Is Your Content Ignoring Half of Your Buyers – or More?

In a recent marketing assessment we performed for a technology client, we learned the company’s blog hasn’t been as strong a business driver as they would like it to be. Reviewing the past two years of blogging, we found that nearly all of the posts were highly technical—great for CIOs and IT staffers, but what about the other key decision makers in the buying process?

Talk to Everyone at the Party

We see this situation all the time. As companies move forward with content marketing, they tend to target only one set of players in the buying process.  Information technology companies tend to just create detailed, step-by-step content.  The needs and potential objections of the business user/manager, CFO/Controller, and others aren’t addressed. By ignoring half the room, companies miss building the business case for their offering across all of the decision makers. So the internal developer may appreciate the detailed technical pieces you create, but the COO and CFO can’t understand what the heck the offering is to begin with and why they need it — and your content doesn’t help them to address those objections.You’re ignoring at least half the room.

Mapping Your Buyers and Their Needs

So what’s the solution?  Don’t isolate yourself with only 1 of the 3 buyers in your “Iron Triangle” of Technical User, Business User, and Economic Decision Maker.  Instead, use your content to accelerate the sales process by mapping it to the each of the buyers’ needs at different stages of the cycle. Remember, this approach applies to your entire content mix, not just blogs. If you’re new to content marketing, a fundamental step is building out your key messaging and buyer personas.  You can then create content targeted to each that address those objections at each stage to accelerate the sales cycle.  If you’ve done this before, it’s always helpful to revisit your messaging and persona and mapping to see if they’re still relevant.

By the way, when it comes to your blog, consider letting “guest bloggers” from your company take a turn. If you’re an IT company, have a marketer post once in a while, or someone from finance.  You might even open it up to bloggers from your clients. It’s one way to help you speak to multiple decision- maker audiences and keep your posts fresh and readable. Do these things and we predict you’ll have a far better chance of engaging all decision-makers in your buying process – and truly driving business.

Want to take your content marketing to the next step?  Download our free eBook How to Grow Your Business with Content Marketing where we explain how content marketing can not only enhance your marketing efforts, but grow your entire business.

About Right Source:

The Marketing Trenches blog provides thought leadership from actual marketing practitioners, not from professional thought leaders. Designed to help business leaders make more educated marketing decisions, our insights come directly from our experience in the trenches. You can find more from Right Source on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn.