4 questions you need to ask for creating content that attracts your ideal customer

Are your content marketing efforts emptying your pockets but not paying the dividends you expect? That's because the right people are not viewing your content. Digital marketers often think that posting or promoting content on social media sites is enough to grant them paying customers, but that's never the case. Unless a person who's genuinely interested in, and relates to, your brand sees your content, your marketing efforts will continue to go in vain. So before you start creating your optimised content marketing strategy, here are four questions you need to ask in order to attract the ideal customer for your business:

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Who is your target audience?

No amount of marketing will be useful if it’s not tailored to a specific audience. Identifying a target audience helps you create a content strategy minimises cost and maximises engagement. The type of content you promote also varies with your audience; infographics and informative blog posts work better while marketing to working professionals while catchy images and videos work better for a younger audience.

How do you want your customers to see you?

It's important to establish a credo for your brand before you begin creating content. Do you want to come across as a fun brand or a serious one? Are you an affordable brand for the masses or a premium brand for a niche audience? Realising the driving principles behind your brand helps in creating an effective content strategy. For example, compare the ads released by Maruti Suzuki to those of Mercedes Benz. One is an affordable brand while the other a premium brand, and their ads clearly reflect their values to their respective customers who won't have anything to do with the other.

What are my customers' problems?

You can only create content that converts your audience into customers if you understand their problems and needs. What do your customers want, need, or desire? Why do they want it? Put yourself in their shoes and try seeing it from their perspective. Create a profile of your ideal customer, listing down things like their daily habits, issues, and needs. Soon you'll realise what is missing from their lives and how your brand can fill the gap. Doing this also helps you create content specific to your customer's place in the buyer's journey — whether your content has to make them aware of a problem that can be solved, or whether it can directly offer a solution to a problem they've already identified. Your content strategy must always be about the customers, and not your brand.

What are you offering them?

The value proposition of your brand must be clearly reflected in the content you share online. Once you've realised your customers' problems, the potential of your brand in solving those problems becomes clear. You can then tailor your content around value and it will undoubtedly appeal to those who face those problems. Understanding the specific solution your brand offers its customers not only helps in creating a better content strategy, it's also invaluable in other digital marketing practices like email marketing, social media advertising, promotional contests, and more.

Following these steps will help you create a content strategy that actually works and gets your business the customers it needs.