Content marketing is a thing now, but how do you adopt it? Here are some questions to help
you zero in on your content marketing approach:

1. Who’s Your Audience? Specifically, who’s the likely buyer/recommender? Your content
should talk specifically to that person. You should take a different slant and possibly use
a different tone if it’s a CIO, CTO, CISO vs. an IT manager, for example.

2. What Are The Pain Points? Depending on the recipient, you should emphasize different
pain points. For example, a CIO or CISO might care about risk and cost above all, while
an IT manager would focus on user features, integration and training time.

3. What’s Your Solution, and How Does it Address the Pain? Emphasize different
benefits of your solution depending on what’s top of mind for that audience.

4. Why is Your Solution Better? Assume your prospect is looking at everyone in your
market, so use a 360-degree view to pinpoint your clearest advantages.

5. Why Should They Believe You? Cite case studies, testimonials, or survey results with
real metrics (savings in costs or man hours, or percentage reduction in risk, for
example). Otherwise, your content is just hand-waving.

6. Where’s Your Target in the Sales Funnel? Those new to your market need education as
well as information about your advantages, while fence-sitters need compelling reasons
to continue the conversation or commit.

7. What’s the Best Channel for Each Target? Different audiences prefer different media -
Email, SMS, Social Media or Web. Put your content in the channels they use most.

8. How Do You Know It’s Working? A/B testing (one email subject line or blog title vs.
another) will tell you what works best. You’ll also want to use Google Analytics or other
tools to look at click rates, time spent, responses and other metrics.

So, these are the basic questions about content marketing, and they also apply to sales or
investor presentations (they’re also content, of course). You’ll doubtless adapt and refine the
answers for your own situation.