Blog Post

As business owners, we can use content marketing in many ways to reach out to our prospects and clients to inform, entertain, and sell our products and services.

However, content marketing can also help you find out more about your customers so you can serve them better and, in the process, make more sales!

Learn Everything You Can About Your Target Market: Play 20 Questions

• Male or female?
• How old are they?
• Do they have kids?
• Where do they live?
• What kind of work do they do? Inside or outside the home?
• Are they happy with their jobs?
• What’s an average salary for your target group?
• What do they do after work?
• What do they do on weekends?
• What are their favorite forms of entertainment?
• Who makes the decisions in their family?
• Where do they get most of their information? Talking to others, online?
• What magazines do they read?
• Which websites do they frequent?
• Do they live an active lifestyle?
• What kind of car do they drive? What kind of car would they like?
• Where do they live: house, apartment, ranch property?
• What are their hopes and dreams?
• Do they have specific religious or cultural beliefs?
• What are their main stressors and concerns? What gives them pain? How can you help?

Use these questions as a starting point to brainstorming more questions that can help you get to know your clients. The better you know and understand your prospects, the better you can tailor your products and services to their needs and desires.

How Will You Find Out This Information?

It’s smart to use content marketing to find the knowledge you seek.

Research shows that the more questions you ask at once, the less participation you’ll get. Online, many will simply abandon the form so you don’t find out anything. Offline, they may feel that it just takes too much time and trouble to give you details that could reveal important information.

So, you’ll generally get better results by finding your answers in various ways and at different times.

Consider these strategies to use your content to learn more about your clients:

1. Ask Your Clients Directly

The most efficient way to find out what you want to know is to simply ask your clients what they want. Use short questionnaires, polls, and feedback forms.

Online, you can use these forms on your website, Facebook fan page, and even send out questions through Twitter.

Offline, clients who come to your office can complete printed forms while they’re there or you could mail the items and have your clients bring in their completed forms. You could also conduct some polls over the phone.

2. Use Progressive Profiling

Progressive profiling is a marketing strategy where you find out a little more and a little more about your prospects or clients as they engage more with you.

For example, each time they download something from your website, you could get a little more info, such as:

1. They download a free report to join your email list. Collect name and email address.
2. They download a freebie mentioned in your newsletter. Collect gender, age, and region.
3. They buy a product. Collect 3 or 4 bits of related data, like family status, what other concerns they might have, or information about lifestyle or hobbies.

Privacy is always a concern. Each time you collect information, link to your Privacy Policy and remind your readers that you’ll use the information to better serve them.

3. Frequent Social Media Sites and Forums in Your Specialty

Get involved in the online communities of your target market and you’ll discover what’s on their minds. What challenges are they trying to solve? What information are they seeking? Add to the discussions with questions and informative comments about their concerns.

4. Engage Your Readers With Regular Newsletters

Send email newsletters to your clients and prospects once or twice a week with interesting and helpful content. View open rates to see who opened your newsletter. Encourage feedback by asking a question or two and asking them to reply. Be sure to set up your newsletter with a return address where you can receive the replies.

You can even include a short poll with each newsletter. Direct them to your poll on your website and start some buzz.

5. Use Content Marketing in Your Customer Service

Ask for feedback on your products and services with regular forms. Why did they buy? Did you meet their needs? How will their purchase help them? What else would they like to see?

Do the same for product returns or dissatisfaction with your service! Find out how you can better serve them. You might be able to offer them content that’s more to their liking and end up with a loyal customer.

6. Try Split Testing

Sometimes called A/B Testing, this type of testing let’s you know what designs, wording, or techniques your clients like best and result in better conversions for you.

For example, use 2 sales pages to sell a product. Funnel some readers to one page and others to the second page. Which one results in more sales?

Or use 2 pages to entice readers onto your list. Which one results in more list members?

You can get very specific with split testing, even using identical pages except for one small change to test a new idea.

7. Put Google Analytics on Your Website

Google provides some great tools to tell you about who visits your website, where they came from, what interests them on your site, how long they spend on each page, what page they leave from, and much, much more.

With their analytics tools, you can even segment your readers based on their answers to short questions and track your Split Testing visitors.

You can learn more details and include Google Analytics on your site by visiting: www.google.com/analytics/

8. Take Advantage of Facebook Insights

If you have over 30 likes on your business Facebook page, you can use this helpful function that tells you about visitors to your Facebook page.

Find out information on daily users, number of likes, demographics of your visitors, page views, and more.

Learn more at: https://www.facebook.com/help/399262596797358/

9. Find Out What Your Competitors Already Know

Visit the websites of your competitors to learn more about your target market. How do your competitors address your market’s needs and desires? What are their most popular products or services? See if they have case studies or other reports that divulge information about your market. These visits can provide you valuable information for your own content.

10. Participate in Events in Your Profession

Go to seminars or panel discussions on hot topics in your industry to find out more about your market. Network with other attendees and share business cards.

Set up a booth at other events and provide flyers, pamphlets, or business cards that address concerns of your market and lead them to your website where you can capture more information and engage them in your other content.

The More You Know…

Use these content marketing strategies to reach out to your customers and provide them with what they’re really looking for.

The more you know about your customers, the better you can target your content, products, and services to what they want. And the more you offer them what they want, the more money you can make, and everybody’s happy!

Credits:

Featured photo by: JD Hancock
Learn Everything You Can About Your Target Market: photo by fogfish
Ask Your Clients Directly: photo by HowardLake
Engage Your Readers With Regular Newsletters: photo by RambergMediaImages
Try Split Testing: photo by mil8
Participate in Events in Your Profession: photo by WEBN-TV

About Kathryn Thomas

Kathryn Thomas is a #1 Best Selling author on Amazon and a Certified Life Coach. She is the Senior Editor and Content Manager at Coachzing.