- HoneyHat

Content Marketing

A healthy, thriving marketing department is essential to build a brand that succeeds in the marketplace. What does this look like? And how can you measure it. Salesforce’s approach to this problem is a favorite of ours.

During her keynote presentation at Content Marketing World 2022 Jessica Bergmann, Salesforce VP Content Strategy & Customer Marketing, stated that Salesforce rates their content marketing success using three main goals.

Build: Did we attract new audiences?
Engage: Did the audience remain engaged?
Move: Did they move them to the next stage?

You need clarity on how you present yourself in the marketplace, with whom you are connecting, and how you interact with them. We see many brands, including our clients, get stuck in these areas, especially when it comes to attracting new audiences. They are so focused on their “ideal customer”, that they miss great opportunities to connect with the larger market. This can lead to significant losses.

How can you make your brand more visible and grow?

3 ways to grow your audience

It may be time for you to take a look at your audience and determine if you are not getting the results that you desire. If you have been targeting the same audience for many years but are not seeing any significant returns, it may be time to broaden your reach. These are the best ways you can do this.

1) Assess your Total Addressable Market (TAM) again.

As a business, your goal should be to expand and not maintain your audience. It is important to look at your market holistically and consider your TAM (aka total number of customers) in your market. This includes both customers who are already buying from you and those who have yet to enter the market. You may be able tap into a wider range of potential customers by expanding your customer base.

There is often a disconnect in many industries, especially B2B, between what we want and who our customers are. While you may already know your ideal customer and have been catering to them for some time, it might be time to review your TAM in order to identify new opportunities for customers.

Take a look at your customers. Does their profile match your ideal customer profile? Are they different in their needs, wants or challenges? This could be a sign of who is naturally attracted by your brand and which groups you may want to target.
Examine your competitors. See who they are targeting. Is there a market segment that isn’t being reached? Is there a market or industry that would benefit from your product? You may be surprised at how many opportunities there are to expand your market reach.
Take a look at industry research. To gather information about your market and its potential growth, you can look for industry publications and market reports. Changes in consumer behavior, new technologies, and new regulations all can have an impact on the potential size of your TAM. )

Tip: You may need to rethink how you market in order reach these larger audiences. Instead of solely focusing on customer acquisition, invest in brand awareness and share your expertise through other channels (think paid campaign and industry publications span>

You can expand your possibilities by having more conversations in different places.

2) Review your messaging.

You will need to reevaluate your visuals and messaging if you have reached a plateau in your audience.

Find out how your audience speaks about what you do. Focusing on irrelevant keywords is one of the biggest marketing mistakes. Remember: It doesn’t really matter how talk to something, it only matters how they talk.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use your expertise in conversations. It does not mean that you can’t use your own expertise to spark conversations. We consider our work “brand development” even though it is a part of our brand building approach.

Tip: To identify the key messages pillars of your brand and create engaging content around them, use our free brand messaging template. To reach more audiences, you can also use our marketing campaign template.

3: Share the behind-the scenes story of your brand

While you may be used to focusing on your ideal customer, there are many others who are watching your brand from afar and are interested in who you are and the things you do. This includes your employees, future employees and vendors as well as peers from the industry.

These are people who might be interested in your services, or may want to help your brand succeed (especially as employees). If you want to see your brand grow, you must engage with these audiences.

Encourage employees to create content. There are many people in your team with different perspectives and expertise. You can show your team’s unique perspectives and expertise to make your brand more human, increase your employee network, and increase word-of-mouth marketing among people with whom you have never met before. Learn more about how your team can become content creators.
Reach out to industry partners. Your success is important to partners and vendors. You may be able access their networks and expand your reach by building strong relationships. These could include guest posting, joint ventures or co-marketing opportunities.

Keep in mind, too, that tomorrow’s decision-makers will be today’s junior-level and intern-level employees. Our newsletter has been used by many of our colleagues, some of whom have been with us since the beginning of their startups and are now marketing leaders at multi-billion dollar companies. They may not have used our services back then but they are using them now and we have maintained our relationship through content marketing. (This is why we include junior-level employees in our marketing personas even though they may not be our ideal customer right now.

Tip Learn more about how to market and build your employer brand and how you can capture more people’s interest by using culture marketing on social media.

Focus on the Value

Whatever your audience, one thing is certain about content marketing: Content creation should not be done just for the sake of creating content. This is the marketing equivalent to busy work. We recommend that clients who are having trouble connecting with their audience cut back on content, while putting the rest of your strategy in place. Instead, you should focus on rich content that has a clear path.

Conduct a content audit. This will help you to identify your content gaps and opportunities, as well as those of your competitors. It will also help you understand which areas you can fill with high-value content. To do this, download our free content audit template.
A divisible content strategy is a good idea. A divisible content strategy allows you to create one large piece of rich content and then create many supporting content that can be promoted across multiple channels. This strategy is a smart way of maximizing your output and creating a variety of rich content to promote across different channels.
Give them a step forward. No one should be able to interact with your content without knowing what to do or where to go next. No matter if they’re downloading or signing up for a demo, give them a clear CTA. To help you create a content strategy , download our guide. )

You must remember that quality content is key to your content marketing success. You can find help or guidance if you are having trouble producing quality content.

We hope that you will continue to learn best practices and work smarter so that your audience grows one piece at a time.

Column Five first published the post How To Grow Your Audience (By Not Targeting Customers).

Author: Katy French

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