Building a strong marketing foundation requires three interconnected elements: a professional presence, authentic feedback, and strategic content. As communications expert Casey Colesworthy explains, effective PR starts with basic tools like Google Alerts and a comprehensive media kit – establishing your brand's voice in the market. This foundation enables meaningful customer connections, which Christina Garnett emphasizes is crucial for bridging the gap between product usage and perceived value. As content strategist Nikki Zeman notes, the final piece is creating targeted content that aligns with your customer's journey, ensuring your message reaches the right audience at the right time. These elements create a cohesive approach to building and scaling your brand's marketing efforts.
Build out (or update) your media kit
"Everyone knows what PR is, but nobody knows what it is," says communications expert Casey Colesworthy. For small businesses navigating PR opportunities, Colesworthy recommends starting with two essential tools.
First, leverage Google Alerts - a free service that monitors your company's digital presence, competitor activities, and industry trends. It's your radar for conversations happening around your brand.
Second, develop a professional media kit - your brand's digital introduction to journalists. Include a concise one-page fact sheet sharing your company's story, professional visuals, and compelling team bios, all as downloadable PDFs. Remember, Colesworthy emphasizes, success in PR isn't about budget size—it's about smart, strategic foundations that scale with your business.
Build your media kit [Medium] | Set up Google Alerts [Easy]
Find one touchpoint to incorporate customer feedback
Is your product delivering the value customers perceive? Customer experience expert Christina Garnett highlights an intriguing paradox: a twice-weekly user might feel like a power user, while a daily user could feel they're underutilizing your product. This gap between usage and perceived value underscores why Garnett emphasizes qualitative feedback: "The qualitative is where everything is. It's where all of the answers are."
She outlines three key approaches to understanding customer perception: strategic feedback surveys, in-depth qualitative analysis, and targeted one-on-one interviews. The goal isn't just gathering feedback—it's creating advocates who "will tell every person they've ever met about you because they feel seen and heard." Bridge the gap between product usage and customer perception to transform users into brand champions.
50 Customer Experience Interview Questions
Try a new content format based on your buyer journey
Content strategist Nikki Zeman shares a fundamental insight about customer connection: timing matters as much as content. "What you should do with your content becomes crystal clear," Zeman explains, "once you understand exactly who you're talking to, where they are in their life, what's going on with them daily." Success lies in creating content that flows naturally with your customer's journey. As Zeman emphasizes, "The conversation creates the potential and the possibility"—positioning your brand as an integral part of your customer's solution.
Want more marketing insights? Listen to the episode | Read the article
Develop content for a stage of the buyer's journey in a format you haven't tried before:
- Awareness: Educational blog posts, infographics, social media content
- Consideration: Comparison guides, case studies, expert interviews
- Decision: Product demos, customer testimonials, pricing guides
Get the buyers journey content types cheat sheet
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