Is it possible to create a consistent message across multiple audiences?
The short answer is yes, absolutely! However, without the right plan in place, creating content for multiple audiences pose considerable challenges for your organization.
It’s not unusual to create a content strategy that caters to different audiences, but it requires careful planning and organization. It also requires a deep understanding of the nuances across your client base.
What are their unique needs? What distinct problems do they face? Are there differences in the outcomes that they’re trying to achieve?
In addition to a deep understanding of their needs, you and your organization also need a deep understanding of how your organization best serves these different audiences. You need to be able to speak to them in a personalized way without sanitizing the core principles of your brand.
Audience-specific messaging. SEO-friendly content. Authoritative information that spurs action and drives growth for the business. Easy, right?
Here are some more recommendations that will help you achieve your messaging goals across multiple audiences.
Create Client Personas
Not every client has the same needs or goals. In order to get their attention, peak their interest, and turn them into a patron, you need content that speaks directly to them.
One way to achieve this is through creating client personas. These personas, depending on the scale of your organization and the consumer data you’re working with, can be relatively broad or quite granular in detail.
Organizing your customer base by age, location, level of education, occupation, gender, race and ethnicity, occupation, income, and other personal details can help you get a clearer sense of what resonates with certain demographics over others.
Of course, this information won’t tell you the whole story. There will be plenty of nuance even within the above categories, but personas will help you create a baseline for messaging that you can refine and improve as you earn more customers and gather more data.
Make Audience-Specific Marketing Content Funnels
Once you’ve gathered a good amount of data that gives you a clearer picture of your different audiences, you have the option of creating audience-specific content funnels.
In a nutshell, your top of funnel (i.e., “awareness”) content would consist of things like blog posts, social media updates, podcasts, and videos.
Middle of funnel content (“evaluation”) would entail pieces of content that will help your audiences determine if your products and services pertain to their needs, including things like case studies, white papers, e-books, and even webinars and quizzes.
Your bottom of funnel content (the “conversion” stage) would include demos, events, and competitor comparisons.
Having the above content that speaks directly to the different segments of your audience will help your business create more customers, and also earn more data that will help you get an even better understanding of the people you serve, their different needs, and how you can improve your delivery.
Use Different Mediums to Reach Different Audiences
Some folks are more likely to engage with your content on certain platforms than they are over others.
By diversifying your content, and publishing distinct messages, you’re more likely to reach the different audiences your organization wants to reach.
The core of your message might not even be all that different from audience to audience, but the way in which you present your content should be. Audience demographics and expectations are very different on Facebook vs. TikTok, for instance.
And sometimes, it’s not even the platform, but the format itself. You can tell a detailed and insightful story on a blog, an infographic, or a video, and the people you’re reaching through those formats are often very different consumers of information. All can lead to loyal clients.
Don’t Think You Have to Reinvent The Wheel
The above information might feel a little overwhelming, but we want to make it perfectly clear that there are easier, more efficient ways to generate content for multiple platforms and audiences.
This doesn’t mean that you’re always starting from scratch. Make refining, repurposing, and republishing your content a central part of your content strategy.
Have a high-performing piece of content? How can you adapt it for another segment of your audience? How can you adapt it for another medium?
Let’s say this high-performing piece of content is a video for one distinct segment of your audience. We would recommend that you get a transcript of your video (there are plenty of free and affordable transcription services available!), create a master document, and then start adapting your content for different audiences.
Additionally, you can start using that master document as a basis for creating emails, social media posts, and even for scripting more videos.
A great piece of content isn’t a single use item. As long as you keep breathing new life into it, its longevity is limitless. And remember — most people haven’t seen your content before. Don’t be afraid to redistribute it!
Stay Consistent In Your Branding
Yes, you serve different audiences with different needs, but that doesn’t mean that you should water down your foundational brand voice and message.
You’re tailoring your content, not your brand. It can be tempting to adapt the brand to serve those different audiences, but ultimately, those efforts will create confusion in the marketplace vs. help you achieve your goals.
The example that comes to mind is Geico. They sell a product that is relevant to virtually every possible demographic, and while they produce content that is sometimes straightlaced and informative and other times outlandish to the point of absurd, or content that is local and other times national, at their core they are always aiming to “provide affordable and dependable direct auto insurance to drivers across the United States.”
They’ve learned how to thread the needle of brand consistency in the midst of a rich demographical tapestry that is quite impressive from a marketing standpoint.
Find the Right Digital Marketing Partner
Understanding your business’s brand is hard enough, but being able to confidently serve diverse audiences in a way that drives growth can be extraordinarily intimidating.
You don’t need to go it alone. The Formada team are experts at branding, content creation and distribution, not to mention paid media tactics and web design.
If your organization needs assistance in making complex marketing problems simple, so you can focus more of your efforts on serving your customers and growing your business, then we’d love to hear from you.