How Audience Perception Shapes Audience Engagement Strategy

I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty beat down by the generic content marketing advice that says you need to "know your audience." It doesn't really help you shape an audience engagement strategy.

Do you REALLY need to be told that in 2025? Why do people think you don't know that?

Like a lot of content marketing advice, specifics are thin. So, today, I want to share with you some specific things to know (or remember) about your audience.

As a brand who has done adequate research, you might know a lot about your audience. However, what gets lost in all of that information is what I would call typical human behavior.

So, I encourage you not to lose sight of how your audience:

• Interprets messaging (direct and indirect) that comes from your content

• Experiences content every day and how that influences their response to yours

How do marketers forget about these critical audience behaviors?

Well, too many marketers might as well be working for Lumon Industries (from the TV series Severance).

Outside of work, we have our everyday consumer brain engaged. We consume content, surf the net, check social media, delete email spam, block ads, ignore stuff that looks the same, scroll past things that don't resonate, etc.

Then we step into work, and:

We forget our consumer life.

We then start creating content that we would block, ignore, and delete.

So, before we before we publish our content, we have to consider how we can break through audience assumptions, attitudes, and defenses based on their past experiences.

Let me put this into a simple context.

Think about the question I asked in the beginning of this blog:

Why does so much advice tell marketers they have to "know their audience" in 2025?

We've seen it 100,000+ times (at least). 😡

So, when we see it for the 100,001 time, we might angrily think:

"Oh gee, thanks! So glad you told me that!"

"Why do they think I don't already know this?" "Great. Anything else? What's next? You're gonna tell me "Content is king?"

Then what happens?

• We might stop reading something.

• The expert who wrote it might lose some credibility.

• We continue to search for something better, different and more meaningful.

👉🏻 Your audience does the same thing.

In an excellent article explaining the engagement and customer benefits of dynamic content, Chris Mulvaney (CEO of CMDS) sums up what happens in the customer's brain when they keep seeing the same things.

"Customers develop repetition blindness, where messaging they have seen repeatedly just fades into the background to the point they no longer even notice it."

So many brands in the same industry write the same stuff, the same way, and in the same context without even thinking about how many times their audience has already seen it.

I've seen tech companies write blogs written for a "highly knowledgeable and tech savvy" audience that start by telling them that digital transformation is rapidly changing things.

They're likely going:

That's like finding a slow cooker recipe that tells you it's important to plug it in first.

As consider the previous content experiences of our audiences, we can dig deeper and think about the content messages and "voices" that might be hidden from us.

Here's how you can find them.

Uncover the subliminal content messages hidden from you

While the digital transformation intro was literally written into the copy and generating a negative response from the audience, there are messages your audience receives that aren't visible.

Blogs

If your audience clicks on a blog and skims it, only to see you've linked to yourself several times throughout the copy, the subliminal message is:

"Hi. Thanks for visiting. Since I wrote this to benefit me more than you, please click on the links we've placed throughout this text wall. Thank you."

If you write an intriguing headline that leads someone to check out your blog, but it actually show them generic or basic information that leads to a sales pitch, it says:

"Thanks for stopping by. We're so glad our tease made you click, now please read this stuff that took 25 minutes to write and contact us."

Despite how most people don't buy something after reading a blog, experiences like these will increase audience defenses even more. So, you have to work harder to convince them that if they click on your content, they'll fine real value.

Yeah, I know. It's why we can't have nice things.

Websites

Another content tactic that sends a problematic subliminal message is gated content.

Robert Rose of the Content Marketing Institute framed gated content's problematic message starts this way:

" Hi. In return for your personal data, we’ll give you a thought leadership paper that explains why our approach to this business challenge is best.

After you register, you’ll receive at least three phone calls and one email per week from our sales team. You won’t be able to miss them because they’ll all mention some level of urgency or follow-up..."

Messages like these and the feeling that the value they got for their information wasn't worth it led to a massive distrust in gated content. So many marketers have now abandoned the strategy.

💡 One thing you could try (aside from ungating your content) is give some value upfront on the landing page. Then, tell them it will go deeper in your gated resource.

I still recommend not even rolling that dice. 🎲

Subliminal messages can drive people away from even your best website content.

In cases like these, you've already succeeded in getting someone to visit your site and maybe read something - that is until:

• A pop-up blocks their view

• A video starts auto-playing

These tactics tell your visitor:

I know you really want to see this other stuff, but we need you to look at this instead right now.

or

We know these autoplay videos aren't important to you, but we need them there. So, just deal with it.

I will tell you that as a consumer, I have visited and immediately left a website because of selfish content that disrupts my engagement.

Emails

A common message from the typical emails that hit inboxes every day:

"As you can see, this is cut/paste marketing copy that was blasted to a bunch of people, but don't let that deter you. Just reply."

Social Media

Then there's something I've seen on social platforms on LinkedIn where a brand posts something and then link to their own page in the copy.

That message is:

"We're so in this for ourselves and are so insecure about whether or not you'll just click on our page link that is 1/10 of an inch above this post...we have to link to ourselves here, too. You're going to click there, right? Right? Please?"

Then there is the company social media feed that is clearly automated and filled with self-serving content without any conversations taking place:

"We know this is a "social" platform, but we don't understand that. So, we hope you'll find one of these announcements, links to us, and generic thought leadership to be something that will make you buy something."

Solopreneurs are capable of sending this type of message, too.

❓ Have you ever seen one post content, got engagement and comments, and never responded to any of it?

Yeah, me too. It's such a bad look.

Considering the VOICE of your content

Have you ever seen this meme?

If you're a Star Wars fan (like me), you definitely read this in his voice.

Do you think this is the only time people read content with a voice in their head?

LISN (Language, Interaction, and Speech Neuroscience) Lab research shows familiarity shapes people’s inner voices.

❓ If I asked you right now to impersonate an infomercial voice or a voiceover for a generic and salesy TV commercial, could you do it?

What would you base that on?

Did your brain create the voice and you impersonated it?

So, with that in mind, what voice do you think reads an email that starts like this:

Are you tired of long turnaround times and having to work with several agencies on the same campaign? This doesn't need to be the case. With us, you'll get everything from one partner.

This is an actual l email I got in my inbox. And the voice in my head was something like this:

We already know that generations of consumers have dealt with infomercials and ads on TV, radio, podcasts, movie pre-screening content and more. Therefore, I think it’s safe to say they're familiar with how many of them sound.

So, when you hear about content trends talking about getting away from corporate and generic marketing speak, this is one of the main reasons why it's necessary.

And I've worked with companies who knew they needed to humanize content, but none of the advice showed them how. One of them created social media content for a university's online MBA program.

One of their social media posts read like this:

"Are you considering going back to school to enhance your career? Explore our 100% online MBA programs—designed for your success!"

If they were talking to a prospective student, would they say it like that?

I'd like to think not.

So, how do you think it "sounds" in their head when they read it?

When you consider the content's voice, it becomes easier to evolve it.

Considerations like interpretation, voice, and perception are keys to humanizing your content and are part of the self-awareness, meaningful language and predicative intelligence components of The STAMP Framework.

It gets us out of the habits that focus solely on content creation and helps us add strategic layers that improve audience connection and industry differentiation.