Creating Foolproof Content Marketing That Customers Love

Creating Foolproof Content Marketing That Customers Love 2

Table of Contents

3 How to use this workbook

4 Content marketing as competitive advantage

9 Content strategy audit

14 Goal setting & overview

16 Audience insights

20 Personas

27 Content planning

30 Voice

31 Content creation & calendars

32 Tools

33 Measurement

35 Need help?

37 Notes


Welcome to the workshop! I’m excited to have you join me as we explore how to create content marketing your customers will love.

Today the customer is the boss. You don’t win with price or offering. You win with great customer experiences. The problem with most companies’ content strategies? They don’t create valuable experiences and their messaging doesn’t resonate with the people they’re trying to reach. The result? Customers don’t care what most brands are saying. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I’m here to help you craft content that speaks to what your specific customers care about most.

I know how busy you are. I wanted to create a workshop that would give you the space to think and tackle the tough questions that can be difficult to carve out time for at the office. My goal is to help you get to the customer insights you need effectively so you can launch a content marketing campaign quickly and test your way to success.

Need buy in? This workbook is loaded with stats and articles to help you make the case for customer-centric content marketing to senior management.

Need support for implementation? You’ll find step-by-step processes, tools and templates you can use when you’re back in the office to create content marketing customized to your particular customers and business needs.

Let’s get started!

Cheers,

Leigh George, PhD

HOW TO USE THIS WORKBOOK


Don’t raise your voice. Improve your argument. People hate unwanted marketing. It’s viewed as noise and an assault on their senses. They do everything they can to block, skip or ignore the 5,000+ brand messages a day that interrupt what they are trying to do.

Frequency is important but to differentiate yourself and grow your business, you need brand communications that are welcome, persuasive and spur action. Instead of interrupting a consumer’s experience, your marketing should BE the experience they want to have.

CONTENT MARKETING AS COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE


The customer is the boss. Today customers have more access to information about a business’s products and services than ever before. Customers can easily share their experiences with brands online. And if anything goes wrong, a complaint can escalate to a viral sensation across social and traditional media.

You can’t just talk about yourself, your benefits and your features. You have to give consumers a reason to care. You have to offer relevant and valuable content.

Need to convince your boss of the value of customer-centric content marketing? Create a custom case with benefits outlined in Why Customer-Centric Marketing Matters.


The top 3 things that make content effective:

AUDIENCE RELEVANCE ENGAGING & COMPELLING STORYTELLING

TRIGGERS A RESPONSE/ACTION

58%

LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community

57% 54%

https://university.custora.com/for-marketers/customer-centric-marketing/basic/the-benefits-of-customer-centric-marketing

https://www.slideshare.net/hschulze/b2b-content-marketing-report-40688285


All marketing is content marketing.To create a memorable experience your brand must connect with what consumers care about.

Everything you create as a marketer is content marketing. No matter how large or how small, from a website to a mobile ad, any way you choose to communicate with your audience is content marketing.

What can set your brand apart from other brands is to take advantage of the opportunity to offer value in the content you market.

Most brands talk about themselves—their products, services, what makes them special. That isn’t content customers care about or value and they’ll tune it out.


What DO your customers care about?


The battle for attention is fierce.Consumers demand more for their time and attention.


PageFair 2017 Global Adblock Report

MILLION

>615devices now have

ad-blocking software.

Statista

54%of all TV households in

the country had a Netflix subscription in 2017.

SJ InsightsADS/DAYADS/DAY2,000 5,000In 1984, a person saw an average of

By 2014, we saw around

TrackMaven

35%

17%

In 2015, branded content output climbed

but content engagement decreased by


Content marketing as competitive advantage.The brands that win are empathetic.

By putting your customers before yourself, you:

• Give people a reason to pay attention to what you say• Create a common bond• Establish trust• Market more effectively

Companies using a human-centered approach to innovation

outperform the market.


Design Management Institute’s Design Value Index Study, 2015

2 O%over S&P 500


Do you have a content strategy?Now that we understand what makes for compelling content marketing, let’s evaluate how well you understand the needs and motivations of your customers and incorporate that insight into your marketing.

Evaluating what you’re currently doing will help you to:

• Pull back from your day to day tactics and see the big picture

• Evaluate effectiveness and performance• Quickly identify what’s working and what could be

improved• Create a snapshot of where you are now so you an get

a sense of where you need to be

CONTENT STRATEGY AUDIT


AUDIENCES

KEY MESSAGES BY AUDIENCE

Let’s create a snapshot of what you’re currently doing to establish a baseline you can build on.Use the chart below and on the next page to document the audiences you’re currently targeting, your messaging strategy for each audience and the role of each channel in your overall marketing mix.



AUDIENCES

SOCIAL(PAID & ORGANIC)

SEARCH(PAID & ORGANIC)

BLOG, PODCAST

WEBSITE

EARNED MEDIA

EMAIL

OTHER

How do you use channels? What type of messaging and content do you apply to each? Why?



Who do you market to? Do you know them beyond a purely demographic description? Are you using personas?

What is your brand story? Can you share it in 4 messages or less?

Do you take a position or have a perspective on something important to your audience?—doesn’t have to be political! If yes, what is it?

Describe your marketing messaging. Do you talk more about yourself or focus more on your customers?

Describe your brand personality. Does it reflect your brand?

Describe your marketing strategy in a single sentence. Does it integrate all your marketing channels? Are your communications coordinated across channels? Or are the channels planned separately?

Now that we have a baseline, let’s look at your marketing another way. Use this criteria to evaluate your content strategy and approach to message development.



What did you learn?


What are your strengths?

What are your weaknesses?


Why does this opportunity matter to your organization?

What barriers get in the way of achieving this? What constraints do you need to work within?

What does success look like?

What metrics will you use to measure success?

GOAL SETTING & OVERVIEW

Why are you interested in content marketing? Now that you’ve audited your current practices, let’s apply your learnings to help you define goals for human-centered content marketing.

A NOTE ABOUT MEASUREMENT: Keep it simple and achieveable. Nothing is perfect out of the box. Instead of perfection strive to develop something you can launch efficiently, test and iterate your way to success. Your customers aren’t static and you shouldn’t be either. By continually evaluating performance you can tweak and adjust based on the insights you gather from customers.What is your area of opportunity? What are you hoping to achieve?

FOR EXAMPLE: Make your marketing more relevant to customers, position your brand or change perception in a certain way, improve your sales process


GOAL SETTING & OVERVIEW

No one likes to set off on a journey without knowing where you’re headed.Let’s use your goals to build a foolproof content marketing plan customized to your company’s unique needs. Your plan will be made up of the components below.

We’ll use exercises to dive deep into each component. The exercises will help you understand how to use each component and customize it based on your specific audiences and goals. I’ve also included tips and tools along the way to set you up for success.

Use “think data” to develop a rich understanding of customer needs.

Craft psychographic profiles of your customers.

Develop a point of view with messaging around your customers’ struggles and a personality that humanizes your brand.

Apply an “outside in” approach to content development by putting your customers’ needs ahead of your own.

Evaluate and iterate to success.

Audience Insights Messaging & VoicePersonasContent Creation & Calendars Measurement


AUDIENCE INSIGHTS

Go deep.The starting point for any content marketing program should be the development of audience insights. To develop content your audience will value, you need to understand what is important to them and how you help them tackle a challenge or make their life easier.

Big data is a hot topic but a purely data-driven approach to understanding customer needs only tells you where customers have been and what they have done in the past. It does not reveal why the customers acted the way they did.

To understand customer attitudes, motivations, beliefs and the trade offs they’d rather not be making, you need to go deep. Unlike the quantitative approach most rely on in our data-abundant business environment, you need “thick data.”

The goal is not statistical certainty but the cultivation of insights around which messaging can be developed.

Organizations who have used market research can be uncomfortable with this approach because the number of subjects is much smaller than the vast market research numbers used in our data-abundant business environment. But a small sample is a deliberate choice because the data gathering is deep and intense.

Research shows that insights from twenty to thirty one-on-one interviews with customers will provide about 90% of what you need to successfully shape and develop the right message.


Research plan.Now that you’ve identified and agreed on your opportunity, it’s time to plan the research you’ll need to conduct. Below is a template you can use to think through how to collect the thick data you will need. In the pages that follow are approaches to data collection and question development you can use to create a customized research plan tailored to your particular needs.

AUDIENCE INSIGHTS

WHO OR WHAT ARE WE RESEARCHING?

WHAT IS OUR TIMETABLE?

WHO WILL CONDUCT THE RESEARCH

WHAT IS THE BUDGET?

WHERE WILL WE FIND THE INFORMATION WE NEED?

(INCLUDE # OF INTERVIEWS IF APPROPRIATE)

WHAT QUESTIONS DO WE NEED TO ASK OR ISSUES DO

WE NEED TO RESEARCH?

Adapted from The Designing for Growth Field Book: A Step-by-Step Project Guide

This book has a wealth of tools, resources and examples you can use at every stage of your content marketing.

https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Growth-Field-Step-Step/dp/023116467X




AUDIENCE INSIGHTS

Finding the information you need.It’s time to conduct your research. There are lots of ways to find the information you need. Below are a variety of research methods to help you gather thick data about your customers. Choose the approach that makes the most sense for you based on your timeline, budget and goals.

PROS CONS

What you already know (research reports, surveys, institutional knowledge of sales and account people, etc.)

Extremely cost-effective. Allows you to gather information quickly and efficiently. A very lean approach.

Assumes you know who in your organization has the knowledge you need.

Secondary research (industry trends, consumer trends are good for B2C while social trends, technology trends, interviews with people like your customers are good sources of information for B2B)

Helps you develop a big picture and understand the trends impacting your business.

You need strong research skills and know the keywords to use to find the information you’re looking for.

Focus groups, group interviews An efficient way to collect information from several people in a relatively short amount of time.

There’s the risk that one person will dominate the conversation and that introverts won’t contribute equally.

In-depth interviews The best way to understand motives and needs because you are able to talk to customers directly.

Can be time consuming.

Observation An effective way to understand behavior because you can collect information around what people actually do that can reveal hidden attitudes and beliefs.

While observation in a brick and mortar location can be relatively easy, to observe an online experience you need to sit with a customer at their computer and ask them to talk you through the steps they go through.


Questions to ask.Here are some sample questions to help jumpstart your research.

AUDIENCE INSIGHTS

Adapted from The Designing for Growth Field Book: A Step-by-Step Project Guide

This book has a wealth of tools, resources and examples you can use at every stage of your content marketing.

These questions will help you explore the larger context of your opportunity:

• What are the best practices?• What are the trends and innovations to consider? What are the uncertainties?

(these could include consumer behavior, technology, society or industry, etc.)• Are there any policy changes to consider?• What is the current attitude and behavior of your customers?

When developing questions to guide conversations with customers or observation, keep these points in mind:

• Keep your questions open-ended and ask them about specific examples. For instance, you could say: “Tell me about a time when…”

• Look for details around a customer’s behavior: timing, frequency, the steps they take• Be attuned to atittudes, values and beliefs. Are they using absolutes or judgement words like “never”

or “should have”?• Pay attention to any feedback that seems unexpected or unusual.

TIP: Work hard to avoid judgment or jumping to conclusions during the research phase. You want to stick to the observable facts.





PERSONAS

You’ve conducted your research and have a ton of information. Now what? To make sense of all the data you’ve collected you need to sythesize it to uncover recurring themes and insights. There are many different tools you can use to help you synthesize all the information you’ve collected in a meaningful way—it just depends on what your goals are and what you’re trying to do.

Because every organization is different, I want to give you a range of tools to consider so you can pick the ones that make the most sense for your situation.

I recommend using one of the Persona tools with the Journey Map and using the Empathy Map and Jobs to be Done if you need to dig even deeper into your audiences’ needs and motivations.

Here’s an overview of the tools.

You can explore the tools for yourself in the pages that follow. Think of this as your “sense making” library. Pick and choose from the tools to develop the insights you need.

Have a clear sense of your core audiences? This tools helps you define them psychographically so you can market based on what matters most to them from a business perspective. Generally works well for B2B companies.

Have so many audiences that the number is unwieldy? Use this tool to help you pare down the number to four core audience segments you should be marketing to. Generally works well for B2C companies.

This tool really helps you connect with your persona segments on an emotional level to develop empathy with them.

Looking to develop new products or services to better serve customers? This is a great tool to identify unmet needs.

Most journey maps are really just graphics of a company’s sales funnel. Instead a journey map should be the steps someone takes in the course of a process or purchase decision. Use the journey map tool to understand this path from the customer’s point of view.

Persona Profile Empathy MapPersona Map Job to be Done Journey Map


PERSONAS

Persona Profile TemplateThe persona template helps you dive deeper into each persona and provide more detail and texture around their behavior, attitudes and needs.

Persona Name: Description:

Representative Quote:

Demographic Description:

Needs & Goals:

Tech Usage & Media Consumption:


PERSONAS

Persona Map TemplateUse the Persona Map to identify audience segments using a pair of psychographic dimensions uncovered through your research. The psychographic dimensions selected should reveal relevant, important and meaningful differences among customers.

Each quadrant will include an overview describing the psychographics that make each persona unique.

An advantage of this approach is that it limits you to four personas which is more manageable to work with than a large number.

DIMENSION 1

DIMENSION 1

DIMENSION 2 DIMENSION 2

Persona 1

Persona 3

Persona 2

Persona 4


PERSONAS

Empathy Map TemplateDave Gray, founder of XPLANE, has created this empathy map to help you see the world from the perspective of your customer and foster empathy with them.

Download this template here. Want to collaborate more easily? Here’s the Google Doc version.

Empathy Map CanvasDesigned for: Designed by: Date: Version:

WHO are we empathizing with? What do they need to DO?What do they need to do differently?What job(s) do they want or need to get done?What decision(s) do they need to make?How will we know they were successful?

Who is the person we want to understand?What is the situation they are in?What is their role in the situation?

GOAL

What do they SEE?

What do they SAY?

What do they DO?

What do they HEAR?

What do they THINK and FEEL?

What do they see in the marketplace?What do they see in their immediate environment?What do they see others saying and doing?What are they watching and reading?

What have we heard them say?What can we imagine them saying?

What do they do today?What behavior have we observed?What can we imagine them doing?

What are they hearing others say?What are they hearing from friends?What are they hearing from colleagues?What are they hearing second-hand?

© 2017 Dave Gray, xplane.comLast updated on 16 July 2017. Download a copy of this canvas at http://gamestorming.com/empathy-map/

1 2

3

4

5

6

7PAINS GAINSWhat are their fears, frustrations, and anxieties?

What are their wants, needs, hopes and dreams?

What other thoughts and feelings might motivate their behavior?

http://gamestorming.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Empathy-Map-Canvas-006.pdf

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1lXxZwISoSWySYU5CsPOs8yf4wsUW0S8Qo5kshCVeY5I/edit?pli=1


PERSONAS

Job to be Done TemplateThis tool helps us look at users’ behavior based on their underlying needs to understand what motivates them to seek a solution: What job do they want their purchases to do?

Solution/Purchase:

Functional Job Tasks to be completed

User’s Desired Outcomes Based on drivers and motivations

Metric of Success Performance criteria to make decisions

Outcomes to Avoid Pain Points

Emotional Job How a user wants to feel about themself or be perceived by others


PERSONAS

Journey Map TemplateAs the The Designing for Growth Field Book suggests, think of marketing as an “on-ramp” helping customers find out about your product or service, consider buying, purchase and become loyal customers and advovcates.

However, this also frames the experience from a brand’s point of view, highlighting the actions they need consumers to take for the marketing to be considered successful.

Consider developing two journey maps: one for existing customers and one for new customers.

For an existing customer’s journey, you could develop a journey around repeat use and advocacy.

For a new customer, their journey might start with a “job to be done.”

No matter which journey you map, identify each step in the process. Next note the emotional high and low points along the journey, including brief descriptions.

A journey map will help you see the points where different marketing channels and content can have the biggest impact.

The Journey of

Responsible Party

Description of Step

Notes & References

1 32 4 5

EMOTIONAL HIGH

NEUTRAL

EMOTIONAL LOW

From The Designing for Growth Field Book: A Step-by-Step Project Guide


PERSONAS

Mind mapping.Collaboration is key to tackling the challenges that most need solving.

Bring the team together to review all the data you’ve gathered. You can create posters of your personas, journey maps and other tools you’ve used and display them around a conference room.

Allow everyone to note data they believe should inform your thinking. Post-It notes are a great way for people to capture meaningful phrases and data points.

Cluster the Post-It notes into groups and identify the insights related to each cluster.


CONTENT PLANNING

Plan your content around your customer.Now that you know who your audiences are, what they care about and what motivates them as well as the steps they take, you can use those insights to develop messaging that gives customers a reason to care about and listen to you.

Here’s a framework you can use to plan your messaging, content types and channels around your customers’ needs. This approach ensures your content marking will be audience-centric at every step in your customer’s journey. Create a different plan for each persona and their particular journey.

What stage is the customer in the process?

What needs must be met for the customer to act at this phase? What are their motivations and barriers?

What messages will address the customer’s needs, overcome objections, and motivate action?

Based on customer preferences, what types of content should we use to communicate those messages?

Based on customer behavior, what channels should we use to publish that content?

Needs/MotivationsStep Themes & Messages Content Types Channels


Needs/MotivationsStep Themes & Messages Content Types Channels

CONTENT PLANNING

Content Plan Template


CONTENT PLANNING

Brainstorming.Need help coming up with ideas for your content? A lot of content strategy companies tell you to research popular topics to find content. But that is what everyone does so it forces you to compete with everyone else for clicks. Instead, you want to develop content based on what’s relevant and valuable to your particular audience. Brainstorming can help you generate ideas.

To get to the ideas that resonate with your customers, let the needs and motivations of your customers provide a focus for your brainstorming. For example, what drives your customers? Are they motivated by status? Is social capital important? Are they seeking personalization or a way to customize their interactions with you? Are they susceptible to social pressure?

The Gamestorming website is a treasure trove of tools and processes for generating new ideas, solving problems and much more.

http://Gamestorming.com

http://gamestorming.com


VOICE

Does your brand have a distinct voice and personality?You have a plan for your content but do you have a voice that humanizes your brand and helps you stand out among the avalanche of communications your customers are exposed to? A distinct, consistent tone of voice will help you create a unique and recognizable personality. By creating a sense of familiarity and reliability, a consistent voice builds trust.

Use this template to describe how your company should look to your customers and the voice of the brand.

Need help agreeing on your brand personality?

Use this card deck to identify your brand’s key characteristics.

How We Should Appear How We Should Sound

https://branding.cards/?variant=993406341


CONTENT CREATION & CALENDARS

Content mapping.Now it’s time to draft your copy and design your visuals. I recommend creating a shared content calendar that serves as the homebase for all your copy combined with a shared file of visual assets to make collaboration easy.

Let’s start with the shared content calendar. It should include essentially two types of calendars. One is an editorial planning calendar that gives you a bird’s eye view of your content, cadence and ensures your communication across every channel is coordinated. The other type of calendar you should use is channel specific: an email calendar, a social media calendar, ad calendar, etc.

Your editorial calendar should be organized by:• Month and week so you can see cadence over time• Themes to drive action based on timing• Messaging specific to particular personas• Channels to use based on persona • Notes

I like to work lean and simple. Here’s a basic editorial calendar I adapt based on clients’ needs that you can customize. Also included are planning calendars for email and social media to help you plan your content before copywriting begins.

Ready to take it to the next level? CoSchedule is an all-in-one marketing calendar that is worth checking out. It has a drag-and-drop calendar interface that allows you to schedule tasks and content. You can also create social posts within the platform.

TIP: Manage risk by placing small bets fast. Emphasize testing over perfection so you can fail fast. What really matters is how your audience relates to the content so it’s important to test and use learnings to improve your content.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X5glw8usAu6v4qPHfftP6KTFTKJ6qA81_dunf81zL4s/edit?usp=sharing

https://coschedule.com/


TOOLS

Use tools to work efficiently.Content marketing should be a team effort but you don’t need to over complicate things. Choose tools that simplify process and encourage efficiency.

Here are my favorites and why.

Slack has a great user experience that makes it easy to quickly and easily communicate with your team from any device. You can call and video conference from the app and share files. And the Slack App Directory has over 1,000 apps you can integrate into Slack.

Google Drive makes it easy to collaborate no matter what type of file you’re working in. And you don’t have to worry about backing up your files. You can access your files from any computer.

Flow is an easy-to-use tool to plan projects, prioritize to-dos, delegate tasks and track progress. A similar tool I’ve heard good things about is Trello.

Gather and organize content all in one place, structure content so it maps nicely to the layout you are using and more.

Part of the Darden Scool of Business, Design at Darden has a wealth of tools, templates and resources to use for audience-centered content marketing.

https://slack.com/

http://Trello.com

https://designatdarden.org/app/uploads/2018/06/all-templates.pdf

https://www.getflow.com

https://designatdarden.org/

https://www.google.com/drive/


MEASUREMENT

Measure hard goals.

Remember earlier when I asked you “what does success look like” and “what metrics will you use to measure success”? What did you say?

Are there any changes to your goals you would make?

Are your goals hard or soft? Soft goals are vague: increase awareness, increase sales.

Hard goals are very specific:• Increase awareness among prospects by 10%• Increase sales by 7%• Drive 12,000 downloads of a thought leadership piece• Increase event registration by 14%


Go directly to the source. Quantitative metrics only tell you what actions were taken in the past. They don’t tell you if your marketing was actually effective. Maybe someone clicked on a button out of frustration or by accident or in confusion. Maybe they clicked intentionally but didn’t like the overall experience.

It can be very difficult and expensive to attribute consumer behavior to specific channels or to even a combination of channels. Consumers are typically exposed to at least seven messages before making a decision. How will you know what tipped the scale for someone unless you ask them? Was your marketing actually effective or were they planning to purchase from you anyway? Was it a combination of the two?

The most effective way to know if your content marketing worked is to ask your customers. That’s right. Forget the metrics, the mind numbing spreadsheets and talk to your customers.

How? No matter if it is a purchase, registration or download, incorporate questions to customers as part of the check out process to find out what marketing they saw and, of those, what impacted their decision.

Here’s a sample you can customize to suit your needs.

MEASUREMENT

Which of our marketing communications have you seen? Check all that apply. List your marketing: ads, emails, social media etc. and include a line for “Other” where people can write in anything they saw you didn’t include. This question helps you better understand your reach, how many people were exposed to your marketing.

What were the key factors that impacted your decision to (buy, register, download, etc.)? Check all that apply. Create a list based on the particular action you are tracking. For example: cost, marketing, a colleague recommended it, reviews, etc. Don’t forget to include a line for “Other.”


Freedom is a strategic branding and marketing un-agency wholly devoted to innovation.Leigh George, founder of Freedom, recognized that organizations are struggling to innovate and tackle important challenges because they are being held back by rigid approaches and old ways of thinking. Freedom uses innovative processes, tools and teams to help brands create new solutions to connect with people in our dynamic, digital world.

Partnering with brands large and small from start ups to global enterprises, from nonprofits and associations to commercial businesses, Freedom’s engagements are based on collaboration because in the end collaboration is key to tackling the challenges that most need solving.

Freedom helps clients achieve their marketing innovation goals through:

NEED HELP?

Research & Insights Organization, audience, competitor and market research, personas and journey mapping, audits.

Brand Strategy Naming, brand architecture, brand positioning, messaging, personality and brand guidelines.

Marketing Strategy Acquisition, engagement and loyalty plans, influencer programs, multi-channel content calendars, training.

Leigh George, PhDEmail: [email protected] Twitter: @leighgeorgeLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/leighgeorge

mailto:[email protected]

http://twitter.com/leighgeorge

http://linkedin.com/in/leighgeorge


Your content marketing network.It’s important to know people in the same position you are, struggling with the same issues you can reach out to when challenges come up or just to commiserate. This workshop is a great opportunity to connect with people you can contact when the going gets rough or have a question or need a soundboard. Use this page to collect fellow workshop participants’ email addresses. I promise you it will come in handy.

NEED HELP?


Write it down.

NOTES

Creating Foolproof Content Marketing That Customers Love · 2020-05-27 · Creating Foolproof...

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