Remember when Hamlet said, “The play’s the thing…?” He had just come to the realization that he could use his ingenious content (his play) to gauge the reaction of his audience (King Claudius) in order to determine if the king was guilty of murder.
For the most part you’re not likely using your content to gauge your customer’s guilt in regard to anything quite so sinister. But, like Hamlet, you should be highly focused on understanding your customer’s reaction to your content.
Why?
- If you are not helping them with their pain points then they will look to your competitors for such help
- If they respond positively to your content, you may be able to find ways to further build on what you are currently providing to enrich their experience even more
Case in point:
I had the honor and pleasure of seeing Jonathan Fields present at SOBCon2010 about the birth and growth of his business. He talked about how he had built a business that he was passionate about and how he wanted to share his experiences with others in a book. But he didn’t know how to go about becoming an author and marketing himself that way.
In investigating the best approach he discovered that there was no resource out there for aspiring authors, in particular on how to use social media to market your new book. So, he wrote an (brilliant and highly regarded) eBook. And then he closely gauged the reaction to the eBook. His point to the audience? “I was testing the viability of the idea that there was an audience for the subject.”
The response was overwhelming (and I’ve referred several new authors to his eBook just in the last week alone) and led to the creation of Tribal Author Camps (in-person events where 25 aspiring authors learn the secrets that Jonathan learned) and is now leading to online webinars because the response to the Camps has been so positive.
Jonathan could have released the eBook and been done with it. Instead – he made understanding the response to his content, the eBook, pivotal in his business strategy, which in turn has led to opportunities to which he never would otherwise have been led.
How about you? How closely are you monitoring your customer’s response to your content? And what do you do with that information? Please let us know in the comments, we’d love to hear from you!
