Finding your content marketing niche in a crowded channel market

by Vanessa Cardwell, MD, Bite IT Marketing.

Oh, I’m back and ready to bang on about the wonders of Joe Pulizzi and his fabulous book Content Inc. In a previous blog, I touched on how Joe turns the traditional approach to entrepreneurial endeavour on its head, suggesting your product and service offering and the charges you make come secondary to finding your ‘sweet spot’ – the intersection between your competency and your personal passion, building your base, and harvesting your audience.

What fascinates me about this is not just its simplicity but the practical applications of this approach and the value you can add through content marketing to existing established clients.

So much about the success of your business is about telling your story at the right time to the right people and through the right channels, showcasing where your unique value is. This links to my previous blog post on knowing where your value is and how to add it.

In our crowded and highly competitive channel market with resellers often competing solely on price, how can you stand out? There’s the obvious, like aligning to the right technologies, bringing the best vendor solutions to your end-users and adding extra value through professional services, support and training. But how can you engage your existing customers and prospects with unique value?

In my view the solution is simple. It focuses around building close relationships and understating your customer’s challenges, making their problems your problems. For example, Marketers selling security solutions could spend a valuable hour with a trusted end-user customer and ask them these 3 questions:

1. What are the biggest challenges you have in securing your business in 2019?
2. What are your biggest security concerns in 2019?
3. What services do you buy that offer you the most value?

By matching your services to your end-users challenges and offering a bespoke content and marketing plan you are best placed to offering a solution that meets your end-user’s business challenges.

I know, what I’ve offered here is a simplistic view, but hopefully, it will get you thinking. And, if you need more support, Bite IT Marketing are on hand to help you identify your target audience verticals, set your campaign goals, define target accounts and decision-making units, classify personas, create content and get cracking! (Which links to my next blog ‘The importance of lighting a fire under your marketing planning’ – watch this space).