Customer-centric content is focused on the customer and designed to deliver the greatest possible value. This type of content is directed to a very specific audience, which makes the message more relevant to the reader. Instead of treating content as a sales opportunity, the priority for customer-centric content is to provide high-quality information that addresses pain points that customers are dealing with. If implemented well, a customer-centric content marketing strategy will propose solutions to customer pain points without coming across as pushy or focused on yourself.
How to Create a Customer-Centric Content Marketing Strategy
Focusing on creating customer-oriented content will help your business to better connect with your audience and, ultimately, earn more conversions. Here are four best practices to embrace to make the customer the focal point of your content marketing strategy:
1. Make yourself aware of the challenges that keep your customers up at night.
Are you aware of the pain points that your customers are dealing with? You can learn a lot by sitting down with your sales team and asking about the questions that they receive the most often from customers. If you can create content that demonstrates empathy for what your customers are dealing with, you’ll be much more effective with getting them to keep reading about how you can help them solve these issues.
2. Align your content framework with your customers’ top challenges.
Identifying your customers’ key challenges should be the very first thing that you do with your content marketing strategy. Once you’re aware of this information, you need to align your content framework (metadata) with these top challenges.
Metadata refers to the behind-the-scenes aspects that go into your content strategy, such as tagging and labeling content. Having a strategy in place for your metadata will help your customers to discover related content and provide a more positive user experience.
3. Connect metrics to your content framework.
The great thing about digital marketing is that you have a wide range of metrics to choose from to measure your performance. Being aware of your top performing content will help you to determine which topics you need to elaborate on in the form of ebooks and white papers. You can also refresh top performing content as a way to continue to drive more traffic to your website.
Many businesses are focused on how metrics that show the amount of traffic that a piece of content is generating. However, you also should be reviewing metrics to optimize organization-wide messaging. For example, analyzing the content that your customer is looking at when visiting your website can provide your company with a better idea of your customers’ needs. Looking at engagement data over a set period of time can help your business to create a relevant overall message that best aligns with your customer.
4. Look for content gaps and fill them.
Another reason why you want to identify your customer pain points is because it can make you aware of critical areas that you’re not covering in your content marketing strategy. Once you uncover a content gap, spend time creating and repurposing content that addresses the particular pain point.
It will take time and effort to transition a product-centric content marketing strategy to a customer-centric strategy. However, your hard work will pay off by being able to deepen relationships with customers and establish a clearer sense of purpose for your content. Surprisingly, very few businesses are using a customer-centered approach to content creation, so modifying your strategy will help your business to stand apart from the competition.
What if you don’t have the time to commit to creating a customer-centered content strategy?
High-quality content creation will allow your business to connect and engage with your customers on a more relevant, frequent, and personal level. However, while most businesses have the best of intentions in creating a content marketing strategy, following through with it is a different matter.
You need to b e consistently publishing fresh content to help your customers find you online, but sticking with a regular publishing schedule is challenging for many business owners that are pulled in multiple directions. If you can relate, we can help.
At New York Ave, we offer a full-service content creation program. We take the time to get to know our clients and their customers so that we can put together a content marketing strategy that will best serve the needs of your customers. We’re advocates of a customer-centric approach to content marketing and are committed to providing value to the end-user with each piece of content that we write.
Contact us at New York Ave to learn how we can help you to develop a customer-focused content marketing strategy that aligns with the goals of your business.
