Answering the ‘So What’ question in your content
“Customers don’t want a bank. They want services that minimize their time on financial management so they can maximize their time running their business”
Came across this powerful quote this week.
And it got me thinking about how it’s so easy to hype up the latest product feature as the Coolest Thing Ever!! and here’s why you should use it because we just added XYZ technology 3.0.
But your target audience doesn’t care as much as you. They’re asking you “OK, so what?”
How can your shiny new feature or product help me make my life easier?
Connect the dots from the shiny new feature to how it will benefit your customer.
Or as fio said in a similar vein on her excellent contentfolks newsletter:
“Nobody comes to our websites thinking “I’m an MQL and need some TOFU-awareness content:” they come because they have a job they need to do and need some help, guidance, and/or inspiration to do it.”
Thinking this way, coming up with relevant content ideas and addressing them in a way that’s engaging for your target audience is significantly easier.
3 thoughtful reads of the week
Using the Jobs To Be Done framework for SEO content: A great framework to use while thinking about your target customers. Question: what small or large tasks do these individuals handle in their daily lives? Besides speaking to your customers directly, candid forums like Reddit or software review threads like Gartner (especially for enterprise software) or g2 are great research gold mines too.
Should you still gate content in 2023? Fascinating post and thread on how ungated content changes how you approach content marketing distribution, quality and measuring results. Links to content repurposing as well.
How to use Jobs-to-be-Done to accelerate product-led growth. Another useful piece on how to categorise your target audience’s needs; functional, emotional and social categories.
1 recommended resource
A gallery of 2,042 B2B SaaS homepages: Planning a website redesign and wondering how your homepage measures up with others? Read an analysis (with design and copy examples here)
1 cool tool
CleanShot: My personal recommendation for a screen-capturing tool. This one does it all - record GIFs, screenshots with annotations and mark-up capabilities, screen recordings, it’s fantastic for grabbing screenshots off a product or video to include in content pieces. Paid tool starting from $29, a one-time payment for Macs only.
