Do you need a lure or a net?

Hey folks, it's your content friend Eric here.

“Know your audience” is simultaneously the most overrated and underrated advice in marketing.

True story: I had to ban “1. Know your audience” as an H3 heading in Dock’s SEO articles because nearly every freelancer we worked with inevitably included it as the first tip for salespeople.

It’s not bad advice; it’s just so overused that it’s easy to ignore. Like: go to the gym, eat your vegetables.

So when I say “Know your audience” a few paragraphs from now, please understand that I’m saying it with a flair and panache that really captures your attention.

I’m bringing up this oft-repeated advice because I’m sensing overwhelming anxiety among “traditional” content marketers (i.e., writers like me) that we all have to pivot to creator-style video strategies now.

The general argument for a “new media” strategy is that nobody searches anymore, that people only want to consume work content that looks like non-work content, and therefore all content has to be entertaining. I disagree, sort of.

I’ll concede this argument, at least partially, for some audiences. Us marketers, for example, are proactive content consumers. Not only because it’s our job to make content, but also because marketing is inherently competitive. We’re always on the edge of our seats, waiting for the next big thing, so we are primed to be influenced by our peers and favorite thought leaders.

For audiences like that, content is a lure. The fish are always circling, but the water is full of other lures, so yours has to be shinier than everyone else’s. Then you reel them in later when the time is right.

But not every ICP works that way.

At Dock, our audience is sales enablement leaders. Their main goal is to create consistency, not change, across a sales organization. Newness is a risk for them. And they’re usually the most overworked, least appreciated people in a company. So they don’t consume much content until they need to.

They’re far more trigger-based in their content consumption. For example, their current software contract expired, and the vendor jacked up the price. Or they hired a new CRO. Or they just increased headcount. They have a sudden need, then go searching.

For audiences like that, content is a net. You need to be in the water to scoop up the audience in the right place at the right time. Competitor alternative articles, “best X for Y” listicles, and case studies still work great for us at Dock for this reason, which is why I don’t buy “nobody searches anymore.” (People just search differently now.)

So this is where I’ll say: ✨ know your audience ✨. If your audience is chronically online, be a shiny lure. If your audience acts on triggers, be a boring, useful net.

- Eric

PS. Rachel Bicha made a similar, but less fishy argument in her “We are not the arbiters of good” article last week. I hope you’re loving those Thursday Superpath newsletters as much as I am!

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🎙 New on Content, Briefly: Rand Fishkin on Zero Click Marketing

If you learned marketing in the 2010s, you probably learned a good chunk of it from Rand Fishkin (The marketing agency I grew up in made Rand’s weekly Whiteboard Fridays at Moz a mandatory watch).

Rand joined Jimmy and Alex to promote his new book, Zero Click Marketing, co-written with the equally legendary Amanda Natividad.

What I like about their zero-click argument is that they never argue traditional marketing tactics are dead—they just work a little less and are much harder to measure.

In this chat, the team gets into:

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