We’ve all experienced this at least once – spending so much time building a great piece of content, believing it will attract new readers and generate new leads for your business only to find that it has fallen flat for some reason. It didn’t get a lot of traction and the few people who have read it were not moved. What went wrong? The material was of good quality, backed by research. Why is it not engaging your target audience?

The problem may be due to a disconnect between you the content writer and the readers. When your material fails to resonate with your target audience, it is usually because it is not what your audience is looking for. Your content may be carefully researched and well-crafted but if it does not sufficiently answer your target visitor’s questions or address his pain points, it would be difficult for the content to engage your audience.

The audience that could not be moved

We know that while it’s difficult to pin down a topic that would go viral and resonate well with most audiences, there is one thing that we know for sure: where there is content, there is an audience ready for consumption.

“So why is my audience not moved by my content?” you ask.

The key here is to understand your audience and serve the right kind of content meant to move them. You have made great content, but it may be designed for a different group altogether – or you may not have caught your audience at a time when they might be more receptive to your message.

It’s not that your content cannot move an audience. It may just be that your audience is not ready to be moved.

This is why identifying your target audience is crucial to creating effective content. You need carefully-written content but you also need it to resonate well with your target market.

Empathize with your readers

Knowing your audience well is especially important in content marketing because you depend on your audience to bring in sales conversions. The key is to understand your audience psyche. Who are the people who visit your site? What keeps them up at night? What are their pain points and challenges? Look at your product and your content from the eyes of a reader. Is your content answering their questions sufficiently or are they being drawn to somewhere else because your content – well-researched and well-written it maybe – is not the information they need?

Having worked with different businesses in the past for their website development needs, we found that one of the challenges that our clients have is writing content that suits their target audience. They know their product well enough to make a provocative copy but it tends to fall on deaf ears because their content reaches users who may have something else in mind or maybe in a different stage of the buying journey so they may not be as receptive to their message just yet. The key is to correctly identify your audience and what their challenges are like at every stage of their journey towards making a purchase.

Reconnect with your audience

Audience research is important in content marketing because it enables you to craft messages that can establish or maintain a relationship with your audience. Conduct thorough research about the people coming into your site. Be very comprehensive and leave no stone unturned. Identify your target demographic. What are his interests? How old is he? What types of website content engages him (e.g. video, images, short articles).