What if I told you that your customers don’t care about your product or service?

That’s exactly what David Meerman Scott says (and you can listen to the entire podcast here). Some marketers agree with him, and some don’t.

Which category do you fall into?

What people do care about is solving a problem and whether your organization, product or service can solve it for them (which is especially true in the B2B world.) Some may think we’re splitting hairs here, but this statement can be powerful for marketing teams who are struggling with creating content.

When marketers get in a content rut, many naturally default to talking about how great their products and services are. That rarely makes an impact on their audience. In today’s hyper-connected world, people are getting very good at finding information and misinformation, at tuning out messaging and becoming more elusive, while also becoming more impatient, more demanding and more discerning.

They’re really good at solving problems, and really good at tuning out old school marketing messaging.

Creating Content That Matters

If your team is stuck using the egotistical approach of just creating content that only talks about what your company does, about your products or services, (which is what many marketers still do), then break your old school traditional media habit by remembering the first sentence of this post:

Nobody cares about your product or service

Everyone cares about solving problems, whether it’s their company’s problem, their department’s problem, their team’s problem, or their own problem, either on the job or in their personal life.

Don Draper was the master of creating a problem that probably didn’t exist and voila – presenting his client’s solution as the answer.

Advertising has evolved, but the concept of solving your buyers’ problems hasn’t; it’s only been amplified.

So if you’re stuck in a content rut, use this simple trick and shift your focus from you to your customers. Think about all of the problems your typical customers are trying to solve. Create your buyer personas so your team can truly understand the human elements of your customers. As David mentions, once you truly understand what’s really important to the people you’re trying to reach, it’s much easier to then understand what type of content to create.

Psychology studies show that when you help people, they feel a sense of reciprocity and have a willingness to help you back. It opens them up, in a time when they’ve become conditioned to shut things out.

Create content that helps your market solve their problems, educating them first, helping them, and then allowing them to use their refined skills of finding information to engage with your brand if they choose.

Your audience will love you for it and it’ll make your content marketing efforts more successful.

If you’re ready to get started, here’s a step-by-step guide for generating content ideas.