Content That Connects: Crafting a Message That Resonates

Effective marketing goes beyond promotion and fundraising. It’s about building meaningful connections, creating lasting awareness, and inspiring action. So how do you craft a content strategy that truly resonates with your audience?

You'll learn how to:

• Develop a deep understanding of your audience and their content preferences

• Craft a brand personality and tone of voice that speaks to your audience

• Build a content plan that drives engagement and fuels growth

📣 Ready to take action and put these learnings to work to create your own brand voice? Connect with our experts and fellow customers by continuing the conversation in our Empowerment Hub.

How do I understand who my customers are so I can send more relevant content?

In the webinar, we discussed the Ideal Customer Profile. Define the characteristics of your ideal, most loyal customer such as:

• Demographic details like their age, income, and education

• Character traits like their pain points, desires, fears, and what media they consume

By focusing on this target audience, you’ll be able to create personalized messages.

So, how do I find this information about my customers?

There are a few ways! It can be gathered through methods like interviewing your top customers or those who frequently engage with you, conducting surveys, or analyzing data from repeat buyers

How do you craft a unique brand personality?

Pose the following questions to yourself:

• What is your purpose?

• What is your brand promise? What problems do you solve?

• How do you want people to feel after interacting with our brand?

Can I reshare content I’ve already created?

Yes, you don’t need to constantly create new content. Evergreen content is a great thing to keep in your back pocket. It provides value to your audience and isn’t confined to a date or time period. If you want to change it up, try formatting it in a different way. Can you turn it into a video or a guide?

What would be your suggestions for a small business whose competitors' main mode of marketing is through social media? How do I stand out?

Tap into your own brand personality and the tone of your content. Make sure you're understanding your own audience and talking to them in a way that will resonate with them. Start with a survey and interview some of your best clients. This is the best way to tap into how to stand out.

Is it best practice to build relationships/network with other organizations in order to redirect overflow for services?

This can be a good idea, but we overall suggest not to put a lot of effort here.Sometimes the client just isn't right for you.

Can that data be directly collected in their contact profile?

Yes, you can use custom fields in your forms to add data to their profile within your Constant Contact account.

Are there ways or services online that can accumulate and evaluate my survey data?

You can create a survey in Constant Contact. For evaluation and getting help with your survey, check out our Agency Directory who may be able to help you set up an Ideal Customer Profile and so much more.

What would you suggest for a real estate agent? Could I include a short survey in my next newsletter? A portion of my contacts are in another state or in Europe.

Definitely segment your list for this. Have a gift that's relevant to each area so they can properly use the gift. A gift card could be a great way to go, and different for each country.

How do you craft your language if your current nonprofit membership base is older (50-75), but you want to begin attracting a younger generation (20-40)?

With email marketing, I would start by segmenting your list. Create an older and younger list and adjust your messaging for those two segments. Older generations often don't mind more reading and text in your emails. Younger generations prefer shorter, more concise content, and you can often use less formal language when addressing them. 

When it comes to social media, you likely need to find a balance of both tones, but you can also adjust based on the platform and who in your audience you know is there.

I work for local government and need ideas on how to elevate the style and material. I want the newsletter to be engaging while being informative.

Eye-catching visuals and even video promotions of the different events could be powerful here to promote the events.

I’m in a very competitive real estate market in Florida. What would you suggest when the product to sell is myself and my services?

You could share your knowledge and tips about navigating the housing market, selling, and securing loans. We suggest using video that shows your personality and lets people get to know you and put a face with your "brand”.

What kind of tone within your content is needed to acquire new donors?

I would really go back to identifying your ideal donor profile. Understand not only their demographic information but what drives them. Their pain points, personality characteristics, and the types of media they consume. This is how you will get to the best tone to connect with your audience.  

I don't have a development person. I would love to do video clips of our Senior Center Members in active classes and show those online and in emails. I have no idea how to do all that.

A smartphone can be used to help you record these videos and maybe even a lapel mic that you can find just about anywhere. Once it's recorded, you can upload the video to your social media and even on YouTube to make it easy to add to your emails. 

If a certain type of content is getting regular engagement from your current audience, but you want to explore new formats or new topics, do you have any recommendations of how to pivot your content without losing your audience?

Yes, brainstorm ways you could use the content idea as a short-form video for social media and even insert it into your email campaign. It can even mean turning it into a few images for a carousel post on social media. Remember, it's about reinforcing information in the content and even reaching new people. 

For people to find your business or organization with an online search, having content on your website, such as a blog post, is a great way to get in front of those folks. You could even think about turning the piece of content into an infographic. This could be supported with the use of Canva to make the concept very visual."

When do you know you need a new branding strategy, and what should you factor in  when creating a new brand?

There can be many reasons you may choose to rebrand. Some of the top ones would be if your business undergoes a shift in strategic direction or if your identity isn't resonating with your target audience. Check out this great article for more information on when you may want to rebrand your business.

One problem I have is that our main audience is our membership but they are not our major funding sources. We are trying to show our value to businesses to gain funds from businesses.

Appeal to the people at businesses first, usually through an emotional connection with your cause. Then, to appeal to the business, you may need to show the value of sponsoring and how in the end, it will benefit them ie. getting in front of more people. This may also mean different ways of getting in front of potential business sponsors, reaching out by phone, visiting in person, or even network with the people who can get you in the door to meet with important people at the company.

If I'm targeting small businesses, I'm conflicted because some small businesses want the mom and pop size support company, but other clients of the same size do want a bigger, more professional company for their IT support. But I'd like to market to both, but not sound bigger than I am, yet not sound so small that I can't help slightly larger companies.

Consider your brand personality, tone, and language you're using in your messaging. You can have one standard, but the language you use to target those larger businesses will need to be different, using IT language that they will be familiar with. This may also mean topics that revolve around trends and big changes in the IT world and the problems that bigger companies face. 

Can I segment my different brand personalities by letting them live on different platforms? I keep trends on IG, informative things on FB, timely messaging on X, and employee advocacy on LinkedIn.

For an overall brand personality, I would stick with one, but the content, like you said, can perform very well, keeping different types of content on different platforms. And as long as that works for you, that's great. 

The big thing with content and especially social, is not to overcommit. You want to make sure you focus on the quality of content and not just quantity to try to compete with an algorithm.

Do I make my messages sound like "I provide" since I'm a sole proprietor, or do I use sentences that are more like "We do this..." even though it's just me.

This is very promotional language. Remember, content should serve the purposes of driving awareness, providing value, educating your audience, and building connections. In this case, you focus on them ie. "you." Example: “Are you tired of struggling with XYZ?” When you are ready to promote, this can all depend on how you're structuring your brand. Are you the face of your company? Do you want to be? If not, I would go with more of a "we" language."

What is a realistic frequency of posting for a small company? How long in advance should you plan articles and does it hurt if you stop publishing for a while?

This has to be the frequency and the amount of content you have the time and resources to create and post. It's unrealistic to try to meet what other experts say if you don't have the resources to do it in a good way. You end up with more quantity and less quality in your posts. Consistency is important, but we all need to take a break at some point.

We have multiple social media channels. Facebook and LinkedIn perform best, and Instagram performs the least. Should we post less on Instagram? We've tried different types of content - reels, stories, carousels - and we are still low on engagement.

If you've also tested the heart of your message/the content itself, then I would probably post less on Instagram to save on resources.

Is there value in trying to build an audience on a platform where your audience is lacking because you want to engage a different audience? For example, if my audience is older, I'm mostly using Facebook but we are trying to target younger audiences like Gen Z, so should I put effort into Instagram?

Yes, absolutely. It's great to think about the future and who your younger demographic could be. For younger audiences, Instagram or even TikTok may be something to look at. Be sure to talk to your audience though, to see where they are actually spending their time.

How can we help seniors engage more in emails or engage in text more? I sell insurance and they want to call and chat a lot. Some older generations like to read a lot.

We typically say that shorter is better, but in this case, you could test longer emails with the details and educational information about insurance. I would also lean into segmentation for your list based on the types of insurance or topics they've shown interest in. 

I represent international artists. We have nothing but amazing content - images and stories. We do have newsletters. Any tips on getting conversions? We are leaning into the digital platform over the physical model.

Assuming you are selling the art itself or commissions even, it's great to feature your artists themselves, their process, and even progress on art pieces. Remember, it's about educating, and with art, it's very specific to the buyer so show them what's in the work with your artists and even the stylings of different art pieces.

Our clients are all well-educated professionals; they expect perfection in everything we do. How can we connect with them as humans?

Make sure you're showing genuine interest and talking to your clients. What are their specific pain points and characteristics? Remember, the well-educated part is only the demographics and speaking to them effectively will require getting to know them on a deeper level. 

When it comes to your marketing, make sure you're tailoring your messages as not everyone in your audience will be the same. It is important to note that it's important to acknowledge their level of knowledge, and it's very important to be responsive and reliable with these people.