Are You Expendable?
Content this, content that, content is king, content marketing, content creation – you have heard it, then you have heard it again. I have said it, you have said it, influencers are saying it, and even my Uncle Carl has said it!
Content.
It is a necessary part of our industry and business as a whole. No marketing plan is complete without content. Shoot, you are even reading content right now. But does this resonate with you? Am I going to touch on your pain points? Is this going to be valuable? It’s hard to tell this early on but the matter of fact is this – the content I provide to you should be more valuable to you than to me. Meaning, you should be more valuable to your audience than your audience is to you.
Wait, what?
Yep, I said it. And I will say it again – You should be more valuable to your audience than your audience is to you.
Let’s unpack this a little bit, first off, if you are not of value to your audience, then you are expendable, and expandable items are, according to Websters “of little significance when compared to an overall purpose, and therefore able to be abandoned’. Last time I checked, my boss doesn’t want to hear the word abandoned… or expendable.
Now we know two things as fact –
- We don’t want to be expendable
- We are (or should be) creating content
This is a good start and is foundational for developing an audience that engages with your organization. But is your marketing content being created for you or for your audience?
Of course, the answer is ‘for your audience’, but how do you know? Did you ask them? Did they tell you? Are you sure you are hitting the bullseye? This can be a difficult exercise, because you have put time, effort and money into the content that you distribute.
If you are just creating content to remain relevant and keep up with your competitors, you are playing a losing game…
You and your team are already investing the time and energy into content, why not do it right or at least better? Stop casting a wide net with holes in it aka boring subjects. Take a targeted approach that is narrow in scope and audience, allowing you to really show skills and expertise. Quantity in today’s hyper-focused market is not your friend; it is costing you money by targeting an audience that is not interested in your offering and chasing unqualified leads that are “Marketing or Sales Qualified”.
Rant Alert.
When was the last time your marketing and sales team sat down and discussed the marketing and sales collateral that they are using or the leads that marketing is passing to sales? Or how marketing can provide better transparency to your sales team? Trick question – NEVER.
Get your teams aligned and working together and let your marketing ROI soar.
Ok, Back to Content.
Quality and quantity rarely come as a package and if they do, let me know your secret! Your costs for quality, will more often than not be similar to those of quantity but your close rate will be higher. Now, I’m no mathematician, but I think that means more qualified leads, more business, a higher ROI and more money at the end of the day. For the majority of us, those are all positive factors.
It is time to level up your content, as Kinetic’s mantra states – Every Day Greater – take a step back and really evaluate the situation. Here is where I would start –
- Do the content topics reflect the true pain points of our audience? Or are they your perceived pain points?
- Would you happily put your name on the work that you are distributing?
- Do you know what your audience is looking for? If yes, are you providing that information? If no, you have some work to do that will need to be covered in another blog.
That should be a good starting point to evaluate where you are and where you need to go, in an upcoming piece, we will break down how to better understand your audience. Until then, if you have any questions or would like to talk with me, feel free to shoot me an email at pierce@kineticmc.com
