalizing content for contextually segmented audiences

Now that you’ve got better segments of customers, it’s time to tailor your content. Here are a few ways content can be personalized:

Message

You want your message to resonate with your audience. When you know what your audience likes and cares about, tailoring your message to different groups is easy. Discuss your latest sustainability efforts for customers who care strongly about the environment. For customers with a strong interest in technology, you may want to share news on AI advancements in their industry.?

Small details like word choice can make a big difference when it comes to personalized messages. Explore adding small, non-work-related snippets to your content. Sports enthusiasts, for example, may appreciate a nod to current events in their region (think World Series, Euros, or March Madness). Movie lovers might appreciate the mention of an upcoming film. You want your message to feel relatable to them as individuals.?

Graphics

Graphics are a great way to help people engage with your content, but they need to hit the mark. Different audiences gravitate to different things. Some like feel-good graphics that are simple and nice to look at, while other audiences (engineers, for example) prefer CAD drawings and detailed specifications of everything. Others respond best to a meme. Tailoring your visuals draws in your audience and makes your content more engaging—and even more shareable.

Tone, jargon and diction

Your audience has different preferences in how you (and your content) communicate with them. So when you’re creating content for different audience segments, think about if they want:?

• To share pleasantries or get straight to the point?
• Formal or informal writing?
• Technical terms or colloquial names?
• A humorous or serious tone?

Now, all your content should be aligned with your organization's brand. Just be sure to consider what each segment looks for in communication and adjust accordingly.?

Platforms

You’ve got some great content carefully crafted for each audience segment. Now it's important to share that content in a format and medium that they respond to. Start by figuring out what formats your audience uses to consume information. Do they want to read something, look at pictures, watch a video – or maybe do a combination of these things??

Think about which platforms they may use to share this content. If your audience wants long-form academic content, consider directing them to a resource center on your website with blog posts, research studies, or white papers. Others may prefer instructional or explainer videos, making YouTube your go-to. Also, think about the various social media platforms people use: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, Houzz, and so on. Each platform serves a unique purpose and, oftentimes, a unique demographic.

All in all, your customers will always be more receptive to marketing that feels like it’s personally designed just for them. Data is a great starting point, but in this age of technology and AI, the secret sauce is still the human connection.