In today’s digital landscape, content development often falls into a common trap: becoming excessively company-centric or product-focused rather than addressing the evolving needs of your market. This misalignment creates a disconnect between what organizations produce and what their audience actually seeks.
The Three Content Perspectives
Content typically emerges from one of three distinct perspectives, each with dramatically different impact:
Company-Centric: “We’ve been in business for 25 years and have won numerous awards for our innovative solutions…”
Product-Centric: “Our platform features AI-powered analytics, seamless integration capabilities, and a user-friendly dashboard…”
Market-Centric: “Marketing leaders today struggle to demonstrate ROI while facing budget constraints and increasing pressure to show business impact…”
The first two perspectives focus inward on what matters to your organization. The third focuses outward on what matters to your audience. This distinction makes all the difference in content effectiveness.
The Problem with Product-Focused Content
When your content primarily emphasizes product features, capabilities, and benefits, several issues emerge:
- Premature Solution Positioning: Audiences in earlier stages of their journey aren’t ready to evaluate solutions—they’re still defining their problems.
- Limited Relevance: Only buyers actively seeking your specific solution category will find your content valuable.
- Competitive Vulnerability: Product-focused content invites direct comparison with competitors, turning your value into a feature checklist.
- Diminished Authority: Constantly talking about your own solutions positions you as a vendor rather than a trusted advisor.
As marketing strategist Jay Baer notes, “If your content is good enough, people will be more likely to buy your product. But make your content about the product, and the only people interested will be those already looking to buy exactly what you sell.”
The Market-Centric Alternative
Market-centered content starts with a fundamental shift in perspective. Rather than asking “What do we want to tell people about our solution?” ask “What challenges, trends, and opportunities are our prospects navigating right now?”
This approach delivers several advantages:
Broader Relevance: By addressing market challenges, your content appeals to prospects at all stages of their journey, not just those ready to buy.
Thought Leadership Position: Market-focused content establishes your organization as an industry authority, not just another vendor.
Extended Content Lifecycle: While product details change frequently, core market challenges remain relevant longer, extending content lifespan.
Reduced Sales Resistance: Educational content about market trends builds trust and lowers defenses that typically arise with overtly promotional material.
Reframing Your Content Perspective
To evolve toward market-centered content, examine your current approach through these critical questions:
Trend Awareness: Does your content incorporate recent industry research, emerging challenges, and shifting priorities? Or does it reflect an understanding of the market from years past?
Problem Lens: Through what lens are you viewing the problems you solve? Your organization’s lens (what we can sell) or your customer’s lens (what they need to accomplish)?
Contextual Relevance: Does your content acknowledge the broader business environment your customers operate within, or does it exist in a vacuum?
Thought Diversity: Does your content incorporate multiple perspectives, including some that might challenge your own assumptions?
Practical Steps Toward Market-Centered Content
- Regular Market Immersion: Schedule consistent conversations with customers about their challenges, not your solutions. Make these discussions about them, not you.
- Trend Monitoring Systems: Implement formal processes to track industry shifts, competitor moves, and customer behavior changes.
- Solution-Agnostic Content: Develop resources that would remain valuable even if your specific solution didn’t exist.
- Empathy Mapping: Before creating content, map out what your audience is thinking, feeling, seeing, hearing, saying, and doing regarding their challenges.
- “So What” Testing: For each content piece, ask “So what?” from the audience’s perspective until you reach meaningful relevance.
Conclusion: Evolution, Not Revolution
Shifting from product-centric to market-centric content doesn’t happen overnight. Begin by ensuring each new content piece addresses a genuine market need from your audience’s perspective. Over time, build a resource library that demonstrates your understanding of your market’s world—not just your corner of it.
Remember that the most persuasive content doesn’t convince people to buy your product; it convinces them you understand their world. That understanding builds the trust that eventually leads to consideration and purchase when the time is right.