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In part 1 of this series, I introduced you to the content strategy pyramid and talked about content strategy as one of the faces of the pyramid. In part 2, we talked about another face of the same pyramid, content capabilities. Now it’s time to talk about your audience.

Unlike the first two faces of the pyramid, the audience face is not tiered, because that would imply somehow that only technical folks read the content from the bottom part of the content face, or that executive decision makers only read stuff from the top. Although this may be true in most contexts, what we find is that your audience is best visualized as participating in a lifecycle of interest.

This lifecycle of interest should always be aligned to your organization’s goals, no matter what they are. Does your organization want to sell more products or services to this audience? Does the organization want them to contribute to a charitable cause? Does the organization want them to buy products and services from affiliates? No matter what the goal is, the lifecycle of interest is something that every audience member will go through.

Entering the lifecycle of interest is a highly personal thing–some in your audience may hit your web site and bounce right off (they don’t enter the lifecycle at all), or they may come in at different points. They may stay in a certain phase for a long time, or they may move from phase to phase with every word they read, ending with a fevered call to your sales reps or an immediate purchase from your site.

Since you can’t control how they enter, where they enter, or how long they stay in the lifecycle of interest, what can you do? For that matter, do you really want everyone who visits your web site to enter this lifecycle?

The answer to the second question is very easy, and that answer is NO.

Let me go off on a slight tangent here. The #1 mistake that’s perpetrated by most web sites content-wise is internal focus. In other words, the content talks all about the organization, how many awards it has won, how many employees it has, blah blah blah. Nobody cares! Certainly not your prospect or customer. They only care about what you can do for them.

The #2 mistake content-wise is being boring. You know what I mean. You hire a copywriter to inject your copy with some spine and verve and then it gets rewritten by a committee of lawyers and execs until nobody really understands what it is you do, but nobody could stay awake long enough to come to that conclusion anyway, so no worries, right?

The #3 mistake content-wise is appealing to everyone. WRONG. We always encourage our customers to use language, terminology, and rhetorical approaches that filter out those people who are a waste of time as defined by the ultimate organizational goal. If your organization wants to attract prospects who are interested in purchasing a $50,000 piece of manufacturing equipment, then weed out those visitors who can only afford $5,000 worth of equipment, or who are there for other purposes (some of which may be huge time-sinks for your sales force).

The answer to the first question is a bit more complex, so before we get into that, we’d better look at the different phases of the lifecycle of interest.For most people, the lifecycle goes like this:

1. Cold contact. They’ve found you through Google or other research, they know nothing about you, they don’t even know if you’re a good match for them or vice versa. They usually don’t stay in this phase very long. Why? Because they either read something on your web site that makes them stick around a bit longer, or they get confused, bored, or otherwise uninterested and leave, probably never to return. (If they leave, it’s always best that they leave for better reasons than those!)
2. Qualified prospect. At some point, if they haven’t left, your content qualifies them at some level, and the same is true vice-versa. They may be entry-level buyers for your service, or they may see that their budget is too small. You and your products may become runners-up for an invitation-only RFP. Note that many folks might come to your site already qualified. They may have been to your booth at a convention, talked with one of your sales reps, or gotten a glowing recommendation from someone they respect about your products and services.
3. Repeat visitor. Repeat visitors have usually qualified themselves into one of various categories, and now they’re coming back to dig around a bit more. They may also be spending time doing comparison shopping with some of your competitors, trying to figure out how you’re different or if you’re a good match to their culture, processes, and requirements. In this age of content syndication, it is possible to have a “repeat visitor” who has read your syndicated blog items or e-newsletters numerous times without ever having come in contact with your main Web presence.
4. Champion. Champions are few and far between. They may be trusted partners, big customers, or even one-time customers who refer you a lot of business or write about you on their blog sites (for example). They love you, they promote you, they buy lots of stuff from you.

At any point in the lifecycle, a person can leave; yes, even long-time champions can get turned off by a change in editorial direction (for instance). At any point of the lifecycle, a person can decide that they’ve digested enough content and then want to buy your product, hire your consultants, or do whatever it is that you want them to do. At any point in the lifecycle, a person can decide implicitly that they will stay there indefinitely; for example, they may choose to become a repeat visitor to your white paper section and never ever make a buying decision no matter how much you bombard them with sales reps and emails.

So what can you do? Every page, and I mean every page, has to have some kind of content that appeals to the different folks in their own personal lifecycles.

If you have a page full of white papers, you’d better have one that says “Company Overview and Capabilities” for those folks who are Cold Contacts.

You’d also better have stuff that goes into more detail for the Qualified Prospects, and you’d better believe that they will be using that information to make some kind of decision about buying your stuff versus somebody else’s stuff.

You’d better have freshly baked content for the Repeat Visitor, because they may get bored and move on.

And for the Champions? Links to special invitation only, password-protected pages that provide them with nitty-gritty white papers and case studies, the good stuff chock full of vitamins and data, the stuff that isn’t available on the street.

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