The power of targeting your content

If your business is one of the majority whose product offering can appeal to many, how do you pitch your content to attract audiences from different target markets?

If you were selling oranges for example, it might be helpful for the orange buyer to understand why they should choose your oranges rather than someone else’s.

To start with, you need to understand who your orange buyers are.

One group could be an athletics club for example, who are interested in the re-hydration qualities of your fruit. Another group could be a health club, keen to find the most nutritious oranges they can buy. Then there are parents looking to buy oranges that their kids can easily peel.

Essentially, you’re selling the same product, yet your buyers have different needs that must be satisfied if they are to decide it’s right for them.

Hence the power of target marketing. Generic content risks being ‘vanilla’ i.e. with little by way of interesting ‘hooks’ to reel your buyers in.

In the marketing industry we talk about business verticals – different market sectors that have different needs and priorities yet happen to be in the market for the same product.

So, how can your copy reflect those different needs?

By talking directly to your audience, using a language they understand, and hitting the specific pain points of each sector, you’re showing those buyers that you appreciate their needs, and that you can provide exactly what it is they are looking for.

With content, very rarely does one size fit all. And the more that you can pitch your content to specific target groups, the more likely it is you’ll receive enquiries.

Time for a little more sophistication

It’s good to know who your customers are, and where they are in the buying cycle. Have they bought from you before, enquired but never bought, or do they need educating about all the wonderful reasons why they should buy from you?

Existing customers may appreciate news from you about new products or add-ons to the products they’ve already bought. And they may like to receive a voucher off their next purchase as an incentive to buy again. Or you may wish to include an early bird discount to recent enquirers to push them towards a purchase if they are procrastinating.

New customers may be easier to convert if they are eligible for an introductory offer.

You get the idea. And hopefully get the gist of why targeting your content can add a strong commercial advantage to your business.

Who would you like to do business with?

It might sound like an obvious question but if you’ve an ideal client in mind, check out your online resources to see if they are pitched to attract interest from this group. Perhaps you’d like business from abroad, from a particular sector such as charities, retail or online businesses only.

Take a little time to think about which clients could award contracts that would really make a difference to your business, and create specific content that will draw them in.

Use blogs to target your different markets too, and signpost to those blogs on Twitter using the sector hashtag that’s relevant to the content. It will start to put you on the radar of the businesses you’d like to have a conversation with, whilst showing them that you’re a serious provider in their field.