How to Tailor Microcontent to Different Audiences

5 minute read

Upland Admin

Marketers love microcontent because it magically lifts the ongoing burden we feel to churn out bigger collateral assets like eBooks, whitepapers, and case studies. Don’t get me wrong: these assets are vital in the marketing mix. But we all know the time and energy it takes to produce approved versions of these heavy hitters.

What Is Microcontent?

Microcontent, as opposed to larger assets like whitepapers, is any kind of bite-sized visual content that can be shared on your proprietary channels such as social accounts, blogs, or newsletters.

When you think of microcontent, think of things like topical factoids, data or stats, cool illustrations, photo images, small infographics, memorable quotes, and so on.

Its purpose is to attract and engage your target audiences with a consistent series of engaging, mini-content hits. Microcontent can either be new and original content, or content that’s been creatively repurposed from your existing evergreen assets.

And that’s the beauty of microcontent. It can be produced and published quickly, it primes the sales funnel between your bigger assets, and it keeps your product, service, or company name in front of your key prospects in a clever and memorable way.

Take a look at some examples of crafty microcontent for demand-gen campaigns and thought leadership initiative.

How Can You Tailor Microcontent for a Variety of Audiences?  

Let’s get tactical now, and dive right in to how you can tailor microcontent to your audiences.

Because you’ll be rolling microcontent into your overall content publishing calendar, it does take some structured prep work. Let’s start with a singular campaign or initiative that’s already planned and in the pipeline. This will get you into the flow of how this works, especially if you’re new to microcontent publishing.

Don’t be discouraged by the following steps—they’re important for reaching your target customers, so the effort is worth it. Producing effective microcontent will become second nature in no time.

Here are some steps to get you going.

1. Gather Your Assets

Look over all the assets you’re planning to use for a given campaign. Grab a piece of evergreen content that your marketing team, sales team, and C-suite are really excited about. It can be a whitepaper, video, eBook, etc.—you’ll know because there will already be a lot of internal buzz around it.

2. Develop Three Target Audiences, or Personas

Sit down with a team of marketing comrades and a designer (the designer’s input is critical) to define three target audiences or personas for the campaign. Complete the following questions for each persona:

  • What would this person consider a product or service win?
  • What does success look like to them?
  • What are their pain points that need solving?
  • What motivates them? (It could be personal or professional)
  • How do they like to consume information?
  • What would disqualify a potential solution, or what are their blockers?
  • When is this person engaged in the purchasing process? What is their role in the purchase?
  • Where do they go to find the information they need?

3. Analyze the Results of the Persona Exercise

Note your responses to what would possibly block each persona from purchasing your solution. This will point out the data or info bites you’ll want to use to address their perceived blocks.

Note how they like to consume information and where they go to get their information. This tells you the channel you can use to feed them the microcontent (for example, email, Twitter, or your blog).

4. Find Bite-Sized Pieces of Content

Next, scout your evergreen asset for bite-sized pieces of info that fit your three personas. Literally highlight the content.

Don’t forget to think outside the box, either—you might brainstorm ideas for microcontent inspired by a popular TV series, a bus banner, a viral YouTube video, or even a colleague who’s a crazy-good artist who could create a memorable visual series for you.

Document all your best ideas and consider this your working library.

5. Match Content with Personas, and Publish

Match all your ideas with the three distinct audiences based on how they like to consume information and where they go to get it. Clarify where each piece could be inserted into the content funnel calendar. You can even take the same compelling stat and create a different look for it using three different design treatments. Finally, create and push your microcontent out across your owned channels (social media, email, blog, or newsletter).

Best-case scenario? Automate publishing to make your life a whole lot easier and so you can track and report the results to your higher-ups.

Microcontent is ready to be your new, super-smart addition to the marketing content funnel. It will be fun (and fast) for you to create, and your audiences are out there waiting to consume it.

Happy microcontent creation!

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