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January 13, 2013
Create a Buyer Persona-Based Content Marketing Strategy
By:
A Changing World
B2B Marketing has become an inbound world. Requiring a new set of skills and talents, which revolve around content creation. In my opinion, we are entering a new phase of evolution. Marketers today must build an effective content engine designed to deliver compelling insights to customers and prospects alike. Core to success is the development of a buyer persona-based content marketing strategy.
Why Buyer Personas
Since creating the first methodology for buyer persona development more than 10 years ago, I have strongly advocated their use in informing strategy. This is most applicable today when it comes to content marketing strategy. Having a deeper understanding of who your buyers are and acquiring deep insight into their goals and challenges leads to effective content creation. The first step is to commit to getting this deeper insight through qualitative buyer research. A challenge for most companies today. Yet a necessary step to move from a shotgun approach to a targeted content game plan.
Building Blocks
Developing a buyer persona-based content marketing strategy consists of six important components. These components help to shape a buyer-persona-based content marketing strategy:
The Content Strategy Workflow
What I am proposing here is pulling out the pick and shovel to start digging through each of the above components. Modern marketing of today requires new outward-in thinking. This approach will get you headed in this direction. It starts and ends with the buyer.
These six components amount to a content marketing strategy workflow. This workflow offers a means to help you create as well as operationalize content marketing strategy. I would like to offer some help. After you finish reading this article, download the Content Strategy Workflow Tool. It outlines these six steps for you. A caveat is needed at this point. I am not promising that a tool alone will provide an instant answer. This is hard work. Having the end game in sight though gets your teams focused on the most important components.
As we evolve new skills and talents in modern marketing, content creation is at the top of the list of those much needed. These start with understanding your buyers. The situations they find themselves in and the issues they care about are the mile markers needed to be relevant to buyers. Finding the right topics that enable both the online and the offline conversation is no longer an ad-hoc proposition.
A purposeful as well as buyer persona-based strategy will get your content engine revving and running smoothly.
(To get started, be sure to download The Content Strategy Workflow Tool below)
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