Understanding your Customers: The Never-Ending Customer Journey Part Two
In July, I asked you if you know who you are. An odd question, maybe, but it’s all part of the process of understanding the customer journey. In that blog, I wrote that until you understood your own organization would you be able to define your audience and start building your content strategy. So, you’ve had two months to figure out who you are. Now, in part two of The Never-Ending Customer Journey – it’s time to find out who your audience is and what they want.
Apologies in advance for the following quote from my all-time favorite show, Mad Men:
Don Draper asks his boss Roger Sterling: Let me ask you something, what do women want?
Roger replies: Who cares?
Oh Roger. Spoken like a true 1960s Madison Avenue ad man. He would have failed miserably at content strategy. Don, on the other hand, was on the right track. He was thinking about the customer and what they wanted or needed.
Knowing your audience. Understanding their wants and needs and providing the content to meet their needs. That is content strategy and it’s all part of the never-ending customer journey.
Your audience is coming to you – to your website, your social media pages – to get information or solve a problem. It’s up to you to be there with the right information at the right time.
When we begin working with a new client, we typically start with a facilitation session to discover more about them and their various audiences. It’s an interesting exercise and helps us cull information that can then be used to determine next steps. Taking the time to analyze your audience and what makes them tick is crucial to successfully build and implementing your content strategy.
Identifying your target audience does take work. But it’s worth it. By analyzing demographics such as age, gender, income, or stage of life you will be able to begin building customer personas that help you focus your content strategy. You also want to think about audiences who are connected in some way. For example, I work with clients in the education arena. You may immediately think that a college or university’s audience is the student. But it also is the parent. And students and their parents will have different wants and needs from the content you provide.
Your assignment before we meet again in a few months? Determine your audience(s), what they want, and if your content aligns with their needs. Then, meet me back here for Part 3 of The Never-Ending Customer Journey.
