5 Actionable Tips to a Data-Driven Content Marketing Strategy
Data-driven content marketing allows businesses to combine the power of content and SEO to improve brand awareness, boost customer engagement, and generate more leads.
With the increase in access for the world’s population with regards to high-speed internet, social media sites, and increased use of mobile devices, marketers now have easy access to a plethora of data. By gathering and analyzing this data, businesses can identify the needs of their audience and develop targeted content to convert leads into paying customers.
With this in mind, in this post, we’ll share some actionable tips that’ll help you create a data-driven content marketing strategy for your business.
#1: Develop an Understanding of Your Target Audience
A data-driven content marketing strategy enables businesses to better understand their target audience. In addition to this, it improves brand loyalty and increases user engagement.
Businesses need to lay the groundwork by gathering data about their target audience’s behavior, interests, and needs. This data is then analyzed by marketers which reveals certain trends and actionable insights. Using this information, businesses can create personalized content to target specific segments of the market.
Marketers can use data to gain specific insights into customers’ behaviors, like:
- The audience’ response to the existing content marketing strategy.
- The content the audience likes (or dislikes) the most.
- The content the audience finds useful or shares with others.
- The tools, apps, and devices they use to access your content.
- Their average time spent on each page.
According to Combo App, the more data available to marketers, the better insights they’ll get into their customers’ preferences, online behavior, and engagement. Understanding your target audience is the first step in developing a data-driven content marketing strategy that’s based on insights, not guesswork.
#2: Use Content Discovery Techniques to Generate New Ideas
Generating new content ideas for your readers on a regular basis can get pretty difficult. That said, taking a data-driven approach to content marketing allows businesses to produce content that delivers value to their readers.
Here are some ways data can be used to generate new content ideas:
- Keyword research. Keyword research helps businesses optimize their websites for search engines. Additionally, it can also be used to generate new ideas for content. Through keyword research, marketers can develop a better understanding of what sort of content their target audience is searching for and produce content around those keywords.
- Competitor analysis. A great way to improve your content discovery is by comparing your content with that of your competitors. To get started, you might consider analyzing the content they produce, its length and format, and the keywords it’s optimized for. This will give you some useful insights into what works for them and how you can adopt the same strategy.
- Industry trends. Tracking trending topics through social media platforms (like Twitter) and tools like Google Trends is a great way to stay informed about the latest trends in your industry.
#3: Create Content That Delivers Value to Your Readers
To maximize the reach of their content, marketers need to convey their message through their audience’s favorite content consumption channels. Here are some factors to consider when choosing the mode and format of your content delivery:
- Length of the content. This includes long and short articles, videos, and infographics.
- Type of content. For example, videos, audios, blog posts, and e-books.
- Screen size of content. Mobile, tablet or desktop devices.
- Relevance. How accurately your content matches a search query?
- Value. How unique and original is your content?
To help gauge the effectiveness of your content delivery channels, you can use analytics tools like Google Analytics. It generates useful insights into users’ interaction with your content. Apart from that, you can get help from Macclesfield SEO to produce SEO optimized content and boost the traffic of your business.
By identifying the right content consumption channel, you’re able to deliver content to your target audience in a way that would resonate best with them. This allows you to educate the customer about your brand and help them better understand how your product can satisfy their needs.
#4: Identify the Right Distribution Channels
Some businesses mistakenly assume that they can publish their content anywhere and it wouldn’t have an impact on outreach. However, this approach doesn’t take into account that their content might not be seen by the right audience.
Businesses spend a lot of resources producing content that’s tailored towards their target market. However, they need to dedicate an equal amount of effort making sure it gets to the right people at the right time.
Data-driven content marketing can help marketers identify the right distribution channels to promote their content. Depending on your particular target market and campaign objectives, you might consider distributing content through:
- Earned (free) media such as media relations, blogger relations, and influencers.
- Paid media which includes advertising, banner ads, and programs like Google AdWords.
- Owned media including your brand website, social media profiles, and blogs.
- Shared media which typically consists of word of mouth marketing, referrals, and content shares.
It’s important to understand that each channel has its own purpose and what works on one may not work on another. This is where data can help you identify the right distribution channel for the type of content you produce and help you maximize the ROI of your marketing efforts.
#5: Analyze, Measure, and Test Constantly
According to Digital Authority Partners, the importance of measuring the effectiveness of your content strategy, both in a B2B and B2C setting, can’t be overemphasized. Marketers can always gather meaningful insights as new data becomes available in order to develop a better understanding of their target market.
Here are some of the most important KPIs for measuring the success of your content strategy:
- Website visits.
- Number of leads generated.
- Lead conversion rate.
- Number of shares.
- Number of followers or fans.
- Number of impressions.
- Average time on page.
- Pages viewed per session.
- Bounce rate.
Measuring the success of your content marketing strategy requires both quantitative and qualitative approaches. While your content marketing efforts will result in a wealth of new data, you need to come up with new ways to make the most of it. As a result, you’ll be in a better position to create content that attracts new customers to your business.
Conclusion
Taking a data-driven approach to content marketing means analyzing your existing data and using insights to improve your content marketing strategy.
The best part is that the more data you gather, the more you’ll learn about your target audience. And, as a result, you’ll be able to deliver more value and, ultimately, convert them into paying customers.
Which KPIs do you consider when gauging the success of your content marketing strategy? Let us know by commenting below.