Create the Thing They Don’t Know They Need

mlns='> Your audience doesn’t know what they want – but you’re not off the hook [View Message in Browser]( / [Add Us to Safe Sender List]( Weekly News 10.8.21 Connect With CMI [These 4 Analytics Oversights Mess With Your Content Performance Plan]( Chris Penn outlines the common analytics mistakes marketers make. Even better, he explains how to make measurement plans more effective. [Read more]( By Jodi Harris More of this week's best stuff: - [Use Internal Links to Get a Better Reception From Search Engines and Readers]( by Ann Smarty - [Out of Ideas? 10+ Tools To Spark Content Creation]( by Irina Weber - [Drop Great Anchor Text To Keep Your SEO Strategy Afloat]( by Manick Bhan - [3 Hot Takes: Experiments in SEO, Work-Life Balance, and #FacebookDown]( by Content Marketing Institute Team Want To Be Featured on the Content Marketing Institute Website? Fill out [this short form]( to share your opinion about any exciting, unique, puzzling, or eyebrow-raising content example, idea, or trend you’ve seen this week (including pieces you’ve created). We’ll credit you as the source (and include your commentary) if we include your submission in an upcoming Friday article.  Create the Thing They Don’t Know They Need Have you seen the Seinfeld episode where Kramer decides to provide the Moviefone service? (Moviefone, for anyone too young to remember, was a phone service that helped people find out what time a particular film would show at movie theaters in their area.) George calls the number, and Kramer answers with “Hello, and welcome to Moviefone. Using the touchtone keys on your phone, please enter the first three letters of the movie you’d like to see.” George pushes three numbers on his phone, but Kramer has no idea what movie he indicated. He’s silent for a moment, then guesses, “You’ve selected… Agent Zero?” Now George is confused. “What?” he says into the phone. Kramer panics and guesses again. “You’ve selected Brown Eyed Girl!” After an awkward silence, Kramer bursts out, “Why don’t you just tell me the name of the movie you’d like to see?” It’s comedy gold (you can [watch the scene here](. It’s also the foundation of a useful lesson for content practitioners. Kramer’s inability to make sense of the tones George entered probably feels familiar to anyone trying to decipher an audience’s signals. How many times have you said to yourself, “I wish the audience would tell us exactly what they want”? Spoiler alert: Your audience doesn’t know what they want. I’ve worked on a remarkable amount of audience research for various clients. One of the things I’ve learned is that audiences will tell you what they want if you ask. But they usually phrase it in the form of a problem they need answers to help them solve. The answer to “What do you want?” is usually something the audience thinks it should want but may not actually need. A classic example is an adage (often wrongly attributed to Henry Ford): “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have replied ‘faster horses.’” In other words, when I ask, “What do you want?” I might get an answer like this: “I have a problem selling content marketing to my boss.” Let’s say I respond with a post on how to solve the content marketing business case. But is that answering what they need? Will it differentiate my solution from another? The problem is that people can only use what they know to describe what they want. What they want often is what they don’t know. That doesn’t mean you don’t need to ask or listen to their answers. Just realize they’re telling you what they think they should want, not necessarily what they actually want. Your golden ticket to differentiation is for an audience member to get to the end of a piece and say, “I never thought of it that way,” or “I never knew that was an option.” In that Seinfeld episode, Kramer delivers this differentiation by accident. By misunderstanding the dial tones, he solves the problem in an innovative way. He simply asks George to say the name of the movie he wants to see instead of entering it through the keypad. Kramer ends up delivering a content service people didn’t know was possible. And at the end of the episode, someone knocks on Kramer’s door and says (in the robotic Moviefone voice), “Hello, and welcome to your worst nightmare. Kosmo Kramer, Apartment 5D, you have been stealing my business.” You can’t know an audience until you listen to their needs. But you can’t give them what they want until you create the thing they don’t know they need. It’s your story. Tell it well. (And [tell us your thoughts](mailto:cmi_info@informa.com?subject=Feedback) about Robert’s note.) Robert Rose Chief Strategy Advisor Content Marketing Institute You're getting this exclusive article from Robert Rose as a perk of your newsletter subscription. Do you have colleagues or friends who would benefit from Robert's weekly updates? If so, please invite them to [subscribe]( here.  A Word From One of Our Content VIPs Your Guide to Content Measurement Learn why content leaders and CMOs are struggling to attach their content investments directly to business value and how a new category of technology, content intelligence, is making this possible. [Learn More »]( Sponsored Content Three Content Challenges for Employer Branding + Next Steps for Success Employer branding comes down to the basics: core values, culture & leadership. During this “War on Talent”, revisit and refine aspects of your brand that impact current and prospective employees with this guide. 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