Have you ever been reading a blog post, and you find yourself nodding along?
It’s like the writer just gets you. Somehow, they’ve pulled the curtain back to reveal your desires and fears.
It’s almost as if you’re speaking to a trusted friend and confidante.
There’s such a special type of magic when this happens.
Right out of the gate, the content you’re consuming is going to deliver some kind of mini transformation. You’re going to find a piece of actionable advice that’s going to help you in some part of your life. And that’s because the writer has taken the time to get to know you.
Can you imagine if you had this same kind of insight into your customers?
How would that influence the content you create for your business blog? You’d probably never run out of ideas for new posts, videos or even promotions and product features.
In this post, I’ll reveal some of the methods marketing leaders and entrepreneurs trust to guide their content efforts.
I’ll also include links to the websites and writers that do this particularly well.
Buyer Personas
This is an oldie but a goodie.
A buyer persona directs your content, it’s an avatar of your customer. You should aim to get as detailed as possible. The more specific you are, the better chance you have of connecting with your reader.
If you have no idea where to start, HubSpot provides a thorough overview, and kicks things off with this definition:
“…a buyer persona is a semi-fictional, generalized representation of an ideal customer.”
HubSpot
HubSpot has a comprehensive guide with templates to help you begin developing your own buy personas here. Turn to these frequently when you generate content for your business blog.
Voice of the Customer
And to get meaningful data for your buyer personas, HubSpot recommends:
The best buyer personas are based on a combination of market research and insights that you gather from actual customers through surveys and interviews.
In an article for ConversionXL, Jennifer Havice makes the case for going deep into your customer’s behaviour.
When you understand the motivations driving your prospects and customers, you can reflect their feelings back to them (in their own words, I might add). That way, you’re way more likely to convince them buying from you is the right call.
Jennifer Havice
The secret to unlocking this lies within voice of the customer data.
Discovering the power of voice of the customer data has made a tremendous difference in my writing.
Sometimes, I am writing a blog post about a product, and I’m not the target market for that product. So, it might be hard for me to generate content that will help this reader.
It’s only when I turned to voice of customer data that I knew I was finally writing articles that addressed the needs and concerns of the intended reader.
You can find rich data from a range of sources, including customer interviews and social media polls.
On this Inc. post, Adrien Schmidt, CEO of OpenBouquet, suggests adding an incentive to a customer Q and A. Maybe it’s a free download, mini consultation or extended trial.
Schmiidt recommends adding a few personal questions to get know your customers on a deeper level.
You can easily carry out surveys with an application like Google Forms, via channels like email or social media.
There’s tons of places you can get direct feedback from your customers. And you can even extend your search beyond your own customers.
This may be useful for entrepreneurs who are still building their base or even as a method for market research.
Study customer reviews on other products and services. We’re living and working in the digital, so our options for this kind of customer intelligence are endless. Depending on the nature of your offering, you may explore Amazon, Google Play or iTunes. The comments sections of YouTube and companies Facebook Pages might also prove useful.
A 2017 MIT research paper considers this to be one of the most effective ways to learn about customers:
User-generated content (UGC), with its extensive rich textual content, is a promising source from which to identify customer needs more efficiently. UGC is available quickly and at low incremental cost to the firm. In many categories, UGC is extensive—for example, there are over 300,000 reviews on health and personal care products on Amazon alone. If UGC can be mined for customer needs, UGC has the potential to identify as many, or perhaps more, customer needs than direct customer interviews and to do so more quickly with lower cost.
MIT research paper
I’ve spoken about this type of investigation on this blog before. You can see how to plot your findings as your work in this post.
Social Listening
Above, we’ve already touched on some of the social platforms you can tap for customer insights. But you might find it’s useful to carry out ongoing social listening.
This kind of strategy keeps you close to what your customers expect. Fortunately, there are loads of tools that make this task easy and even affordable. Years before it would have been expensive – and complicated – to gather this kind of market intelligence. And it would definitely have been out of reach for many entrepreneurs, startups and smaller organizations.
Scale up your social listening strategy with tools like HootSuite and TalkWalker.
Inspiration for Your Business Blog Copy
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, good copy is universal. I have included a few links to websites that stand because the content is so well targeted to the customer. Whenever I read these blogs, I find something amazingly useful I can apply to my life and business.
You might too!
And even if the content isn’t relevant to you, look at the way the content addresses the reader’s pain points. And here’s the thing, this kind of approach boosts engagement. Speaking from personal experience, if I get an email from Joanne Wiebe, I make time to read it. When Marie Forleo opened up a new copywriting course, I signed up immediately. Because I trust them and feel like they know what I need to take my business to the next level. That’s the kind of response we should be aiming for 🙂
Begin researching your customer today, and start plotting content they can turn to for help with their problems.
