How Do You Create Content that Resonates?

Ben:

Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today, I’m joined by Claire.

Claire, welcome to the show.

Claire Foster:

Hello, thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Ben:

I’m excited for this subject. Today we’re going to get really tactical and provide some helpful advice that I think everyone can use right away. But before we do that, let’s get to know you. Tell us about your career and what you love about content and marketing.

Claire Foster:

Totally, totally. Yeah, so I have been in marketing in multiple different disciplines for almost 15 years, which I’m proud of. It also pains me to say it all at the same time. I started my career down in DC, where I was working for a multinational defense contractor. I was chasing billion-dollar contracts. It was all about getting the message right and getting it out there at the highest level of the funnel so that you would get the decision made that you wanted to be made.

I spent about five years there. In the past 10 years, I have been totally obsessed and in love with B2B tech SaaS. As crazy as it is to be part of sometimes, I had no DemandGen experience prior to that when I was working with military officials in a highly regulated industry. Tech has really been all about demand generation and messaging product launch for me.

I’ve held multiple different roles within my time in tech marketing. I did a career planning exercise a few years ago to figure out what I wanted to do next. It all came down to content, the message, and the story. That’s when I decided to make that pivot into content marketing. It’s been a good ride. I’ve spent part of my career working on massive narratives with huge stakes to then getting more into the day-to-day transactional messaging that’s needed to move the needle on smaller decisions.

The Role of Content at Every Stage

Ben:

And I like how you described the role of content at every stage of the buyer’s journey. I am such a big advocate for that. I think it’s so impactful. We’ve seen a trend where demand generation leaders have typically been the ones promoted to VP and executive-level positions in marketing. I think we’re going to see a shift to content marketers taking those same positions because of how impactful content is to every single stage of that journey.

If you don’t know how to manage that, it’s going to be brutal. I think there’s going to be a fun shift where a lot of content marketers are going to be in the driver’s seat. I think that’s going to be good.

Claire Foster:

I love that outlook, and it makes total sense. You need to be best friends with your demand generation partner because you need to be feeding them what they need to be successful. If you work hand in hand, you’ll understand the results of what you’re producing, and that’s what’s going to move you up that ladder. So I love that.

The Importance of Customer Insights

Ben:

Today we’re going to talk about something fun—Weaving the customer insights into content research and the creation process. We’re going to get really tactical, like very hands-on about the resources and opportunities to do it. But before we dive into that, why is it important, Claire, to be so close to the customer when creating content, and how do we incorporate that into what we’re building as marketers?

Claire Foster:

Yeah, I think it’s always been important to understand your target audience and really get in line with what they care about and what problems they need to solve. To do that, you need to know your products so you can make those connections. You need to know your industry so you can understand the macro and micro trends impacting what they’re worried about.

By and large, you need to understand them to produce something that they’ll want to open, read, and that will bring your brand top of mind if and when they need somebody like you to help them. For me, when I don’t know what to do or I’m stuck somewhere, I always go back to the customer, to my target audience, to center me. So it’s important to know how to do that and to remove any obstacles that are in the way of getting you there.

Tactical Ways to Learn from the Customer

Ben:

I love it. So let’s dive into the tactical side. How can you actually spend time with the customer, learning from them, and understanding them?

Claire Foster:

A lot of people say that. I’ve read a lot of articles and seen a lot of material that says, “Get to know your customer.” It’s kind of nebulous and vague. How do you actually get close to the customer? What can you actually do?

Ben:

Yeah, let’s get tactical. None of us need to hear cool ideas that don’t provide information on implementing. Like, no, not here for that, right?

Claire Foster:

Yeah, no deadlines, right? So there are lots of ways. Of course, everybody goes to in-person engagements, like shadowing sales, doing ride-alongs, which you should do. If you’re newer to your industry, your company, or working on something new, you should absolutely do that. But with the volume of content we’re typically producing, even when being intentional, I don’t know any content marketer who feels they’ve covered everything they need to.

A way I’ve been able to stay close to the customer and get really deep in understanding the highest and even the most specific angles I want to understand is through technology. There are lots of ways you can use technology to understand your customer. I’ve tried many over the years, but first, look in your tech stack within your company. If you’re working for a brand, that’s the first place I’d go. Make sure you know what’s in your sales and marketing tech stack and get to know those tools.

Using Technology to Understand Customers

Claire Foster:

I’ll give you a few examples. I’m in Gong every day, multiple times a day. Chorus is another tool. They’re called revenue intelligence platforms, primarily meant for sales coaching and recording calls. But they also have a use case for product and marketers in that you can go in, type in a topic, a keyword, and it will bring up every single call depending on what state your customers are in. Sometimes you can’t share both sides of a conversation that’s recorded, but if you’re working in states where that’s allowed, you’ll be able to listen to everything your sales reps or your team within your company are saying about a given topic.

These tools have gotten much better over the years. I started using them in 2020 when working for an HR company, trying to ensure we were talking about vaccines the right way. That was more of a compliance use case, and it was hard, but it’s gotten a lot better. You can just type something in, look at a quick transcript, and pinpoint a specific part of a call to see the context and what somebody’s talking about.

Understanding Customer Emotion and Terminology

Claire Foster:

If I’m looking up a topic, I can spend 20-30 minutes going through a couple of calls, sometimes more if I want to. But if I need to, I can do it in 20-30 minutes and get a good sense of the context, emotion, problem, and words people use to talk about it. That’s the first and most effective tool I would say.

Then there’s the scrappier side, which is also fun. I was writing about why you should use an AI agent 24/7 instead of only certain parts of the day. This was recently. I went to Slack, went through all these different channels, and typed in that topic. I found things like in our support channel, “Hey, somebody’s not wanting to turn this part of the tool on 24 hours a day. Can someone walk me through why we would want them to do that?” It showed the customer had this objection, and here’s the response. You can take just little bits of conversations.

SEO and Keywords

Claire Foster:

I’ve had a lot of success doing that. From a more human listening standpoint, those are the main tools I’d recommend. There’s also the SEO side. I don’t want to get too “write for the robots” because there’s a time and place for that, but that’s not the general vibe when you’re trying to build compelling content. The other area I’ve had success in is going into ZoomInfo and Sixth Sense. Those are prospecting and ABM tools that provide punchy keywords for an H1, title, or hook.

The reason I prefer those over just relying on paid ads or Google keywords is because I can build an audience reflective of my ICP and figure out what they’re specifically searching for. I don’t necessarily know that when I’m doing keyword searches in Google. It’s more like “here are the keywords that would make sense for your target audience to search,” but we don’t actually know. Those are really popular tools within a tech stack.

‍

Tools for Confidence and Impact

Claire Foster:

So that’s where I go, and it gives me that vote of confidence, and I think it moves the needle. There are other tools I could talk about too, if you’re in a low-budget, no-budget scenario, but let me know if that’s helpful.

Ben:

I love that, I love that. Maybe we’ll get to that, but I want to double-click on one thing you said because I found it so fascinating. When you’re looking at those Gong calls, you’re looking for the emotion of the customer when they’re talking about something specific. You’re looking for the terminology. What else are you looking for to ensure you get the value out of those insights from those calls? What specifically do you care about, and how does that translate into your content?

Finding the Light Bulb Moment

Claire Foster:

Yeah, that’s a great question. If I were to sum it up in a couple of words, it would be the light bulb moment. It goes back to that emotion, right? When we pitch a solution in a certain way, and I see that light bulb go off for the customer or the prospect, that’s what I want to run with. Sometimes I can find that if I’m searching for a specific topic. Sometimes I find that when I’m just listening to calls in general, without as much of a pointed agenda.

But that’s what I’m looking for because I work with an audience—like literally everybody—but I work with an audience that has zero free time, zero capacity. You have to be straight-shooting if you want their attention. So for me, I need to spend a ton of time on the hook. Everyone needs to spend a ton of time on the hook. That’s the mode I’m in—building my hook mode—when I’m in those tools.

Measuring Content Success

Ben:

How do you feel like learning the customer voice, learning everything—how are you measuring and looking at your content to determine if you nailed it? Did you hit it right? Sometimes people have access to different amounts of data and all sorts of stuff, and it’s different at different stages. Like Sixth Sense and those programs, they’re really cool but can be a little expensive sometimes. How do you really judge that for yourself?

Claire Foster:

Yeah, it varies based on the format of content. For something more long-form, like a blog, I’m definitely going into Google Analytics, and the key metric that is my holy grail is the engagement rate, which reflects the amount of time spent on the page. Recently, I put a blog out and put some paid behind it on LinkedIn. I did two, kind of in close proximity to each other.

One of them, embarrassingly, had an engagement rate or time on page of less than 10 seconds, and it was a topic we were pretty excited about. Then I did another one, and the time on page was like a minute 30. I felt really good about the quality of both, and I put paid behind both of them. So, you know, I know it wasn’t one of those things where it was just employees looking at it or something.

Video Content and Captivating the Audience

Claire Foster:

For video content, I’m still trying to get a bit more sophisticated with measuring it, but I would say it’s the same thing. It’s about how much time is spent within the video before abandoning it. To me, that’s more important than likes or comments on a video. We all independently search for topics and solutions; we’re all doing our research. I may see something I love that will definitely influence me to buy something, but I might not like it, and I’m definitely not going to comment on it.

So while those metrics are good, it’s more about actually seeing the behavior and how long you can captivate the audience, essentially.

Ben:

I love that. Well, this has been a really good episode. I love the tactical advice. It’s so applicable. People can go and use that today, and I absolutely love that. As promised, these podcast episodes are short, and hopefully, people got the insights they needed out of it today. I loved it. Claire, if anyone wants to reach out and connect with you online, where can they find you?

Claire Foster:

Yeah, they can find me on LinkedIn—Claire Foster. I’m always happy to chat, love connecting with my fellow content marketers. I’m also in the Slack channels within Content Marketing Institute, so if you’re there, I’m there. But yeah, would love to hear from anybody who wants to chat more on this.

Ben:

Love it, love it. Again, Claire, thanks for the time and insights today.

Claire Foster:

Absolutely, thank you.

‍

‍