I used to work for a start-up. It had a great product, a strong USP and had invested a lot of time and money into design and development. I joined the company about nine months into its journey, ‘to do the comms’, which essentially means, for nine months, they’d been winging it.
This isn’t uncommon, and I’m not pointing the blaming finger here. I’m observing that comms is often an afterthought to product or service development, and when so much effort and money is poured into product development, you’re simply wasting time if you then don’t know how to tell your audience about it.
If you’ve been in a similar environment, you might have observed contracts being thrown out to PR agencies, even specific services like email marketing agencies, but if there is no overall strategy tying it all into place, it’s often money thrown into the dark.
What this company lacked before launching, was real audience investigation. It had identified a target customer, but hadn’t spent time getting to know them in-depth. They had no idea what their buying motivations were, especially when it came to purchasing a specialist product that took effort on the customer’s behalf, when they could have picked up a competitor’s in the supermarket.
As time went on, the strategy continued with assumptions and guess work, and worse – not even really knowing why some sales were coming in. If you don’t know this, you can’t know if you have a future-proof business.
I work with founders and leaders to get ahead of this massive issue before it has the chance to become one. Once a company has launched, everything feels like a race against the clock, and there are never enough hours to do it all. So suggesting that founders or comms leaders take time out of their jobs to speak directly with their audience and get to know their pain points intimately are often out of the question.
That’s where strategic content partners come in. I work with founders, leaders and impact-driven individuals to uncover their audiences’ pain points by spending time with them directly. I put a solid communications strategy at the top of the priority list, without you having to commit your team’s time to it.
I create bespoke reports which become content bibles for your business. You’ll never have to wonder what messages to start your week with again, because you’ll know exactly what you need to be talking about, when, and how with The Content Plan.
Does your audience love a good session on TikTok? Are they a long-form blog reader? Unless you know this stuff, you can’t know that you’re getting through to them effectively.
A lot of businesses and organisations talk about building trust, but who trusts someone who hasn’t spent the time getting to know them?
Organisations and individuals that invest in getting to know their audiences and brand messaging save themselves around a year of misplaced content. That’s a LOT of wasted resources.
If you’re interested in hearing more about what’s involved in creating The Content Plan for your business, get in touch today and meet your goals faster.
PS: If this post resonated, or you want to avoid falling into the trap of forgotten comms, remember – the second best time for action is now.