Content Marketing For The 21st Century Entrepreneur (COVID-19 Edition)

It's no secret by now that a worldwide pandemic has disrupted our economic flow and structure. As a result, a lot of people have found themselves retrenched and jobless during this sensitive and critical period. Millions of small businesses continue to be at risk of closure worldwide, with tens and thousands of them already forcibly shut down. Due to such interpersonal connections being cut off abruptly, the marketing industry also faces significant negative drawbacks. This makes it imperative for companies to make their business processes more efficient, such as by using tools to make paying their employees easier. For those curious to find out more, you can add your logo to a pay stub template to see if it is something you are interested in.

Prior to Covid-19, it was easy to do networking with people face-to-face. However, in-person liaising has evidently been put on hold with everyone currently strongly advised to practice safety measures like social distancing and self-quarantining at home as much as possible. This change in lifestyle has led many marketing teams to turn towards digital marketing through websites and social media as their new alternative. However, only firms with experienced and tech-savvy marketing teams have been successful in adjusting to this new change. This leaves smaller firms or teams comprising the older generation on the losing end.

To counter these new-age problems, this article aims to provide a content marketing guide to adapt to this evolving environment efficiently while minimizing costs as much as possible.

Reconsider Your Consumer's Habits

According to SocialMediaToday, the term "buyer persona" can be defined as a research-based profile that characterizes a target customer predicted by market research and existing consumer data. Hence, it describes the "ideal customer" for your company and how they live out their lives. This information is vital to understanding your target demographic, revealing their behavior in the face of challenges and priorities. However, be aware that there can be more than one buyer persona for a single business. If the decision-making process of the end-user is facilitated by the opinion of others, those separate personas should also be accounted for.

Guide to Creating an Efficient Buyer Persona

1. Conduct Comprehensive Market Analysis
As established above, a buyer persona is a reflection of your current customer demographic. Thus, take advantage of this present data and use it to perform thorough market research by analyzing your consumers' preferences and purchasing habits. It'll give you insight into your competitors in the market and learn how to better expand your outreach to more potential customers. Don't simply rely on your gut feel to figure this out.

2. Understanding Their Shortcomings and Goals
Every consumer purchases a product or service to obtain something or resolve an issue. If it's an issue, identify what's their obstacle in hindering them from their goal. These challenges faced by your customers can be identified as their "pain points." Consult your customer service team as well – they'll be your best intermediary. Investigate popular trends through narrowing down search streams related to your company to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and capitalize on your brand's niche.

Once you understand their "pains," you can now move on to learn about their goals too. Every consumer has a motivation in dictating their purchasing habits. Learn what makes them happy and what's their ultimate goal. In doing so, you'll be better equipped in serving them in the most appropriate way, be it in product or service.

3. Solving Problems
All this talk about understanding your customer demographic's "pain points" and happiness brings us to the next important step: How can we address these issues with an appropriate solution? This is where you'll need to start taking concrete steps.

Plan a detailed strategy on how to dismantle the barriers impeding your product or service from reaching these prospective customers. By slowly connecting the dots between your company's vision and your customer's demands, you'll be able to establish a more direct and personal connection with them.

Brand Makeover: Rebranding and Authority

The next phase of marketing to consider would be your branding. Every business needs to have a distinct branding to distinguish it from the competition. Whether you're an established or emerging business, branding is arguably the most important component of your firm's reputation.

Branding manifests in the form of logo, consumer relations, employee presentation, etc. Anything that you believe represents your company would fall under branding. Hence, in order to grow a strong, steadfast branding, you'll require extensive market research and customer analysis.

1. What Makes You Different?
Identify your unique selling point. What do you offer that your competitors don't? What problem is your product or service addressing and why should people be compelled to purchase it? These are key questions to consider while constructing your brand image. Think back to why you started your business in the first place.

2. Personify Your Brand
Although this sounds strange at first, let me explain. Just as how every person is individually unique, you can view your brand similarly to a person – to be unique. Within a person, there are multiple facets to their personality, from their speech patterns and mannerisms to their values and beliefs. As a result, take your time to nurture your brand's own belief system and values in order to truly stand out from the crowd.

By creating a brand that is a proper reflection of who you are as an individual and all that you represent, you'll be able to demonstrate an authentic connection between you and your brand to the public. If you're true to yourself from the start, you'll never have to worry about character inconsistencies in the future. Additionally, this also means that the customers who are drawn to your brand will be loyal to you from the start. This is the key formula for a long-lasting relationship with your customers in the business.

Keeping Up With Trends

Once you're comfortable with your brand identity, now's the time to understand the marketing trend within your niche. Within every product or service market, there'll always be trends popping up every few months. Thus, it's crucial to be updated with changes in consumer preferences and what's popular in general. By creating trend projections, you'll be able to think ahead and be on top of these trends instead of simply reacting to them as they come. This way, you'll never be intimidated or overwhelmed by changes in your market.

Last but not least, there's a person behind every digital screen. Appeal to your consumer's emotions. By creating relatable content to your customer's interests, you develop a subtle authority in their consumerism habits because you become the most relevant brand to them in terms of the market you're in.

All's fair in love and digital content marketing. The biggest takeaway from all these points would be to gain a solid understanding of your consumer demographic and your own brand identity. If you're not confident in these two aspects, marketing (whether real-life or digital) can only take you so far because your service or product would fail to appeal to the targeted market. This would result in you falling behind your competition that managed to develop a more honest and authentic relationship between product and consumer.