Focus on Your Audience, not Your Products and Services

Although you are selling (ultimately) products and/or services, your main focus, when it comes to content marketing, should be on your target audience. You need to develop relationships with your target audience members that are solid and mutually beneficial. Having the ability (and the eventuality) to sell your products and/or services will come after you have been able to connect with those people.

How to focus on the people

If you are not used to thinking in terms of the people, it may take a little getting used to. The first thing that you have to determine is exactly what topics to write about. In large part, that will be driven by your target audience members. They will have no problem telling you what they want to read about if you ask them. Of course, that is also one way to solidify your relationship. Of course, your ultimate goal is to sell your products and/or services. However, the journey that you must take to get up to that point will be filled with all sorts of things before you get anywhere near selling anything to anyone.

Of course, that is also one way to solidify your relationship. Of course, your ultimate goal is to sell your products and/or services. However, the journey that you must take to get up to that point will be filled with all sorts of things before you get anywhere near selling anything to anyone.

It is important that you don’t get caught up on coming up with topics for your content. Instead, you should try to put yourself in the shoes of your target audience members and figure out what they would like to read about based on the issues that they are experiencing with their businesses.

The reality is that if you write (and write well, of course) on topics that help your target audience members, they will keep coming back to you for more and more information. That is exactly how you establish a relationship together. It is very important that you think in terms of considering the needs and wants of your target audience before anything else. After you have established that, you can then concentrate on showing those people exactly what you are capable of accomplishing for them. 

Your target audience comes first

As you are writing, remember to always keep your target audience in mind first. It won’t do anyone any good if you write content that is not relevant to the experiences of your target audience members or to what they are experiencing. If your content doesn’t resonate with them, they won’t come back for more and that is exactly what you want them to do. Another negative result that may occur is that they won’t share your content with other people who they know and trust.

Another reason to focus on your target audience members instead of your products and/or services is so that your sphere of influence is as wide (yet effective) as it can possibly be. If you only write about your own products and/or services, you will probably run out of content ideas rather quickly (at least, more quickly than you will if you have a broader range of topics). That would definitely not be a good thing.

If you don’t have a varied enough list of topics about which to write, your content will not be as exciting and compelling as it should be and you will have the potential to lose target audience members. The last thing that you want to do is to run out of what to discuss. That is a sure way to lose readers.

Customize your content to your audience and offer great benefit

Once you have determined who your target audience is, it will probably be easier to come up with a variety of relevant topics. A great way to get ideas is by looking at the content that your competitors are sharing. Also, pay close attention to what your influencers are saying. You have chosen them as your influencers for good reasons. You should leverage that.

The other advantage that you will have from reading the content of your competitors and influencers is how to write really effective content that other people will enjoy reading. As you are focusing on your target audience members, you should make sure that the content that you are posting is not promotional. Nobody wants a “hard sell.” The tone of your blogs should be informational, informative, compelling, and exciting but never promotional.

Your initial objective is to build relationships with your target audience members that are strong and enduring. You want to get to know them and you want them to get to know you and to get to know your brand. The more valuable your content is to them, the more they will want to interact with you on may different levels. You want them to become interested in the many aspects of your business that are so important to you.

Conclusion

Being creative and having the ability to come up with a long list of exciting topics is not only good for your target audience but it is also really good for you and for your business. The more varied your content topics, the more people will want to interact with you. Those interactions will lead to stimulating discussions. Those discussions can also potentially lead to more and more fresh, innovative topics.

However, you should keep in mind that your work will call upon you to be flexible when it comes to the best way to relate to your target audience. In order to succeed, you must have a clear understanding of what your target audience wants and needs at all times.

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