When I was a kid, my family had a magnet that said, “A little artist did this.” We used the magnet to hold a painting or drawing my brother and I made for them — showing it off for all to see on our refrigerator.
And because the art was for Mommy and/or Daddy, the work was personal to them. As such, our parents wanted to display our work. Because it wasn’t just a dog or a man or whatever the thing was that we drew — it was a personal piece of art that was created for a specific person.
Many adult professionals are still showing off their work. For instance, marketers will often post an article to their blog and show it off by linking to it on their social media platforms.
Marketing expert Seth Godin says, “The goal [for a marketer] isn’t to personalize the work. It’s to make it personal.”
It’s easy to personalize a piece of marketing, such as by addressing a person by name in a marketing email. It’s difficult, however, to make that same email personal, but it isn’t impossible.
So, how do we do this? By creating content for specific people or groups of people. This content is personal because you created it for them. Not for the masses, but for them.
This can be something as simple as answering a question you think your target audience may have. You could also share something you learned that you think your audience may find interesting. The point is to empathize with your audience and think about what would add value to them.
Because they are who it’s for.
To illustrate this idea of making content personal, let’s use this blog post as a real-world example.
Some of the folks I wrote this for include:
- Those who create marketing content on their own
- Those who want to learn about marketing
- Those who want to grow their brand through content marketing material
It isn’t for professionals who never plan to use digital marketing. Or for those who already have an agency they use to outsource their digital marketing. Certainly, these folks are welcome to view this content, but it wasn’t created with them in mind.
Which means I’m not going to try to argue with people who don’t see any benefit to digital marketing. Nor am I going to talk about the best ways to communicate with third-party marketers. Why would I? It’s not for those people.
But for the people this is for, I say this:
Your marketing content is a form of art. It should be created with your target audience in mind. This makes it personal, which will mean a lot more to your specific audience than something that was made for the general public.
Parents don’t display their children’s artwork because it’s pretty (though it might be). They display it because their child’s art is personal to them. After all, their child created the art with them in mind.
And people love stuff that was made with them in mind.
