Staying Relevant in a Content Led World
Posted On - 15/06/2021
‘Content is king’ is perhaps one of the most overused terms in the world of marketing since Bill Gates first coined the phrase in 1996. The premise is simple: create great content and the world will listen to what you have to say and more importantly, your customers will come knocking on your door. 25 years later, data and anecdotal evidence show that content still reigns. It’s what people look for and trust when it comes to making a decision about a service, partner or product. Consistent content gets your brand in front of more people and as a result the brand becomes more visible and more established as a credible voice.
But what happens now that everyone is creating content?
Right now, content remains king but when it comes to developing winning PR and communications strategies, companies need to focus equally on the relevance of their content to yield powerful content that encourages, convinces and inspires.
In order to create and foster relevance, you need to know what truly engages with your audiences. Gone are the days of bunching your audiences in generic demographic groups. We were recently having a conversation in the office about what makes us buy a beauty product, what is the thing that sways our opinion towards a certain product over another? One of us is more likely to buy a product that has received a good review from a beauty columnist she trusts while the other trawls through reviews, especially video reviews that show results. That’s where relevance of content and channel comes into play. Top-line audience segmentation would probably stick both of us in the same customer demographic group because of geographical location, professional background and age.
It’s now more important than ever to develop a much deeper understanding of audiences on a much more granular level than perhaps is the norm. Customer personas need to look beyond the generic audience characteristics and look into what really makes your audience pay attention. Covering all bases when it comes to your content marketing isn’t about creating great volume of content across as many platforms as possible, it’s about covering the different needs and interests of the people you’re trying to appeal to. On top of that you need to apply the relevance of your content to the wider environment you operate in and take into consideration what’s happening around you. I would argue that creating tone-deaf content is worse than not creating any content at all.
The C-suite and business leaders have come a long way to recognise the importance of PR and communications as a key business function. The ones who combine this with a ‘test and learn’ approach to create relevant campaigns will be at the helm of their industry shifting opinions, engaging with their stakeholders and enhancing corporate reputation.
