What's a Reasonable Content Marketing Goal?

Last week I came across a post on LinkedIn that took my breath away.

The author, who shall remain nameless, argued that the goal of a company’s marketing/communications team should be to become their customers’ favorite destination on the internet.?

Think about that another way: instead of going to ESPN or The Athletic to follow their favorite sports team, or to Instagram to see what their friends did over the weekend, or to any number of popular news and culture sites, this author wants their customers to be completely obsessed with their enterprise software. They want “company.com/blog” to be the hottest, most popular media property on the Internet — the Met gala of online content.

I’m here to tell you today why this line of thinking is:

1. Unhinged
2. Emblematic of some larger issues
3. Completely unproductive for your company

Let’s start with the simple reality: your customers will never fan over your cloud security solution or enterprise accounting software in the same way they fan over Taylor Swift or the New York Yankees. It is insane to want them to.

When our goals are unmoored from reality

What drives someone to set a completely unrealistic marketing goal for their organization?

When we look at this mindset in the broader context of Silicon Valley and recent startup trends, it starts to make more sense. During the cash-rich era of the last few years, companies weren’t encouraged to ground their goals in reality.?

• It wasn’t enough to develop a good, functional VR solution for remote work: Meta wanted users “to be able to do almost anything you can imagine” in the metaverse.?
• It wasn’t enough to build a more user-friendly mobile payments solution: the founder of Clinkle said, “What we’re trying to do here is fundamentally change how people trade. Every human being, every day, has to do this.” (How’s that for thinking big? The world’s eight billion people all need to be using Clinkle every single day.)?
• And it wasn’t enough to make reasonable improvements to blood testing technology: Theranos claimed it could run dozens of lab tests “from a single drop of blood.”

In the era of easy money, founders were incentivized to think of huge, outlandish, world-altering goals. If you’re stuck in that mindset, it would make sense to try to turn your product update into the Eras Tour. But the era of easy money is over — at least for now — and even when the VC floodgates open back up, it would be more productive to set ambitious but attainable goals both for your marketing program and for the business itself.

Redirecting our focus

I’m not saying it’s bad to think big. But “big” needs to be placed in its proper context to avoid being unproductive. I’ve set the ambitious but attainable goal of running a marathon in 2024. I am not betting the house on running faster than Eliud Kipchoge.

If we boil the goal from that unhinged LinkedIn post down to its essence, they’re basically saying, “we want our customers to be obsessed with our product.”

What’s the reasonable, attainable version of that goal? “We want our customers to be enthusiastic evangelists for our product.”

As always, it comes down to value. If you can answer “yes” to these three questions, you’re on the right track to achieving the reasonable goal:

1. Are you delivering value to your customers?
2. Are you communicating clearly so they understand the value they’re receiving?
3. Do they have channels available to them to celebrate that value and share their experiences?

A marketing or communications team can’t solve the first challenge — that’s down to the product. But numbers two and three should be the absolute focus, the meat and potatoes of your efforts.

Help the customer understand the value they’re receiving:

• Using case studies and blog posts, provide examples of how customers are seeing real business value as a result of using your product
• Develop the operational content that will help customers increase their use of your product and maximize the return they’re seeing on their investment

Provide a diverse set of channels for them to celebrate your product and share their experiences:

• Establish a guest blog program for customers to share their successes
• Publish social content and encourage users to engage in the comments
• Host events and webinars in which real people will speak on behalf of your product

None of these ideas are groundbreaking. It’s a matter of keeping your eye on the ball — avoiding the temptation of trying to turn your AI tool into the San Francisco 49ers. It’s about fostering and channeling enthusiasm rather than obsession.

2024’s hottest trend in marketing? A healthy dose of reality.