The 6 Human Needs of Highly Effective Content

Highly effective content performs many tasks:   

• It provides helpful information in an easy-to-understand way.   
• It reaches its intended audience and engages with their interests.   
• It highlights a brand's knowledge and adds to its authority.   
• It persuades readers to do whatever the brand hoped they would do.   

To do all this and more, it's important to keep in mind that your readers are human.

To achieve a highly effective content marketing strategy, each piece of content should make use of, or speak to, a human need. 

What are the 6 human needs?

You may have heard of Tony Robbins. His work helps millions of people around the world. He’s a self-help superstar and master marketer.

He's built a reputation as the leading authority on “peak performance”. US presidents, top athletes, leading global executives, and other notable figures call on him for private consultations. 

During his career, Robbins has adapted Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He's highlighted 6 levels as being critical for an individual’s fulfillment.

Here’s a quick breakdown of each and how they can connect:

Certainty: We crave security and stability in our lives, but we also want… 

Variety: Change helps break up a tired routine. It can also introduce a challenge that leads to…   

Growth: This process creates movement that builds momentum towards a feeling of fulfillment and…   

Significance: A hope that there’s a special purpose or meaning for our lives, which we also get through…   

Connection: By accounting for the human interests of others, we can build stronger connections. But it’s unsustainable without…   

Contribution: We must serve the greater good, both for ourselves and others. This adds to our security and brings us back to certainty…

Effective Content Marketing

Thinking about these as the underlying needs of your prospects can lead to more valuable content.   

For a fun thought exercise as you read, try considering each need and how they can relate to your prospect and your offer. 

This will be a creative challenge that will help you communicate your value to prospects. It can even help you create a more detailed buyer persona. This will help you break out of the status quo with original content that speaks to your audience.   

Certainty

People buy things for many reasons.   

Maybe they’re overwhelmed and want some outside support. Maybe FOMO and they want to buy some bitcoin, blonde hair dye, and beard oil. Maybe they’re thirsty and want a Coke.   

Regardless of the cause of a purchase, prospects want some certainty that they’ll get what they pay for. That it'll scratch whatever their itch is.   

Consumers crave certainty. This is especially true for big purchases where they may feel fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

There are many causes of uncertainty. There may be inconsistency between the marketing messaging and what the product or service delivers. Delivery times may be unclear.

If you look at negative reviews of eCommerce and SaaS companies, you'll see they often stem from uncertainty.

What does this mean for content?   

It's our job to help build trust and certainty through our marketing strategy. Content creation that speaks to the security and stability we seek. You can use your content to show your prospects what you can deliver, what you know, and why they should trust you. 

A company’s messaging must revolve around what it can indeed provide. The benefits customers can expect to enjoy. This is way more interesting for consumers than features.   

Even creating content that delivers what the headlines promise can help build trust and rapport. Just make sure it's easy to digest and consistent across channels.

Variety

Without it, content has the potential of becoming bland.   

Variety is the spice of life and the ingredient that helps your content stay fresh and exciting.   

It will also help you reach a wider audience, displaying your brand in different formats and platforms. For instance, people gravitate towards different content types. Some prefer YouTube to reading blogs and vice versa.   

This process can literally be as easy as repurposing your new or most popular content into different formats. Videos, podcasts, email nurture campaigns, social media posts, ads, or even lead generators.   

Using a variety of formats and platforms will help to spread your message and ensure prospects stay familiar with your brand.   

Sharing a consistent message in a variety of ways will help drill in your value proposition and keep your brand top of mind. 

Growth

A burning desire to develop and grow drives a lot of our thoughts and actions. The SaaS industry helps people and businesses leverage automation to more effectively grow.

It doesn’t have to be a major change. Even a small step in the right direction can be priceless to a prospect. What truly matters is fueling the momentum.

It’s not only your product or service that can drive this growth. Your original content and messaging can also play a role.

If you're able to spell out how your product or service will help prospects accomplish growth of any kind, your profits will probably grow with them.   

Great content is a win-win. It can help build your audience and brand advocates. And it can be an invaluable sales tool as you gain the relational value of other's spreading your message. 

Helping them grow and learn with your content wherever they may be brings them closer to trying out your offer. For an excellent example of this, check out the content marketing of Ahrefs.   

Significance

Everyone wants to feel significant. It may not be obvious, but you prove your prospects' significance when you offer them a thoughtful solution.   

Your content can highlight this intention in clear language. This is a great way to express empathy and address any concerns they may have.   

You’ve done your research and brainstormed the needs of your prospects. Google's 'People Also Ask', Quora, Reddit, and even competitors' FAQs can be great sources for questions to answer. All you have to do is then present them with answers and solutions in your content.   

In this way, you show their problems are significant. So much so that you sacrificed your time and resources to help them.   

This can help to strengthen a connection grounded in mutual respect.

Connection

Most businesses today depend on long-term, win-win relationships with customers.

You help them overcome a challenge with your products, services, and content. And they give you continued business and hopefully spread your brand to their network.   

No matter what you offer, pretty much every sentence of your content can address your prospects and their needs directly.   

How can you do that? One way is to by adding a person to the subject of each sentence. 

You can find the human interests buried in every story. Even less obvious subjects like science and technology breakthroughs come from the work of humans.

The series Cosmos does a great job at this. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is also a great example. Both provide engaging informational content on science through a focus on the humans behind the discoveries.

All you have to do is add ‘people, they, their, you, team, etc.’ as the subject of the sentence.   

These human interests are much easier to read. Adding them to your content can improve the clarity of your messaging and time on page. 

Contribution

This builds on our need for connection. All healthy relationships of any kind and anywhere are reciprocal.   

Both parties in a relationship have to contribute to fulfill the needs of the other and add value to the whole. It's required for healthy and sustainable relationships of all kinds.   

Your content can emphasize this, and as you cultivate your content, you can involve your audience in the creative process. You can ask for their input and strike a goldmine of new ideas.   

AND this contribution will reinforce the connection that your business depends on.   

If you can make your prospects feel like insiders, they may become brand advocates. This can be more effective than any paid ad campaign.

Referral and affiliate programs make great use of this. Giving influencers incentives to spread your messaging.

You can also do this for free. It can be as simple as acknowledging an audience generated idea in a piece of content.   

Attribute an idea in a piece of content to someone in your network and let them know.

Not only will they likely share it with their audience, but more people will probably share ideas for their chance to gain recognition.

This can be a goldmine for fresh ideas and new perspectives.   

After all, like how people crave connection, they also want recognition. If they can champion ideas that improve their personal brand through relational value, it's another win-win.

Give them that opportunity and tap into new opportunities.   

Conclusion

Your content is written for humans to read.

It only makes sense that you can improve your chances they'll do that if you tailor it to their needs. And as we have examined, humans share 6 needs that can help make effective content. 

If you want to have a maximum impact with your content, be sure to tailor your original content to at least some of these human needs. You may see significantly better results. 

OR better yet, let us help you. Contact us today and let’s take your content to the next level.