How effective content ideation impacts consumer mindset

The consumer mindset may have been permanently altered by the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects.

By Vaibhav Sisinty

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The modern consumer has a plethora of options, forcing businesses to put them at the front and center of all growth strategies. Quality content is the bare minimum expected by consumers today. Their attention spans are getting smaller, making it necessary for businesses to be very strategic with marketing efforts. Content strategy is one of the easiest ways to meet many business goals at once- from establishing brand authority and awareness to lead generation.

Content ideation is at the core of an effective content marketing strategy. In my experience as a growth hacker running a digital media agency, innovative ideas presented with quality copy have gone a long way in generating results. Good content and copy also help streamline the customer experience, a differentiating factor that is on its way to overtaking product and price.

How Consumer Mindset Matters

The consumer mindset may have been permanently altered by the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects. Consumers have embraced digital channels enthusiastically, becoming very comfortable with shopping online for a variety of products and services from groceries to financial needs. It appears that this has also reduced brand loyalty with many people reporting willingness to try alternatives.

Modern consumers are more aware than ever, and it is accurate to call them digitally discerning. They have all possible information they could want at their fingertips. In the recent past, consumers have slammed brand-centric companies and tone-deaf campaigns for not moving with the times in their content ideation.

In such a landscape catching the consumer’s eye requires investment into all the channels they frequent. There is a lot of data on the boom in content consumption with the average screen time having become 3 hours a day. Not tapping content creation can be a costly mistake to rectify later.

Ideating Content to Resonate with the Consumers

The afore-mentioned data has many great insights for companies interested in capitalizing on content. I have already spoken about the importance of content and copy; comprehensive resources like blogs, papers, etc. are given for any company’s website whether B2B or B2C. Video content is a fast-growing avenue and is in many ways more impactful than text due to its visual nature.

Taking into account factors like attention span, buyer personas, the level of awareness, etc. content ideation first requires zeroing in on the medium- should a brand choose blogs, videos, influencers or something else? The medium should suit the channel and the audience. LinkedIn, for instance, has been the backbone of my lead generation efforts and content hacking has helped me get over 25 million post views. But, I couldn’t expect the kind of content that works on LinkedIn to do well on Instagram. I had to come up with different ideas. Since each platform shows results on the basis of different parameters and algorithms, I make sure to map unique strategies accordingly.

Returning to the importance of customer-centricity in business strategy, good content ideas are those that engage the consumer, and resonate with their needs. It is the art of storytelling while addressing the consumer intent. Therefore, the gaps in their understanding of the brand and product has to be identified.

The content should also be tailored to the objective while establishing a tone and recognizable voice. Even content for SEO purposes must be created primarily with human users in mind.

For generating ideas, there are numerous tools that can help the good, old, thinking brain. Proper ideation also involves validating those ideas. This is where you need to use the data relevant to your industry, about consumer preferences and concerns.

In conclusion, the best way to come up with content ideas that will resonate with the consumer mindset is to understand it by prioritizing the voice of customer research. Many brands leverage user-generated content to make an impact, and if you can incorporate this approach, there is no easier way to have an endless stream of content that converts.

The author is growth hacker and has trained over 40,000 people in the last one year

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