At today’s Pardot User Conference the marketing agency Brainrider gave a great presentation titled Developing Customer-Centric Content. The big takeaway for me was that too many sites organize content based on how marketers think about types of resources (e.g. PDFs, Case Studies, etc) as opposed to how the potential customers think about what they want. Have you ever gone to a site and generically said that you want a PDF? I didn’t think so.
Here are notes from their presentation:
Things to define:
- Driven by objectives
- Customer-focused
- Demonstrating subject matter expertise
- Supporting your programs
- Measuring performance
Checklist for better content:
- Be customer-focused
- Start with light content
- Make it findable
- Measure what works
What business are you in?
- Target
- Needs and pain
- Value proposition
- Content categories
Start with light content:
- Leverage “as is” content
- Repurpose existing content
- Use light formats
- Curate and share 3rd party content
Leverage as-is content:
- Existing brochures
- Resource center
- Slideshare
Repurpose existing content:
- 1-page download
- Checklist
- Resource post
- Blog post
Make it findable:
- Use keywords in your title
- Describe why it’s worth reading
- Use images and graphics for key concepts
- Headers and lists to be scannable
- Include more information links at the bottom
Measure what works:
- Track content by category in Google Analytics by segments
- Pageviews, Avg. time on site, Pages per visit, Gated downloads
Brainrider argued their case well that marketers need to develop customer-centric content and provided great examples.
What else? What are your thoughts on customer-centric content?
David Cummings on Startups 
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