Episode 48 of Landscape Digital Show reveals 3 keys to a content marketing roadmap that creates alignment with ideal customers.
Great coaches start with a strategy, a roadmap or game plan, but they are prepared to make adjustments based on how their team is performing – and how the opposing team is responding.
They study, measure, evaluate and realign their resources to accomplish specific goals and objectives. That is how we are going to design your digital, social and content marketing roadmap.
You just have to start well and make adjustments to its implementation as you make new discoveries about what your ideal customers want and how to give it to them.
#1. Business and Personal Goals
The starting point of your content marketing roadmap is your business and personal goals. You cannot separate the two because those personal details that answer why you are in business inspire people and build trust.
Growth is probably the most common business goal, but you have to be specific about the type of growth you are looking for and what’s now standing in the way of your achieving it.
Rebranding is another common business objective. My question is why are you rebranding? Is it to serve new markets or to achieve deeper penetration into existing markets you serve.
Write out all of your goals, prioritize and categorize them as you wish.
And here’s a good question: Which one goal, if you achieved it, would change your life most dramatically in 2017?
#2. Ideal Audience and Actions
Every business needs to define the audience that it can best serve with its expertise.
• Is this an audience of people or companies?
• What are their needs and wants?
• What are the pain points that get in the way of achieving those desires?
• What actions do you want buyers to take to solve these pain points?
When your content communicates this it creates alignment with ideal customers by showing them you understand what they want, and that you are capable of helping them achieve it. Your content also has to be relatable by demonstrating it understands their worldview, which is how they see the world.
We’re talking about real people here, but we need a stand-in for them, something that literally hangs on the wall so that you and your marketing team can create content that is on point.
This description of your ideal customer is known as an audience or buyer persona. An audience persona is not a blend of all of your customers, but one customer in particular. By designing your marketing content for this singular ideal customer it achieves greater focus.
You may have more than one audience persona if you have a variety of product lines, such as commercial landscaping and residential landscaping. While they are both landscaping, the customers for them are as different as a commercial truck and an automobile.
Both are forms of transportation but are respectively designed to do two completely different jobs. Too many businesses fail to achieve their goals because they take on all kinds of work, whether it fits their capabilities or not.
When the business is clear about its ideal audience it naturally attracts it.
#3. Find and Perfect Your Brand Story
What does your business stand for?
Often, this is personal, but it doesn’t have to be. Every business has a personality and that needs to come out in your marketing because it’s what makes emotional connections.
Not only that, your brand story is the most powerful marketing distinction you have because it cannot be matched. It’s what aligns your business and its goals with a targeted audience and their goals.
Your content needs to effectively communicate that fit or there is no sale. And it has to consistently and continuously communicate it with a compelling brand story that captures the hearts and minds of its ideal customers.
Content marketing is like a dance between you and your audience. The better you know them the easier it is to create content that communicates the value your business can bring to their lives.
We’ll discuss the specific content formats and marketing channels for implementing this in the next episode.
Show Notes
- Discover more about audience personas in Episode 9: Buyer Personas: How to Create Customer-Facing Marketing
- Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
- And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I’ll greatly appreciate that!
Call to Action
Let’s make getting clear about your business goals and audience the primary call to action for this episode because that’s the foundation that will support all of your content marketing.
This includes listing your business goals and defining your respective audiences with accurate audience personas. Those two activities are key for your building your content marketing roadmap.
Then give consideration to finding and perfecting your unique brand story. This is who you are and how your business helps its customers get more of what they want out of life with its unique solutions.
