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Imagine two rabbits in front of you.
You want to catch both, so you lunge for both. You struggle to commit to either as they run away in different directions, eventually ending up with no rabbits.
The purpose of this story (from Gary Keller's One Thing book) is to illuminate the power of focusing on getting one thing done at a time. The one thing that will make the next "thing" easier.
With content strategy, that one thing is knowing who you're creating content for and the progress they aim to make. Without that, it's (nearly) impossible to succeed with content.
Why? People want to feel seen. And the best content mirrors us and helps us make progress.
That progress could be getting through a Friday night alone with a funny Netflix comedy show. Or it could be an educational webinar on email marketing.
The first thing you need to do when creating a content strategy is define the who.
One of the ironies with content is that it's not always created for those making the buying decision. Usually, it is. But sometimes, you create content for a group that will influence those making the decisions. Not those with the signature on the contract.
This is common in software, with one example being Drift. A B2B company that created the category of conversational marketing (a.k.a. chatbot software). Rather than make content for CMOs who buy their product, they created content for marketers who had the keys to the website as the software was built for websites. They’ve since started creating more content for CMO’s as they built out a different (new) category.
Another example could be if you sell sales training. Sure, the VP of Sales or another adjacent title is the decision maker, but do they need to be who you create content for? You could create content for the sales reps under the VP who would champion your training to be universal for the org. By gaining trust with those under the decision maker (I.e., creating content for), you were able to influence them and produce better results. And you also likely have more insights and easily adopted strategies for those earlier in their sales journey.
Sometimes, when you create content for the decision maker, it does not resonate as they might not care about the features or the practical progress your product can help them make. Or, which is common, you will inflate the progress you help achieve to appeal to those decision-makers. Resulting in content and marketing that is at best unhelpful and bullshit at worst.
First principle: the best people to create content for are those who could benefit most and have an influence on the decision-maker.
In the next section, we cover this and more, but we must remember that content is only one player in the marketing and sales arsenal. For some decision-makers, they may need direct sales or in-person engagement. Invest in content to educate the influencers within the org while using other means (sales) to reach the decision-makers.
Now, let's cover some tactics to uncover the who and what progress they strive to make.
Here are a few strategies for how to figure this out. But before that, let's discuss what I'm not discussing here: A faceless persona.
We've all seen the worksheets for defining your ideal customer profile. While cute and somewhat useful, they're ultimately unhelpful. They give the false belief that defining the WHO is easy and that all I need to do is "color within the lines." The truth is that figuring out WHO is one of the most challenging pieces of the puzzle.