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What is content targeting?

In this article I break down this taxonomy and convert it into something more common, especially to marketers & other acronym lovers >>> 3Ps!

One of the simplest techniques marketers can do to improve the effectiveness, utilization, relevance and reuse of their marketing content is to set up a system for tagging all of their content by persona, process step, and pain points of the audience.

These “3P’s” of content targeting make up the core building blocks of a marketing content taxonomy that supports modern marketing programs and systems.

Let's break them down

Persona

Most organizations are starting to plan, create and target content that address the needs of more specific customer segments. According to a Millward Brown research, 74% of high performing marketers report placing more emphasis at targeting their content by people with common attributions, or persona

At the highest level, persona-based targeting involves breaking the core audience for front of the funnel social media, content marketing and web marketing programs into several personas.

As marketers become more advanced, they start to narrow the definition of the persona, to reflect more and more granular target customer profiles to improve engagement in marketing automation programs, or buying functions within an account level targeting model to support sales enablement.

Process

Process based targeting targets content based on what stage of the customer journey it supports, or the customer is currently at.

Aligning and targeting content by stage of the customer journey ensures content directly supports the go-to-market strategy and drives measurable business outcomes.

Process based targeting makes it easier to recommend the right content to support the different value conversations that happen at the front, middle and back of the sales funnel.

More and more marketers and content creators are targeting their marketing content based on what stage of the customer journey it supports.

Pain Points

Leading marketing teams are analyzing audience intelligence, social listening data, customer feedback, semantic data, and sales feedback to understand the issues, topics and questions that need to be addressed during sales conversations and post-sales support conversations.

57% of the marketing executives interviewed by Millward Brown report they are targeting their marketing content by customer pain points, needs, and topics of interest as a way apply that knowledge in day-to-day selling situations.

Targeting content based on customer needs improves marketing performance because more relevant and important content will generating more engagement, better response, more sales meetings, and better value conversations.

While persona marketing is all about segmenting the audience, creating consumer profiles, & marketing laterally at an individuals, process marketing is based on a holistic customer journey, mapping down triggers & criteria that influences interest & purchase.

Finally, pain point marketing is all about modeling topics that dig into unmet met needs through emotionally relatable content.

Content constructed by the 3Ps is much easier to find, target, recommend, assemble, and distribute the right content at the right place in time in every marketing, sales and media touch point.