Competition is fierce, especially in this noisy digital environment. Long gone are the days of the one-size-fits-all, shotgun approach where marketers blasted out content to catch buyer interest.

When I talk to small business owners and their sales and marketing leaders, I often hear how they’re experiencing these kinds of pains related to content marketing.

Do any of these sound familiar to you?

• We’re not telling a cohesive story, and it shows in our lack of conversions.
• Our clients are confused because we say one thing on our website, another in our marketing collateral, and another when sales people are talking to prospects.
• We’re wasting time and money rewriting the same content over and over.
• We can’t prove the content we’re creating is really working to attract new prospects or generating any results.
• We don’t have any strategy in place, so we kind of just write whatever idea or trend pops up in the media or competitor’s site.
• No one really knows how to plan, build and execute on a strategy, or they just don’t have the time to deal with it.

If you’re exploring options with my marketing firm (or any other, for that matter) on the best way of developing a content strategy for a website redesign, or one for your brand and lead generation efforts, let's start by explaining what is a content strategy:

A content strategy helps a business deliver relevant content to communicate and connect with specific buyers at just the right time.  

Okay, so a lot of people are going to get frustrated when I say this, but the reason your messages are getting lost is because they are not relevant enough. You're fighting for the same buyer's attention but you're publishing the exact same old, boring regurgitated content. How does that make you stand out from everyone else? It doesn't.

Without a clear understanding of “why” (the purpose) and for “whom” (the specific buyer), it’s almost impossible for your content to connect with the prospect. Nowadays, people are more resourceful in seeking info on their devices, are smarter about marketing tactics, and require more effort to get their attention. This has led to the trend of a more planned out content marketing strategy.

Why? Because relevant content marketing is really about custom content. Depending on your target buyer, content can be personalized to engage and convert more leads into paying customers.

The key to breaking through the clutter is by delivering personalized and relevant communications to buyers.

According to Demandmetric.com, here are some stats to prove it:

• • 90% of organizations market with content
  • On average, marketers spend over 25% of their budget on content marketing.
  • 78% of CMOs see custom content as the future of marketing.
  • 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing.
  • 86% of B2C marketers use content marketing.
  • 80% believe custom content should be central to marketing work.
  • 37% believe that content-led websites are the most important way to engage customers.
  • 62% of companies outsource their content marketing.
  • 20% of Internet users’ online time is spent on content.
  • 68% of people spend time reading about brands that interest them.
  • 57% read content marketing titles at least once a month.
  • 80% of people appreciate learning about a company through custom content.

With promising results like these, why isn’t personalized content marketing more widespread. To start, personalized content marketing is not easy.