Create for Customers. Not Peers.

Alright, alright, alright.

We’re back with another issue of Mind Your Marketing. Today, I’m talking to you about creating content for your customers, not peers. Now this sounds easy, but in reality, creating content for peers is intoxicating. And like anything that’s intoxicating, it can become addictive.

Let me tell you what happened to me.

I create this newsletter, my YouTube channel, everything, with the intent of connecting with businesses that want to hire my agency to help them. But I lost the plot.

See, I thought that by digging deep into marketing psychology and giving nuanced takes full of jargon, I would seem more credible. Now, did I find that stuff interesting? Hell yeah. However, it was too deep, too in the weeds. And sure, other marketers might enjoy it. But I’m not selling to other marketers.

So it was time for me to cut the proverbial grass.

In doing this exercise for myself, I was able to derive a four point framework to see if my messaging was hitting the right audience. Here is what you can use for yourself:

1. Engagement Audit – Go through your last 10 posts for yourself or your company and see who is engaging with the content. Is it potential customers (or people who could become customers) or is it peers, friends, and family? If it’s the latter, it’s time to change it up.
   
2. Business Results – Okay, I’m going to mention a scary acronym for marketers, but did your content efforts lead to ROI? You might have different goals for your content, but you want some measurable way to see if your content is actually leading to business. For example, I have a CTA at the bottom of this email for people to book calls. When someone books a call and is also on this newsletter, those two things let me tie ROI back to the effort put into writing it.
   
3. Language Check – Are your posts full of jargon? Could your customer send these to someone in their workplace without an additional paragraph of context? You want to create content that someone can send to a family member or co-worker without spending 20 minutes explaining what it means.
   
4. Don’t Market to Your Own Feed – This one is the hardest. Everyone has the tendency to market to their own feed. But you have to accept that your feed on social media is your reality, no one else’s. If you follow a bunch of business people, your feed is going to be full of them. Hormozi, Vaynerchuk, you know the type. So you might think you need to create content like that. But your potential customer might be interested in a wide array of things that have nothing to do with business. You have to stop walking in your own feed and start mentally spending time in theirs.

Now this will be harder to implement than it may seem. That’s because you’re going to have to give up the dopamine rush that comes along with creating content for peers. Peers engage with content, and they do it quickly. So when you see those views, comments, and likes coming in, it triggers you to create more content like that.

You have to fight against this urge. You have to create a message for your customer. You have to stick with it, even if it means you get fewer views.

Because what are views even worth if they’re coming from someone who isn’t your target customer?

The answer: nada.

So, as you go to create content, take a second and ask yourself, “Am I creating content for my peers or customers?”

If you’re still stuck and want some help figuring it out, hit the ‘book a call’ button on our contact us page and book a real consultation call with me to see where you’re at.

Cheers,
Jordan