Content Marketing: Why you Should Get all Emotional (how and what to write)

In the second of our series on content marketing, we look at what appeals to your target market and what to do when you find yourself staring at the blank page.

We’ve already seen Why, When and How Often you should write content – it’s now the right time to understand what style or tone you should use and how you can “connect” with your target audience with a few simple tricks.

In fact, failing to write for your target audience would mean not only wasting your time, but also missing out on sales.

Remember: Content Marketing is not rocket science, as long as you know who you’re meant to write for.

Know Your Audience(s)

Who are you speaking to with your content?

We all pick up signals very early on when consuming content, signals that tell us whether this thing we’re spending our precious time looking at is relevant to us.

If we feel it’s not for us, we’re gone.

Ship abandoned.

The best and most effective content reaches out to a specific group of people – your best prospects.

Your best prospects might not always belong to one, tidy segment.

Your business or organisation may have several audiences. An estate agent, for example, needs to speak to potential vendors as well as potential buyers; two completely separate audiences with very different needs and interests. This calls for a strategy with two strands.

Having said that, one audience is more important than the other – the estate agent will only earn a fee through a letting or sale if he or she has a property to sell or lease.

75% of the content strategy should be aimed at vendors, while 25% is for buyers. One Facebook post in four should be aimed at buyers, one blog per month, and so on.

The more specific you can be about your audience, the better.

So now you know your audience, put yourself in their shoes.

What do they want to know?

Create an Emotional Connection

Think of this.

Famed salesman and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said “Selling is essentially the transfer of feelings”.

So when you are creating content, try to bring feelings into it. I’m not saying your blogs should be a tell-all diary (though that could work for you depending on your product or service!), but if you can somehow connect with your readers at an emotional level, they’re more likely to be interested enough to read your 300-word blog.

Every week.

Mentioning real people, pets, describing a dilemma or scenario that people can relate to – these are all ways to connect with people on an emotional level.

So if it’s good to connect with people via your content, that suggests it’s not a good idea to doggedly talk about the product features (that’s sales), statistics (that’s torture, unless your readers are stats nerds), or something you found on the internet that doesn’t reflect your company, brand or target market (that’s treating your customers like fools… and it’s plagiarism!).

If you take a look at what I wrote at the beginning of this article:

“In fact, failing to write for your target audience would mean not only wasting your time, but also missing out on sales.”

It is evident that a simple sentence like that can immediately connect with you – my audience – by communicating the following emotions:

• failing
• wasting time
• missing out on sales

After that sentence, you’re likely to be interested in what I have to say next.

And possibly next week, next month, next year.

Takeaways:

1. Know your audience, listen to your audience, write for your audience.

2. Prioritise the most important audience in your content schedule.

3. Connect with your audience on an emotional level