Content Marketing Audience – What’s The Experts’ Intake On It In 2022?

Content marketing target audience refers to a defined set of people that you want to attract and engage in your content. This set of people are those who will genuinely believe and understand your brand.

It is also this set of people that will convert from being just a target audience to paying customers. With this group defined, you can refine a content marketing strategy that works for your brand and offers excellent Return on Investment (ROI).

What binds this group together is the similar characteristics like professions, aligning needs, age, gender, etc. However, stark differences can definitely exist.

Using a broad umbrella will do more bad than good to you, so, be precise and don’t let your marketing message become too woolly that it fails to attract people to it.

As to why it is important –  understanding your target audience allows you to formulate your digital content marketing strategy with greater chances of success, precisely because you can meet the needs of that audience.

When you opt for an audience-first content marketing strategy, you are allowing your business to effectively get your message across to the ideal content marketing audience.

The fact that it is the most cost-effective way of social media content marketing is also what makes it so liked by the brands.

With precisely-focused target audience set for campaigns, they are proven to be more profitable in the long-run and are more effective in keeping customers loyal to the brand.

You think of an idea, plan it and then work to implement it to optimize your content marketing audience based strategy.

All of that to what end? To present it to your target audience with hopes of achieving your set goals. That’d be an appropriate answer. However, getting there requires a step-by-step approach.

Here’s how you put your target audience first in 7 easy ways…

1. Address Commonly Asked Questions

Solving the problems of your audience can help them understand your brand better and help you understand them better.

2. Provide Value In Multiple Ways

Your user is only going to be interested in your content or your brand if you are offering something of value through your content in return. This can come in the form of videos, blogs, podcasts, etc.

You should offer more than a great headline, offer good, valuable content so that it builds credibility for you and doesn’t feel like a sales trap.

3. Focus on Solving Your Buyers’ Problems

Your focus should never stray from providing solutions to your audience because that is what will help you appear authentic.

4. Talk More About Ideas Than Products

Sometimes when the only thing a brand does is talk about themselves, people have driven away from it and they are longer interested in purchasing anything from them.

Instead, what a brand should do is talk about something interesting and helpful that is relatable to people to build trust in your audience.

5. Provide a Path for Your Content Marketing Audience To Follow

Be sure about where you want to direct your audience and provide them with all the relevant call-to-action to drive the right response.

6. Be Honest & Authentic

Content designed to be authentic and honest from the start will resonate far more than something created simply to move products and services. This is often what elicits the trust and connection you are looking to make with your target audience.

7. Story-Driven & On-Brand Content

If you make your content story-driven, it will save you from being promotional.

If you make your content authoritative, the same won’t be said then. Moreover, align every aspect of your content with your brand’s identity – including values, vision, and mission.

Don’t be swayed by the latest trends, instead of stand out by staying original because that is what attracted your audience to you in the first place.

There are so many sayings surrounding putting your customers first and all that jazz.

“Know the customer”

“The customer is always right”

We’re sure a lot more have popped up in your head. To put it simply, they are all right.

Ultimately, it is the content marketing audience you choose that matters the most and so, it is about capturing their attention, maintaining a level of interest, and finding opportunities to create revenue.

However, more often than not, content marketers lose sight of their purpose in designing a content marketing strategy and shift their focus from the target audience to getting more likes, followers, and leads.

To avoid this from happening, there is a tool for content marketers called the audience journey. It aims to align a brand’s content with the needs of your audience by finding out their needs.

It is based on the hero’s journey – a model commonly used in storytelling to attract and retain the attention of the audience throughout a narrative.

The same nine steps are also followed here but with a few tweaks here and there. These steps are given below:

Step #1: Describe Their Ordinary World

This first step just really refers to understanding your brand and connecting with them and vice versa.

Your audience needs to understand you very well before they trust you enough to buy from you.

You need to understand them really well so that you can determine what kind of content will impact them while remaining fitting to your brand story.

Step #2: Know The Trigger Factor

Monitor the audience’s information to determine what causes them to view your content. How they react to your content can also be helpful in classifying whether it is intrinsic or extrinsic motivation.

The former means the motivation came from within a person and the latter means the motivation came from an external source like social media, books, etc.

By identifying the triggers, often through qualitative and keyword research, you can know what is helpful for them.

Step #3: Assess Friction Levels

This is another good way to know what your audience aren’t really connecting with in your content. What’s proving to be a hindrance that is stopping your audience from taking the desired action.

To discover the resistance factors, a good place to look is your analytics.

Another way to find out the resistance factor, you can ask your audience through an online survey.

Once you have all the answers, focus on improving the content by mitigating the problems your audience is encountering.

Step #4: Mentor Them, If You Have To!

Use the information you have gathered to be the mentor your audience is looking for. You have the right understanding to give advice and tips as the experts on the subject.

Step #5: Cross The Threshold

Step into a new territory. Your audience was first coming to you while looking for content on the subject that you were working on. Let’s refer to it as the ‘introductory phase’.

You have crossed the threshold on this introductory phase and now, you are crossing over to a place where they know you and are coming to you repeatedly. Let’s refer to this as the ‘bond phase’ because it is where a connection between you and your client has been cemented.

Step #6: Pass The Test

If you haven’t successfully crossed over to the ‘bond phase’, that means it is time for you to pass through another set of hoops. Or more commonly known as ‘collaboration with other experts/brands in the industry’.

First, identify the trusted content brands and explore the possible collaborative opportunities.

Second, take a fresh approach. Keeping things fresh consistently will help you continue providing impactful content for your audience.

Step #7: Continue to Address The Central Ordeal

Up until this moment you have kept your target audience and in the following steps, that is just going to become rock-solid so that you never waver in a different direction.

So this step is all about maintaining the progress you have already made.

Step #8: Deliver The Reward

However, it is time for you to collect a little reward as well. While on this content marketing audience journey, it might not be sales that you gain; content-related rewards might still be coming your way.

Step #9: Strengthen The Relationship

You only have a few opportunities left to strengthen the relationship you have with your customers. Use them to turn them fully committed and loyal to your brand. You are adding value to your customer’s life by enriching it with information.

They rely on you but if they haven’t subscribed to your channels, or downloaded your app, etc; then you need to get them to do it.

Optimizing and scaling any content marketing audience first strategy is a demanding process. Feel free to improvise on the aforementioned steps. However, be patient and consistent to see results unfold.

Having said that, have you ever tried any content marketing audience strategy through an ‘out-of-the-box’ approach? If so, we’d love to know more about it. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Good luck!