How to find a content-market fit?

You can’t get results with your content marketing without the content-market fit. Period.

You can’t grow a company without a solid product-market fit, right?

So it makes sense to have a content-market fit before investing your resources into a content marketing production.

But, what is the content-market fit?

Same as PMF, Content-market fit is proof that your content engages and resonates with your target audience and eventually converts them.

I know all of this sounds great, but how do you find a content-market fit?

Let me guide you through the exact process we’re doing at Contenthorse.

The central part of the content-market fit, or how we also call it ICP research, are interviews.

You MUST conduct interviews with two types of people:

1. Your teammates who are in constant contact with your customers (so your sales reps, customer support/success reps, and others)
2. Your customers

Our recommendation is to interview ALL of your teammates (if you have a lot of them, then 5-10 sales reps and 5-10 customer support reps) and to interview between 10-20 of your customers.

Before I dive into the questions you’ll need to ask each and one of them, let me quickly give you some tips on how to land interviews with your customers:

1. See who are the most helpful/supportive users on your list. The ones giving you the most feedback during the live chat/email support sessions are usually more likely to invest 15 minutes of their time and speak with you.
2. Offer them some incentive - whatever you want. You can order them a takeout and have a virtual lunch together, or give them an Amazon gift card, your merch, whatever it is.

Now, the questions.

What to ask your sales reps:

• What’s the most common problem your leads talk about
• Where does the “aha!” moment happen during your discovery call?
• What type of leads most frequently buy the product?
• Who’s the most common decision maker?
• What type of employees most commonly schedule a discovery call with you?
• How their “problem-solution” look like before buying your product?
• What’s the one feature that prompts them to buy the product?
• What does a power user look like?

Questions to ask your support/success reps:

• What’s the most liked and used feature?
• What are the most common problems customers have with your product?
• How long does it take for users to onboard themselves?
• What type of customers most frequently use the product?
• What’s the feature your users use the first?
• What does the power user look like?

Questions to ask your customers:

• What do you like the most about this product?
• What do you like the least about this product?
• What could be improved?
• What would prompt you to become a brand advocate?
• What’s the main problem this product solves for you?
• Where does the “aha!” moment happen while using this product?
• What prompted you to buy this product?
• How did you solve the issues before buying this product?
• On a scale from 1-10, how likely are you to recommend this product to your friends? Why?
• How do you use this product? What does your workflow look like?
• What type of content do you consume the most?
• What industry experts and communities you like to follow? Where do you hang out on the web?

By conducting this ICP research, you’re able to:

• Find out what kind of content resonates with your target audience
• Find out places where they congregate on the web
• Understand the reasons for choosing your product (so you can improve your messaging and write content/copy that converts)
• Get to understand your customers and step into their shoes.

So my genuine recommendation is to get out of the building, do this, implement the findings in your content, and believe me, you’ll see your engagement and conversions skyrocket.

This is the exact process that allows us to get 5-15% conversion rates through CONTENT (not landing pages) for almost each of our clients.