So let's start with the beginning. The very first thing you need to consider when talking about content marketing is your audience. Your product, and your messaging has to align with what your audience wants with what they need with what would appeal all of their desires right now. Now, this is not a course on market research. This is something that I encourage you to really master, if you haven't already done so. It's one of the most important parts of your business, knowing what your prospects what your clients, what your return customers really want, and really appreciate about you.

Nothing is more important because you could have a terribly written ad that would still be Work amazingly, as long as it just resonates with them. If you have, on the other hand, a really sophisticated ad, one that's that's polished and uses all the cool, psycho logical tactics and things. But if it doesn't resonate with the audience, no one will act on it, no one will even read it. So understanding your audience is crucial. Like I say, this is not a course on how to do market research. But I will just give you a couple of tips, especially those that apply really well to content marketing.

The first thing you need to think about is what's going on in the mind of your prospect or your client or your customer as they are reading your content or just before they read your content. What sort of emotions do they have around what issue What's the logic that they use? really understanding that thinking is important? Because people who work in finance, for example, are going to have very different concerns very different hopes, very different dreams than those who work in say healthcare. Understanding what makes your prospect your audience tick is incredibly important. And once you do understand it, once you understand the emotion that's going through their minds, once you understand the logic that they use, when thinking about their work when thinking about what's going on in their lives.

Once you understand that, it becomes a lot easier to write content that speaks to them. And speaking of speaking to them, what sort of language does your audience use? Are they really educated? Or are they really blue collar? Do they use lots of specialists slang jargon? Do they speak with like lots of energy?

Do they tend to be more reserved? It's really crucial that your content marketing speaks with the same voice with the same language that the audience does. You want your readers to go? Yeah, this person really gets me. This person understands me. Because once the reader once the audience feels understood, they begin just automatically to trust you.

Once they trust you, the messages you're trying to get across the point you're trying to get across. It just comes across automatically. Without that trust, it's a lot harder. The other thing you need to know about your audience is what do they like to read or listen to? And what do they like to buy? Because a lot of people will talk about, oh, I would hypothetically buy this product in this circumstance.

That's what a lot of market research will tell you. And so then businesses will go out and say, Hey, this, the our audience said that they want this, that they'll buy this. So let's create it. And sometimes that just falls apart. Just like it just doesn't work. Sometimes it does, of course.

But the interesting thing is they get much better results. By paying attention to what they already buy. Don't Ask Don't ask them what they would buy hypothetically, have a look at what they're actually buying. Because what they already buy is what they'll buy more of what they already read, and listen to is what they'll read and listen to more of people like what is familiar and comfortable. You have to be new with your content marketing. But at the same time that newness has to be in a familiar package.

So if your audience for some reason reads newspapers still, then your content marketing needs to read like a newspaper. If they like to read, I don't know, detective novels. then adding a little bit of that, that detective novel essence into your voice just to touch will really resonate with you and your readers.