We were there at the dealership and the slick black haired, fancy suit wearing dude approached us. We had decided it was time to buy a new car (and I mean new car which has only happened twice in my life) and had convinced ourselves to go to the dealer for help. Now this was back in the early 2000’s when you still had to actually go to the dealership since Carmax and Carvana were a thing of the future. The slick haired dude, who I think was named Anthony or Tony, asked the first of many questions “what brings you in today”. Overall a fairly good opening question and regrettably the last good question. “We are looking for a new car” we responded.

Let me pause and state the obvious – from here on out, everything he asked was questions that related to him and his need to make the all-consuming commission on the sale. This is where he stopped being an advocate for us (the client) and became singularly focused on his needs.

“Needle scratch here”

Needle scratch here – you can imagine what his next question was to us – “What do you want your payments to be? And after a litany of other self-serving questions, came the final question “what’s it going to take to get you to leave here in that car today?”

We’ve all had that experience, and I can only imagine we all feel the same way when it happens. Fast forward to today’s marketing and sales tactics around content marketing. Consumers have become exhausted with ads and media talking about products and services. We now are wanting to get more information that makes us more educated on the product or service and how it will help us solve an important need. The advent of content marketing has filled this need, with over 85% of organizations professing they have a content marketing strategy. And for these companies, SEMRush attributes over 79% of all quality leads came from this content marketing.

There are a few very important considerations within content marketing. First is where the intention is placed when writing the content. If the intention is placed on the company or the product being sold, the reader will quickly abandon the article, realizing it is a manipulated way of being able to talk about ourselves. However, if the content is directed AT the reader FOR the reader’s needs, the content becomes more intentional toward the client and will be seen in a more genuine light.

Second, when writing content for a reader type, making sure that the content is relevant and interesting. We have all already been fooled by an AI generated article that we really thought was original that turned out to be AI. When reading content, making sure there are personal touches that are added that make it clear that a human is writing the content makes a huge difference.

Lastly, if the content is specific to actions to be taken, giving the reader some starting points and action steps are critical. In my line of work, financial services content is abundant. However, the content that gets read the most is the content that gives a current financial landscape, describes the necessary end state and then gives the reader some thoughts on how to achieve (eg “Making sure you take out Required Minimum Distributions can act as a reasonable way to generate income”).

So, when creating content remember the 3 I’s.

• Intention – Making sure the content is specific to the reader and their needs.

• Interesting – Unique content that adds a part of the writer’s personality will win over more AI content.

• Implementable – Giving the reader information that they can use after reading an article. Great examples of this are checklists, calculators, and design frameworks.