Small business owners are always looking for the best way to balance their time between marketing and running their business. If you’re like most owners, you’d much rather focus on the business, so you look for resources that will reduce the time you spend on marketing.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is obviously the new shiny object across the online world, and it is especially being touted as the perfect marketing solution. Why come up with your own content when AI can produce it in seconds?
As a marketing professional who has helped many businesses develop customized content to attract their ideal client, I can actually name several reasons why you should come up with your own content. This is not to say I’m fully against AI or other outsourcing methods for that matter. But I do know that what they save you in time could end up costing you in marketing effectiveness.
Content Creation Requires a Creator
Whenever I begin working with a new client, I get to know a lot more about their business than just the service they provide. I want to know what makes them unique. What do they want their clients to experience regarding their personality, level of service, and communication? There’s a lot more to it, but what we are doing is building a persona and developing messaging.
A persona is a fictional representation of an ideal client. Messaging is what you say and how you interact online with that persona in order to attract the real people who fit that profile.
When I support clients in their content marketing strategy, I ask specific questions to construct both a persona and messaging. But I can’t do anything without the client. Only you, as the owner, can describe what makes your business a perfect fit for a certain type of client. Everything I work with has to come from you:
The way you think about your business and its value
Your distinct business vocabulary and tone
Your education, knowledge, and experience
Your pathway to business and early lessons
Your successes and failures
Your methodology for providing client services
Far too many business owners don’t realize how this information differentiates them in the marketplace. They take their best features for granted rather than creating content gold out of them. They wind up feeding quick and easy prompts into an AI platform or subscribing to a generic industry content service.
The result is generic content that simply gets thrown into the algorithm and becomes part of the noise rather than a shining beacon to the potential clients who need to find them.
Still not sure where to get started? Here are some questions I often ask my clients that help their gears turning.
What’s something that you’re seeing with many of your clients?
What’s a recent story from a client you’ve worked with?
What do you keep saying over and over?
These prompts are going to help you identify what information is both helpful to your prospective clients and showcase your unique way of thinking and working.
Your Ideas are a Differentiator
I fully understand the need to economize your energy. You didn’t get into business to spend your time marketing, writing, posting, recording, and analyzing. You want to do the work you set out to do. But you and I both know that you have to put some level of effort into your own marketing in order to attract your ideal clients.
Rather than succumb to the time-saving but reach-restricting allure of AI or a content service to do the work from start to finish, I would encourage you to invest your time upfront so that you can save more of it in the long run.
Yes, you need to use your own ideas in order to develop content that gets you noticed in online marketing. But that doesn’t mean you need to devote yourself to it exclusively from now until forever. Once you pour your unique voice, experience, and expertise into idea development, you can absolutely outsource content production.
Marketing professionals, content writers, and yes, even AI platforms are all powerful resources. The key is using them wisely so that they enhance your online visibility to your target audience.
Hopefully by now I’ve convinced you that your content needs to reflect your unique ideas, experience, style, and expertise. But you might be thinking that you actually don’t know what your ideas are yet. Or maybe you have a few ideas, but you don’t know the best way to convert them into content. We can help with that! We work closely with business owners to draw out their differentiators so that their ideas form the messaging that resonates with the right clients. Contact us to schedule a consultation.