Sell the outcome, not the product

It’s easy for your content to get caught in the self-promotion trap – sometimes without even realizing it. There’s a time and place in the customer journey for speaking specifically about your product, but effective content speaks directly to your clients and their needs.

It’s not just what a product or service can do; it’s about what your customer can achieve. When content focuses on outcomes, you’re not just selling a product – you’re empathizing with customer challenges and offering a transformative solution; a clear path to their goals.

Outcome-focused content puts the customer first, demonstrating real-world value and positioning you as a trusted advisor.

The customer’s problem statement: the heart of your content

Every customer has a problem statement: a challenge to overcome. Potential clients don’t just wake up and say to themselves “I really need the latest in [insert product/service category].”

It probably sounds more like:

“Our ERP system is running slow and crashing. We need this fixed.”

“My storage footprint is out of control. We’re wasting money and need to find savings.”

“I need access and visibility to our data more readily. It’s impacting our ability to make decisions.”

“We don’t have the skillset to manage our infrastructure effectively.”

As marketers, it’s important to explore problem statements such as these to help us empathize with customers, to understand their frustrations, ambitions, and preferences, and to create content that is both relatable and keenly focused on the outcomes they need.

How to implement an outcome-focused content strategy

Employing an outcome-focused content strategy requires a deep understanding of your audience, including their challenges, goals, and the journey they must undertake to solve their problems.

Here are some ways you can achieve this:

Identify your customer’s problem statements

There’s a variety of ways you can identify and understand your audience’s core challenges:

Tap into your organization’s subject matter experts. SMEs hold a wealth of knowledge and experience of your products from the perspective of both pre-sales and ongoing support.

Talk with your sales/partner teams. They regularly talk with customers and can share stories and relay what they’re hearing.

Listen to customers when and where you can, through surveys, case study interviews, or social listening. Direct access to customer thoughts is key to grasp their primary concerns and objectives and to find common themes across your customer base.

Map challenges to outcomes

Use your research to align customer problems to outcomes. Articulate this information into clear solution-oriented value propositions. You can document this information in materials such as:

• Messaging maps and frameworks
• Customer personas
• Use cases
• Win wires

Use storytelling for an outside-in approach

As you build content across the customer journey, storytelling can be a useful tactic. It allows you to take an outside-in approach to marketing messaging. Employing templates and processes that align to a story-led approach, such as the hero’s journey, can help you create effective outcome-focused content that resonates with your audience.

Continuously seek feedback and refine

The market is constantly evolving at a rapid pace. Creating an ongoing feedback loop will allow you to stay on top of changing customer problem statements and desired outcomes. Regular touchpoints with your SMEs, sales/partner teams and customers are vital to an intelligently evolving content strategy.

Maximize marketing’s impact

A strategic shift to outcome-focused content can enhance the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and support cross-department functions. At the end of the day, customers buy outcomes –the products and services we sell simply facilitate those outcomes. Successful content will present a memorable narrative that demonstrates an understanding of customer challenges, speaks to their aspirations and articulates clear solutions.