A good friend of mine runs a business on the East Coast, and it’s always been successful – a killer combination of hard work, great attitude, and traditional advertising spurred on by word of mouth keeps the customers coming. But she’s hit a point where, although happy with the success so far, she wants to REALLY blow the top off and attract new clients.

So, obviously, we went out for a #pumpkinspicelatte (because fall only happens once a year) and started chatting about her business growth plan. It became clear pretty quickly what the plan was missing: targeted content marketing.

“I have a blog,” she said. “And I share the posts on all of my social media platforms with fun pictures, but it’s not really working, and I’m thinking of investing my time and energy elsewhere.” Target marketing is a proven method for building trust and growing your customer base, so I was surprised to hear that.

“What makes you think it’s not working?” I asked.

“I’m not getting any real leads from it. I get people who read my posts, and maybe they visit my website, but then when I reach out to them they never answer my emails or calls. I only write about stuff that’s relevant to the industry already, so I’m not sure how much more targeted I could get.”

“Well, maybe you’re not looking at the topics with a narrow enough lens,” I suggested.

“But won’t narrowing the focus too much eliminate a huge part of my target audience?” she asked. “The exact people we’re trying so hard to reel in?”

“It might – but it will allow you to really focus on one set of your customers,” I answered. “Your customers might all be interested in the same thing on a broad scale, but they likely have varying degrees of industry knowledge, or may be at different stages of your buying process. Not everyone who reads your blogs is new to the industry, but not everyone is ready to buy your products just yet, either.”

We chatted a little longer, and got on the topic of Customer Profiles.

Customer Profiles are exactly what they sound like, and they help you get right down to the nitty gritty of what each of your main groups of target customers want to know. You may have a store selling baby clothes and think your audience is pretty obvious (new parents), but what they need from you (no, it’s not baby clothes) differs depending on their profile.

• Are they first time parents, or are they having their third child?
• How far along are they in their pregnancy?
• Are they a single parent?
• How old are they – 18? 35?
• Do they have close family and friends in the city?

You can see right away how these factors would change the kind of conversation you would have with someone who walked in to your store, even if they were “just buying some onesies”. The tips you offer, the jokes you make (or don’t), the premium items you offer (or don’t), are all targeted to the customer you’re speaking to.

And your online content should reflect that. Seems obvious now, right?

Get started with content marketing success by creating profiles for your top 5 customer types. If you don’t know enough about your customer base to do this, spend some time speaking with customers and really getting to know them, and what it is that drives them to you. That’s not to say every customer will fit neatly into one of your profiles, but it will help you connect with a larger number of them.

In the case of the baby store, a customer profile might look something like this:

Customer A (First Time Mom)

• Anxious, but excited
• Has done some reading but has a lot to learn
• Asks a lot of questions on a number of topics
• Reads Mommy Blogs
• Wants your help and suggestions
• Interested in a number of items
• Shops at mid-range price point
• Shops online and in-store

When you start tailoring your blogs, social media posts, website content, and online resources to one of these specific groups of people, you’ll quickly notice that they come back to you for more – because now they’re getting exactly what they want to know, and you’ve built their trust as an industry expert with great tips they can apply to their daily lives.

You’ve just turned a ‘stumbled-upon-your-site-and-read-your-blog’ potential customer into a ‘trusts –your-knowledge-and-will-come-to-you-first’ customer.

If you need help building out your profiles, or have profiles set up but aren’t sure how to tailor your content for them, let’s talk. I can help you develop your content in a way that makes sense to your customers.

Happy writing!

Nikki