I know, this course already seems to be endless, so I’ll be short …

So, most likely you are targeting a specific group of people who are interested in your content. When picking your target audience you should choose as narrow and small a group as possible which is still large enough to achieve your business goals.

Now, an essential part of a successful marketing strategy involves knowing your customers, and it’s very important to understand that a market or market segment isn’t just a type of person.

What I am trying to say here: you’ll have to outline at least a general audience profile to describe and understand your customers.

If you are focusing on lead generation and/or sales, you’ll have to make a step even further to create specific customer profiles, the so-called buyer personas. Knowing your audience is always important for a business, but in content marketing is literally vital for your success. If you don’t know them, you wont be able to create the perfect content for them. Period.

I know, I know … I just said that I’ll be short and I haven’t even mentioned the style of your content yet … Well, when you are targeting a specific group of people, you’ll have to adopt a specific voice, tone and language to get your message across. To put it simply: knowing your customers will help you to define a unique brand style which eventually will give you the opportunity to stand out from the noise and to engage your audience much more efficiently.

As I already mentioned, your style will be defined by three main characteristics:

• Brand voice; essentially, it’s the “feeling” that you will want your content to convey. Depending on your main audience group you can be educational, professional, authoritative, conversational, academic, etc.

• Brand tone; nothing else, but the way that your content will sound. It may sound scientific, formal, honest, amicable, direct, humorous, serious, etc.

• Brand language; it is what it is, the language in which your content is presented. And no, I am not talking about writing in English or Japanese, I am talking about being talkative, jargon-y, easy-to-digest, complicated, austere, etc.

Defining your own unique style is incredibly important for your content marketing success. Also, consistently applying it in your content creation process – and of course, through different communication channels – will help you to establish yourself as an authority and to increase your brand awareness.

Keep these thoughts in mind when you are developing a content marketing strategy for your business.