Creating a successful content marketing strategy calls for smart use of data. When your goal is to attract more leads, increase conversion rates, and stay at the top of your game, you need to eliminate the guesswork from your marketing plan.
Precise analytics and customer data should be the pillars of your content marketing strategy. You need to know exactly what type of content best resonates with your audience and understand their preferences in order to run a successful business.
Our friends at a web design company in San Diego pointed out that a data-driven approach to developing a marketing plan helps businesses serve content in line with the needs of their users. Moreover, it allows brands to improve the customer experience and increase sales.
In this blog post, we will explore ten of the most important techniques and show you how to use them to execute a successful data-driven content marketing strategy.
1. Define Your Goals
The number one thing to do before you start working on a marketing strategy for your brand is to define your objectives.
You should never create content just for the sake of creating content. Senseless drivel probably won’t resonate with your visitors.
Instead, ask yourself:
1-What is the purpose of my content?
2-What do I want to achieve with it?
3-What do I want people to do after they read it?
Whether you want to raise brand awareness, increase customer engagement, find new employees, or boost sales, defining your goals and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) is paramount for success.
When you know what you want to achieve, it will be easier to start working on a strategy that will benefit your brand and help you reach your goals.
2. Understand Your Audience
Here’s the deal. If you have no idea who you’re trying to reach with your content, there’s little to no point in sharing it.
In order to create a marketing strategy that converts, you must know who your target audience is. Furthermore, you need to:
- Know what your target audience wants
- Perform a demographic analysis (know their age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, etc.)
- Understand the buying patterns of your audience
- Discover the main channels your audience is using (e.g., if they prefer to consume content on social networks rather than on websites, etc.)
- Know what type of content your audience prefers (e.g., if they enjoy watching videos more than reading articles on relevant subjects)
- Find out how your audience can benefit from your products (e.g., do they want to become better at something, keep up with their peers, etc.)
To find this useful data, you can engage with your audience directly by encouraging them to leave comments on your site and then replying to them. You can also send them customer surveys or talk to them on social channels.
Another helpful technique in learning more about your audience is including practical forms on your site. That way, you can collect data such as your customers’ email addresses, ages, marital statuses, or gender. Just make sure to be suave and not appear too nosy.
Not everyone is comfortable with sharing too much information about themselves, so make sure you ask only for the details relevant to your business.
3. Devise Content that Matches Your Data Findings
Once you define your audience, you need to gather practical information about them. This includes their buying habits, and interests. Once you have this information, you can start crafting content that matches their needs and preferences.
Make sure to skillfully implement all that you’ve discovered into your content. That will allow you to better target your audience and help them find you with greater ease.
You can use Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and other analytical tools to find primary and secondary keywords your users are most likely to type into search engines. That will help you increase your brand visibility and attract more users your way.
Of course, be careful to avoid keyword stuffing. If you overdo it, Google warns you to risk poor user experience and lower site rankings. Instead, you should opt for more natural keyword insertion. Try implementing long-tail keywords as well as synonyms to persuade Google to give more weight to your content.
4. Optimize Content on the Regular
Keeping your website fresh and updated is one of the key factors of business success.
If you’re modifying your products and services, your audience should be aware of all that’s new. Your content should underscore the changes regarding your brand and the way those changes benefit your users.
Another important thing to remember is that Google and other search engines constantly change their algorithms. What was relevant yesterday may be considered passé by tomorrow. When you diligently update your content, you have better chances at continuously maintaining good rankings.
To measure the way your content performs, you can use platforms such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
The former will enable you to monitor the SEO performance of your content and its presence in Google search results. The latter, on the other hand, allows for tracking conversions, the way the users consume your content, and how they interact with your website.
If you notice some areas of your website are underperforming, start optimizing the content immediately to make it up-to-date with the latest SEO practices.
5. Repurpose Content for New Platforms
Content repurposing is a practical action that allows you to use the existing content in new ways and on new mediums.
When you share your content on other channels, you are likely to:
- Increase brand visibility
- Reach a new audience
- Receive backlinks to your site
- Reinforce your message
For instance, you could turn your blog posts into podcasts or transform audio podcasts into videos. Or, if you have a solid collection of posts, you can consider publishing them as an e-book.
When it comes to deciding which channels to use in order to repurpose your content, the best thing to do is ask your audience. Don’t shy away from asking them how and where they would like to consume your content. You can set up a poll or ask them to fill out a form to get valuable feedback.
6. Track Analytics Constantly
If you decide to share your content on multiple channels, you should constantly monitor specific metrics for each medium.
This will allow you to understand if some channels are underperforming and what you could do to better optimize them.
For example, user engagement on your social channels could be impressive but your conversion rates could still be low because you fail to bring leads to your website. By keeping an eye on the analytics, you could identify the problem on time and add more persuasive messages to bring customers to your site.
7. Implement On-Site Search
Adding a search option to your site is a sophisticated way to discover what interests your audience the most and keeping tabs on what they look for on your website. Furthermore, the on-site search option is also a great way of identifying keywords that could bring more traffic your way.
To find out what users type into your search bar, we suggest you use Google Analytics.
Once you get the results, make sure you analyze them carefully. That may help you realize whether people look for something your site doesn’t cover yet but may be relevant to your niche. If the content they seek is missing, you can add it to your site and prevent users from looking for answers elsewhere.
8. Make the Most of Influencer Marketing
Over the last several years, influencer marketing has become increasingly popular. More and more companies are implementing it into their marketing strategies as a way of promoting their services.
If you’ve only just launched your business or you’re finding it hard to reach your target audience, influencer marketing could be of tremendous help in increasing the visibility of your brand. Even if you’re successful in what you do, bringing more users your way certainly won’t hurt.
Before you start collaborating with any influencers, you should first and foremost ensure they are credible. It’s paramount you find someone with a loyal following that your audience trusts.
Another thing you should be mindful of is collaborating with an influencer whose image aligns with the values you stand for.
Don’t jeopardize your brand’s reputation by working with someone who has a large following but lacks maturity or promotes beliefs that could negatively impact your brand’s reputation in the long run.
9. Blog Often
Blogging is a terrific way of driving more traffic to your site and building trust with users.
The more you blog about your thoughts and ideas, the higher the chance of building authoritative inbound links that come from other relevant sites. Statistics show that brands that blog get 97% more links to their websites.
Besides, Google ranks websites depending on how authoritative they are, so blogging can significantly help you boost your SERP rankings.
By regularly sharing blogs on your site, you can give your business a unique voice that will set you apart from your competitors. You can also address important issues and current trends. That will give your business a human touch and make it more appealing to audiences.
10. Create Longer Blog Posts
The longer your blog posts are, the easier it is for you to share high-quality information with your audience. At the same time, it’s easier for Google to determine how relevant your content is and then position it better in search results.
Long posts give you more opportunities to subtly disperse primary and secondary keywords as well as synonyms throughout your text. That way, there won’t be any risk of keyword stuffing.
Longer blog posts also leave a lot of room for incorporating engaging imagery and video material into the text. Exciting visuals can amplify your message as well as make your blogs more appealing to readers.
Closing Thoughts
A data-driven content marketing strategy is the best way to ensure your website achieves better rankings, generates more leads, and achieves higher conversion rates.
You can rely on Google Analytics, Ahrefs, Google Search Console, and other useful platforms to monitor and measure user data.
Once you get valuable analytics, use them to create content that resonates with your target audience. Make sure to constantly keep an eye on the metrics – that will allow you to be aware of the areas that need improving and understand how to best optimize your content.