‘Intent’ in Marketing

I recently read an article from Amanda Milligan on Search Engine Land titled “‘Intent’ should be every marketer’s #1 obsession“.

In her short article Amanda says:

By “intent,” I mean both user intent and what I call “creation intent.” That is, we should always be focused on what people are looking for and why we’re creating something because where those two elements meet is where the most successful content lies.

I’ve talked to countless business owners and sales managers who can build rapport with anyone in minutes, discuss details about product lines/services they offer in an informative and interesting way all while connecting with customers to continue relationships for years. But they struggle to convert that knowledge and rapport into text or meaningful content to help drive the business‘ goals.

As a business owner or marketer, “creation intent” is often looked at from a sales point of view. The objectives of the business are most effectively met when they are aligned with the intent of the customer. This is the reason so many SMBs have trouble with creating in house content that is successful.

The customer‘s intent is to learn about a product or service. They will research options for a problem they are trying to solve. Or simply just “window shopping”. A great way to meet the intention of the customer is to think in this manner. Think about your own inner dialog when you’re making decisions as a consumer. That is where you want to focus your content.

Natural language is also the easiest to follow. If you were to record yourself while with a customer, you would find a couple of topics to write about, what they want to know, and how to explain it. All you have to do at that point is to decide what topic you want to discuss, what question you’re answering, and write down the information you have! It may be silly, but even just recording yourself explaining something the way you would to a customer makes a world of difference in the difficulty of content creation that meats your customer‘s intent.