Customer Advocates are Your Content Engine
Content marketing is a growing area of investment for marketers, but building content that matters and has impact can be a challenge. Most of the companies we work with are not struggling to create content, but they are struggling to create content that connects with prospects and customers. Enter your customer advocates.Your customers and customer advocates can help you build content that connects with your target audience. Our research shows that case studies delivered on stage, in video, or in print by your customers drive more return on investment than most other content. Of course the challenge remains - how to connect to those customers and build the stories; we recommend a co-creation approach and an ongoing program to help build out the library.
Co-create Content
Work directly with your clients. Develop a program that focuses on interviewing clients on a regular cadence and use those interviews to determine areas of interest, pain points, success stories, lessons learned and future areas of investment. In each interview listen for stories that can help you build out your content roadmap. These stories do not have to be long or complex – sometimes the highest rated content is very short and powerful.If you aren’t convinced that co-creation is the best approach for you – here are three things that co-creation delivers that have impact:
- Credibility– Extracting ideas, solutions and best practices from your clients provides one of the most critical ingredients for successful content—peer insights. Executives value their peers’ experiences and perspectives above many other sources.
- Relevance– Working with your clients allows you to single out the highest priority issues and topics that they care about. This makes your content relevant and targeted to your most important audience.
- Authenticity – Stories told by peers bring the value to life.
Your content engine is sitting right at your fingertips and you will be amazed at the things you learn that impact all parts of your business when you take the time to listen to your clients.