Being knowledgable in different areas is great, but not when it comes to content marketing because most customers are not looking for “general” content. Most customers are looking for something specific.
For example, you don’t need “dog food”, you need “dog food for large breeds”. We can make our search for dog food even more specific, “best dog food for labradors”. The point is that most consumers need a specific product or a service.
Specialized Content Will Attract The Right Buyer To Your Business
A typical buyer (lead) will have a lot of questions, especially if they are not familiar with the product/service they are buying, and naturally, most of this research will be done online (e.g Google Search).
If we take a step back, all successful content marketing strategies start with the customer (buyer). More specifically, what are their needs, wants, and pain points. In essence, the objective of a content marketing strategy is to plan articles, blog posts, white papers, social media posts, and how-to videos around your customer’s (buyer’s) needs, wants, and pain points.
Can you answer buyers needs, wants, and pain points, if you don’t specialize? No, because your ideal buyer’s needs, wants, and pain points are always specific; therefore, you will not attract the right type of buyer to your business, if you don’t specialize your content for them.
Specializing Will Add Depth To Your Content (Important SEO Factor)
It’s no secret that Google and other search engines prefer content depth over “general” and “shallow” content.
Shallow content lacking detail, expertise, and unique opinion/voice doesn’t rank as high and has a higher bounce rate and lower average session duration – typical indicators of poorly performing content.
Buyers (and search engines) favor specific, unique, and detailed content, so add depth to your content.
You Will Never Be Considered A Leader (In Your Industry) If You Don’t Specialize
Let’s look at a well-known example (Gary Vaynerchuck’s first business) to illustrate this point. If you are not familiar with Gary Vaynerchuck, he is a serial entrepreneur and New York Times best-selling author.
At the beginning of this entrepreneurial journey, Gary started with a small (single location) family business “Shopper’s Discount Liquors”.
How did Gary grow this small business into a nation-wide brand, featured in many of the largest media outlets?
The first step was to rename the business to “Wine Library” and specialize in Wine. He understood that specialization was vital, so he focused all his content (and daily videos) on wine.
His passion, knowledge, and decision to focus only on wine made him a leader in the wine space. Becoming a leader (a known wine expert) was a critical factor in growing his family business. Could he have been an expert/leader in all the different categories – Wine, Whiskey, Brandy, Beer, etc? No, because “jack of all trades” companies and owners never become leaders of any one specific category.
There are thousands of other examples of businesses that experienced significant growth after focusing all their content marketing in one particular field or topic.
Small companies especially need to understand this point, because they often try to write generic content hoping to attract as many leads as possible. The issue being, by acting as a “Jack of all trades”, you will rightly be considered a master of none; consequently, you will never be viewed as a leader, and more importantly, never experience the explosive growth many businesses achieve once they are recognized as a leader in their category.
Summary
A clear and specialized content marketing plan is an essential part of all growth strategies. As we explained in this post, without specialized content you will not be able to address your buyer’s needs, wants, and pain points.
Don’t fall into the trap of creating generic content. If you do, your content will most likely rank lower and will fail to attract real buyers.
