7/29/2014 Making the Leap: Egocentric to Empathy in Content Marketing

http://www.toprankblog.com/2011/04/egocentric-to-empathy-conten-marketing/ 1/20

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Making the Leap: Egocentric to Empathy in Content Marketing

By Lee Odden Content Marketing, Online Marketing

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Imagine this scenario: Company XYZ has developed a greatbusiness creating products and services, developing marketing programs that explain the features and benefits of

those offerings and making sales. The mix of SEO, advertising and newsletter is focused on explaining the

solutions offered with the intention of educating and persuading prospects to buy. This is the way it’s been done

in the past and it’s what current marketing programs are based on. Pretty common right?

But let’s also imagine in our hypothetical situation that sales growth has started to slow down or even slumped.

Competitors are starting to eclipse Company XYZ in search results, the blog doesn’t really get many shares,

likes, links or comments and it’s nothing but crickets chipring on the Facebook Fan page, on Twitter and the

YouTube channel. The staff responsible for creating content are running out of ideas. Seem familiar?

There are tens of thousands of companies in this situation: stagnant marketing and slow or loss of momentum.

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7/29/2014 Making the Leap: Egocentric to Empathy in Content Marketing

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Many times when agencies like TopRank Online Marketing are tapped to help established companies fix or step

up the performance of their online marketing mix, one of the most common situations we see is the need to

transition from an egocentric view of marketing to one of customer empathy. I’m not saying these companies

don’t care about their customers, they really do. But SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing programs that

are focused solely on the product/service Features and Benefits model are running their course.

The need for this transition is especially present with content marketing focused programs. A Content

Marketing: Discovery > Consumption > Sharing model means leveraging SEO, Social Media, Online PRand Email Marketing to help customers find, understand and promote company content to boost awareness,

engagement and sales. But if the content topics are solely focused on what the company deems important, such

as features and benefits, then there can be significant disadvantage.

Say Company XYZ has decided the mix of content on their website focused on explaining the products/services

in the feature and benefit style. That means the company is deciding what’s important. It’s their egocentric view

of their offering that drives content. When a company is solely focused on explaining its own point of view, they

may be missing numerous and compelling opportunities to create the kind of content that gets shared, linked to

and that inspires sales.

The transition from egocentric to empathy simply means looking at the company’s products/services offer fromthe customer point of view. Doing so opens up a bevy of content creation and social engagement opportunities. I

know this sounds intuitive and obvious, but my experience over the past 13 years as an online marketer has beenthat common sense is indeed, the least common thing.

How to make the change? Here are a few simple steps towards opening up a goldmine of content marketing and

social media engagement opportunity:

1. Create personas about your ideal customers identifying their preferences for content discovery, consumptionand sharing. What are their pain points, what situations are characteristic of their need to buy your solution? Use

those personas as customer segmentation guides for creating a Social & Content Marketing strategy.

2. Audit your existing content and reconcile it with the information customers really need to: buy, use &recommend your products/services.

3. Tap into Customer Service and Sales departments discussions with customers to find out what the most

common questions are. Develop a creative strategy to answer those questions with content and media online, onan ongoing basis. Make a topic matrix in your editorial plan that will help you manage planned creation,

optimization, promotion and measurement of this customer-centric content.

4. Use real-time and social media monitoring tools to identify questions being asked about topics of interestfor your target audience and products/services mix. Something as simple as a persistent query on

search.twitter.com can reveal topics to cover in your content plan as well as engagement opportunities. Quoraand Facebook are also useful in this way.

5. Crowdsource content from active customers and fans. Present challenges or requests for opinion andinformation on relevant topics from your social networks and customers to create new content shared with the

community. Topics could range from the reasons why the category of products/services is important toinnovative uses by current customers. Recognize contributions publicly to reinforce participation and sharing

7/29/2014 Making the Leap: Egocentric to Empathy in Content Marketing

http://www.toprankblog.com/2011/04/egocentric-to-empathy-conten-marketing/ 3/20

behaviors. Find ways for fans to participate in a way that meets their needs and in doing so, help meet your

brand’s objectives.

There are many other angles a company could take once the door of thinking like a customer is opened. There’sa time and place for brands to decide what information is best for customers but the days of using that egocentric

approach as the driver for content is over. Tap into what’s important to your customers, build trust and engagethem to create a more sustainable approach to content marketing success.

We have many, many smart marketers reading this blog, so how have you helped your organization think about

content with more empathy towards customer needs? Are there creative examples you can share?

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14 Comments

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Tags:Content Marketing, customer centric marketing, empathy, online marketing, tips

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•

Jason Montoya • 3 years ago

Auditing your content is important, Many times we write something and a few years later things

have changed. Going back and updating it is a good way to stay relevant.

Lee Odden • 3 years agoTopRank Mod Jason Montoya

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•

Good idea Jason, it's also a good way to find content to repurpose. :)

•

Ozio Media • 3 years ago

One of the best ways to start thinking like a customer is to tap directly into your customer base.

Inspire interaction on your social media pages by posting a short survey or poll as a way to

inquire about what pains your customers and what their wants and needs are. This will get

them talking and sharing. Include a promotional offer as an incentive to get current and potential

customers to participate such as a coupon or an exclusive discount.

•

Jennilia • 3 years ago

Marketing is adding something new everyday.

•

Thomas Marrickville • 3 years ago

we haven't done the last one, but a competitor has and it has worked wonders for them. They

simply used a forum that they first padded out with an excel database of comments, then they

sent a mailout to customers to join and it became organic. Customers of the company are the

mods! its madness.

•

SocialMediaMagic • 3 years ago

I really like what you said "There are many other angles a company could take once the door of

thinking like a customer is opened." Thinking like the customer is one of our biggest challenges

when marketing. It's something that should be in the forefront of our minds while creating

content. Great article! Thanks for the knowledge.

•

Alex J • 3 years ago

Stop Writing about Everything. So many brands create content and try to cover everything,

instead of focusing on the core niche that they can position themselves as an expert around. No

one cares about your special recipe. No one cares about your iPad review, that has nothing to

do with marketing automation.

Find your niche, and then go even more niche. For example, let’s say you sell travel gear for

pets. If that is the case, don’t create a blog on “pets” or “pet supplies”. Create consistent and

valuable content to solve your customers’ problems around traveling with pets. Seems simple,

but many companies make this mistake. For more, this one may help: Content Marketing

Stinks: Fix It.

2

Peter • 3 years ago Alex J

Alex, I agree with you but sometimes there are some niches where you have to go up

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•

Alex, I agree with you but sometimes there are some niches where you have to go up

otherwise you'll not have anything to talk about!

Either way regarding the post, I think if we want empathy then we have to help people.

Creating a persona helps to know how we can help our target.

Why on earth would people like to read a blog about a company where every post is

about a different aspect of the company product, anyway?

•

Lee Odden • 3 years agoTopRank Mod Peter

That's the thing Peter, people do want to connect with brands that are useful and

not a spew about product. If a brand can master the art of both, then it's a win all

around.

•

James M Cooper • 3 years ago

Hi Lee,

Yeah, 'buy my xyz, it's really good, it has abc', is sure not the best approach to find people that

could be interested in your products/services. Nice descriptive contrast; egocentric vs

empathy!

I think we should note; features and benefits should make up part of the 'sales' message. The

sales message is for those people that show interest in your products/services once they have

likely found you through good content marketing (where the 'marketing' message is focused on

helping people out).

Cheers,

James

•

Lee Odden • 3 years agoTopRank Mod James M Cooper

Good point James - I don't mean to discourage feature benefit content, this post is to

inspire content creation in addition to it.

Guest • 3 years ago

Great point on the 5 steps. The 5th step is the trickiest because the content has to have value.

In my experience, fans and followers are not looking to be a brand's friend. The reason why they

follow the brand is to receive information about the brand as it relates to products and

promotions. It's the brands job to deliver.

When asking for content, it does give them a sense of ownership and participation, especially

when they see the growth of your brand's social presence.

Recognizing their contributions is also key because not only does it show them you are

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•

Recognizing their contributions is also key because not only does it show them you are

listening to them and appreciate their participation, it also increase your brand's digital footprint.

@IsmaelAlterian

Community Manager | Alterian

www.alterian.com

•

Lee Odden • 3 years agoTopRank Mod Guest

It really depends on the company and market. I don't think anyone can accurately

generalize that all people follow brands to get promotions - especially when it comes to

B2B, which is an area of focus for our agency and the content on this blog. For

example, we have 8,500 fans on Facebook without a single promotion.

But it's not limited to B2B. We have a retail client that is getting great engagement and

website traffic by asking customers to share photos of things they've made with our

clients' products. In this case there are also promotions, but it's evidence that

customers do want to engage with the brand through content and not just exist on the

receiving end of information.

•

Antonio Coleman • 3 years ago

A company must be willing to step outside the box and get things down in a more newer

fashion..once they do that then the rest just comes in time..

"Black Seo Guy "Signing Off"

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