A special guest post by Jayme Thomason…my new partner in crime.

I don’t know about where you live, but in Kansas City, tow truck drivers seem fairly aggressive in their “customer acquisition efforts.” Drive on any highway in Kansas City and you’ll see them. Perched on frontage roads and sitting in parking lots ready to come to the rescue of motorists in need.

I’m not an expert in the industry by any means, so maybe it takes this aggressiveness to make a living as a tow truck driver. Some might see this laying-in-wait strategy as sort of vulture-like, waiting to pounce and take advantage of people in need. Or, you could view tow truck drivers as the cowboys on the white horses, coming to the rescue. However you look at it, I think we can learn a couple things about content marketing from these savers of stalled cars.

1. They know exactly where their customers are and that’s where they hang out.

2. Because they hang out where their customers are, they’re ready to jump into action when they see a need.

Tow truck drivers know who their target audience is, mostly rush-hour commuters on highly traveled roadways. So that’s where you’ll find them hanging out. Do we have as good a handle on who (specifically) our target market is, and where (exactly) they hang out online? If not, here are three places to look for them:

Blogs – do keyword searches for blogs within the industry in which your customers work and start reading the top 5. You need to educate yourself on what your target customers are reading so you know where your content can add value.

Forums – forums are a great place to look for the “pain” of your target market. Listen for specific issues, questions and problems and then create valuable content that addresses those things.

Social Media Communities – sites like Facebook and Twitter are great places to find out what your customers care about and what they’re interested in, in their own words. Listen for those interests and words and then create content for each.

So what can we learn from our tow-truck-driving friends of the highway? When approaching our content marketing efforts we need to be more aggressive about finding out where our customers are hanging out online, pay attention to their needs and jump to their aid with relevant content. Approaching content marketing with this type of customer-centered strategy could have an amazing impact on your business.

Imagine your customer saying, “Wow, I was just commenting about how hard it is to hire good HR people and then company x posted a great blog about just that topic! They must be paying attention!”

This is what we’re all trying to accomplish with our content marketing efforts – one relationship and solved problem at a time.