Day 1: Pick a target Consider all of your potential buyers and pick just one to be your initial target. It may not be the best one (yet), but that’s OK. Remember, the idea is just to start doing something to help you set up a very simplified content factory. Once you have a target buyer, learn as much as you can about the person in a couple of hours by talking to your colleagues in sales or mining your CRM tools. Your job for the day will be done when you understand any pain points your target is facing. Day 2: Create a simple piece of content Since you are trying to make an immediate impact, stick to creating a fairly basic piece of content such as a blog post or an article that can be created in just one day. Brainstorm some ideas about what information you might include to address one of your target’s pain points. Do whatever research is necessary, including talking to in-house subject matter experts, and start working on a draft. By the end of the day, your goal is to have a solid first draft that is written specifically for your target and speaks to one of his or her concerns. Make sure to include a simple conversion goal in the draft, such as get- ting your target to click through to another relevant page on your website. Day 3: Get feedback and iterate On the third day, share your draft with others — ideally your in-house subject matter experts and customer-fac- ing colleagues — to get some feedback. Find out if they think it is going to resonate with your target audience and make adjustments as needed. Now is also the time to make sure that your content has been optimized to have maximum impact (see Chapter 4). It Takes a Content Factory! | 58