When marketing your business, one of the most important questions you can ask when creating a strategy and content is: what story is my client telling themselves?

While everyone is different and comes to your website with different backgrounds, there will be something, or a few things, they share in common that they’re seeking from you or your competitors.

As a marketer who cares about earning and belonging to your customer, it’s your job to figure out the commonalities among your customers and create content that attracts them and engages them so they’ll choose you.

So, how do you do it?

Here are some ideas:

1. Ask them – your sales and customer service teams are the best sources of information. They can understand the needs and desires of your current and potential customers when they engage them in conversation. It pays to have a process to record and share it with all business areas.
2. Research – taking the time to research and seek out information that may or may not be easily found is the key to understanding people and the stories they may be telling themselves about what they want. And, it doesn’t have to involve focus groups or expensive customer research agencies. Seek out the information you’re looking for in places people naturally share it. When consulting and copywriting for my clients, LinkedIn and Amazon are goldmines for informal conversation and insight.
3. Pay attention to the market – choosing a few key and proven publications or podcasts to follow will show you what people are talking about now and spark some ideas for your business.

When you have this customer insight, the next thing to do is create messaging and content around the information in support of your sales goals.

By asking yourself, “what story is my customer telling themselves about hiring me to ….” or “what story are they telling themselves when they buy my …”, you can meet them where they are and encourage them to see their story in your offer.

Training yourself to ask this question before putting anything out into the world will make marketing easier, more effective and more rewarding for your client. It’s part of how you Belong to Your Customer.

Resources: Seth Godin’s Udemy Course, Modern Marketing, and his book, This Is Marketing.