Websites. Emails. Blogs. Whitepapers. Influencer videos on social media. They’re all considered types of “content” and can play important roles in helping a startup succeed. However, not all types of content may be appropriate for a particular business. A lot depends on the audience for that content — your prospective customer base.
Even the most fantastic, award-winning content won’t do a business any good if it doesn’t reach the people who will be buying, recommending, and/or using what you’re offering. Nor will that content deliver many benefits if it doesn’t provide what your audiences need, want, and expect.
In part one of this three-part blog series on content for startups, we’ll discuss why one of the most critical steps in developing content for a startup business is identifying and learning about your prospective audiences (customers).
Identify Your Customers
Most likely, you have an idea of who your prospective customers are. They’re the people who will benefit from the product or service you’re offering (or plan to offer). They have a problem or need, and your product or service solves the problem or fulfills the need. But are they the people that will make the purchasing decision? Or are they more likely to influence others to make the decision?
The content you develop for people making a purchasing decision may not work for those who influence decision-making. There may be differences in the kind of content different types of prospective customers (i.e., users, decision-makers, influencers) prefer, seek out, and trust.
This is where the use of personas and user models comes into play.
Personas are fictional characters that represent various target audience segments. They typically depict demographics such as age, gender, family, location, income, education, hobbies, life stage, etc. User models take personas a step further by focusing on their pain points, the stages they go through in making purchasing decisions, the drivers behind their behaviors, and their propensity for making referrals and repeat purchases.
Understanding these various dimensions of your target audiences helps you identify the content types that can best reach them and drive your desired actions. It also helps you determine where in their decision-making journey various types of content will be most effective and the kind of messaging that is best suited to each potential touchpoint.
Action Steps:
- Write out who you think your prospective customers are. Segment them by users, decision makers/purchasers, and influencers. What problem or need do they have that is met by your product and service?
- Test your assumptions. Conducting well-planned research, including customer interviews, surveys, and focus groups, is ideal. However, chances are you don’t have the budget for that just yet. (Check out Envīveo’s Vive Interactive issue on bootstrap research).
You can take advantage of publicly available information. This includes online forums specific to your service or product and those populated by prospective customers. Q&A platforms like Quora can also be helpful. You can also use online search engines to find articles and research about your product or service and its audiences. Social media listening—monitoring social media channels for mentions of the problem/need and its solutions—is also beneficial.
Find out what people say about the need or problem you’ve identified. What products or services are they using, and are they beneficial? Pose questions asking how they get the information they need to solve their problems or meet their needs. Take note of any demographic or other information you can pick up on.
Use your findings to determine if you’re still on the mark regarding who you think comprises your prospective customer base. Do they still fit in the categories you used (users, decision-makers, influencers), or are there different or additional categories?
Get to Know Your Customers
Given that your prospective customer base could number thousands or even millions, how can you possibly get to know every one of them? You can’t, but you can make some generalizations. In many cases, the people who will benefit from your product or service share a few things in common, such as pain points and information preferences.
Action Steps:
- Start building out customer profiles in various categories based on the information you’ve gathered thus far. Supplement your initial findings with additional online research as needed.
- Continually fine-tune your queries as you learn more about your prospects. Write out specific questions that you need answers to to guide your online research. What are the prospects’ pain points? What drives them to prefer or seek out a particular product or service? Where do they get their information? Are they using the information they find themselves or passing it along to others responsible for purchasing decisions?
Is there some content or information source they wish was available to help them at any point? Do they prefer information delivered via email, text, or print format? Do they dislike specific marketing tactics? If you can find out what roles these people are in, all the better in building your understanding of them.
Also, review what industry analysts and others are saying about the market for your product or service. What trends do they see affecting your prospective customers?
- Look at market research, marketing best practices, and other information to better understand your customers' and prospects' potential journeys as they learn about possible solutions to their needs and problems. What marketing tactics seem to be most effective at different stages? Are certain kinds of messaging more successful than others for various types of audiences? There is a lot of information on the Internet, and some of it may be conflicting, so it’s a good idea to consult multiple sources.
Although much of the information may be fairly general, it can provide important insights into how your audiences think and behave and what influences them, including content types and messaging.
What Comes Next
Now that you know more about your prospective customer base, you can develop and test preliminary messaging. In part two of this blog series, we’ll cover the components of a messaging document, how to test them with your target audiences, and how to use them as the basis for an effective content strategy.
In the meantime, take advantage of Envīveo's resources to help you identify and understand your customers and prospects. (They’re among the resources included when you enroll in Envīveo’s Signature Course, Startup Strategy Mastery: From Idea Validation to Investor Ready.
Other Resources:
- Schedule: One-on-one time with Carilyn
- Purchase: Five Whys Worksheet
- View: Hubspot Make My Persona Tool
- Purchase: Defining Your Ideal Customer Workbook
