Creating great content takes time, resources, and creativity. Before investing in creating a piece of content, take a step back and determine what will make your content successful. Marketers are increasingly asked to demonstrate ROI and prove their value to the organization - what better way to do that than with remarkable content that generates real results?
Ask yourself these three questions before embarking on your content journey. You'll establish a strong foundation for your piece and ensure it meets your goals!
1. Who is your audience?
This is the most important question marketers can ask themselves before creating a new piece of content. Who is this resource for? Who cares about it and will pay with their information to download it? Defining your buyer personas is one step in the right direction. You should know your audience well - what voice or tone resonates with them; do they appreciate humor or not? Answering these questions will help you decide if your content should be silly or serious; fun or functional.
2. What problem does your audience need solved?
This is the next most important question for successful content. The most successful content marketing solves the specific problems our prospects face - it doesn't shill our product, it doesn't focus on our brand story, and it doesn't try to be everything.
Think about the three problems your product or service solves. Do you help your customers save time? Your content should do that, too. Do you help customers create engaging content? Your content should do the very same thing. For some brands, the "problem" might be boredom, and the solution is a cat video. That's great content, tailored to your audience.
3. What is your goal?
Finally, every great piece of content has a specific goal. Is this a lead generation piece? Looking for better brand awareness? Collecting email subscribers? Define your specific goals up front so you can design your content and your distribution and promotion strategies around meeting that goal.
If your goal is lead generation, for example, you'll want to make sure you include some way to capture lead data (like a form on a landing page), and you should decide how to promote the asset to collect net new names. The piece itself should also be designed to appeal to your buyer personas so they'll fill in your lead forms and enter your sales funnel.
Go Make Some Killer Content
You now have the tools you need to start executing your next remarkable piece of content - and seeing great results. Get going!
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