The Five Steps to Optimize Your Content for Data-Driven Content Marketing
Are you overwhelmed by the myriad of ways available to promote your business online? How do you make sure your site content is making its way to your target audience?
The short answer is to utilize a data-driven content marketing strategy.
The long answer is much more involved and includes multiple steps. It takes a well-thought-out strategy to distribute your information in a way tailored to your target audience to create engagement that relates to a specific goal.
A solid content marketing strategy is the only way to guarantee success in today's competitive online market.
The First Step: Set Content Goals
For your content marketing to be effective, you need to first determine what you are trying to accomplish.
Do you want to increase traffic to your site?
Are you trying to generate leads?
Is sales your primary goal?
All the information you disseminate should be useful not only for your consumers but for the growth of your business as well. Do not push out content just for the sake of pushing out content. In data-driven content marketing, each and every piece of content should be published to accomplish a specific, measurable goal for you while still meeting the needs of your consumer.
Prioritizing these goals gives you the beginnings of a framework for creating content. You will be able to create relevant content to see your business grow and thrive.
Once you've got your goals firmly defined and ordered, the next step is determining your target audience.
The Second Step: Know Your Target Audience
Determining your audience is not a simple task. It's not about just choosing a generic demographic and being done with it, but involves learning everything there is to know about your specific demographic and creating customer profiles or personas for each of them. This is the first key to successful data-driven marketing.
You need to know what motivates your target audience to interact with your content.
First, do they have specific pain points or emotional triggers that will make them want to engage with your content? If your demographic is middle-aged women in caregiver roles, they might potentially be looking for some kind of support for themselves as they spend most of their time and energy caring for others. Meet that need and they will engage.
So, take a minute and think about what is going to encourage your audience to say, "Hey, this content resonates with me and what I'm feeling. I'm going to share it with my friends who will get it too."
Second, what method of receiving content enables them to engage with it easily? Every demographic is going to have their preferred way to enjoy the content. Businessmen who are always on the go won't have time to sit down and spend time reading a blog or an article, but they are likely to spend their 45-minute commute listening to a podcast or streaming a video.
Take this into consideration as you determine what your ideal audience prefers. If your audience prefers videos or podcasts, don't spend all your energy creating written content because they won't take the time to read it. Create content that will best fit your consumer's preferences and post it on whatever the best channels are to reach them.
Third, when are they most likely to engage with your content? Stay-at-home moms aren't going to have much free time to interact with content during the day. But early morning and late at night are key times for them because this is when they are most available to engage.
Do some research to ensure you post your content during the times your audience will most easily be able to engage with it and you will be guaranteed to see more traffic.
Now, these are just a few of the questions you should be asking about your targeted audience. There's more to it than just this, but this will get you started in the right direction and further define your content marketing strategy and framework.
If you're not sure where to start because this seems daunting, it doesn't have to be. The whole idea behind data-driven content is using tools to help you figure these things out not just going on your instincts or gut feelings.
Google Analytics is one tool you can utilize. It will gather data on your potential customers and provides audience reports you can use to determine the demographic of people interacting with your content, where they are, how they like to engage, and more. Use this information to create an imaginary customer profile such as "Suzie Homemaker, a middle-aged woman, looking for ideas on keeping the house decluttered, baking, and organization. She is often online early in the morning between 6-7 am and in the evening after 9 pm. She prefers Facebook and blogs/articles of around 1500 words."
When a business owner utilizes a buyer persona such as this, they know exactly who they are creating content for, what the content should be about, and when and where it should be posted to receive the most engagement.
There are innumerable ways to get your data-driven content out there, so make sure it's getting to where your audience will see it, when they're most likely to be looking, and in a way that will make them want to respond.
The Third Step: Create Content
You have established why you are creating content and who it is for, now you need to get to the actual creating, right?
Not quite. Before you get started there's a bit more research you need to do first. Remember, you are striving to optimize your content using a data-driven content marketing approach. This means some research needs to happen both before and during the creation process and it's best done in two parts.
Determine what your content will be about
Use data analysis such as blog view counters, trending topics, and keyword research to get ideas for your content. Not sure where to find this information. Many companies now offer content analytics software to aid your research. Google Analytics leads the way as being one of the most well-known, but there are many others to choose from. Semrush, Bitly, and Rebrandly are just a few others with good ease of use.
It doesn't matter which one you choose as long as the software helps you determine what your customers want.
Spend some time browsing the sites of your competition and others in your niche. Get an idea of what types of content they are putting out and then personalize it for your business's use.
Take their ideas and then make them relevant to your specific customer personas. Write blogs for the persona of someone looking for information about your business. Create content videos about your products to encourage your buyer persona to make a purchase.
Follow influencers in your niche. Consider their content and use it as a basis for your content. This is an effective way to capitalize on successful content from other sources and make it work for your business as well.
You don't have to reinvent the wheel and start from scratch with your content creation. Remember you're building a reliable and lasting framework model so all the content your business puts out will be data-driven content based on valuable insights gained from your research.
It means you take what you've already been doing and make it better so you gain more leads, see increased customer retention, and meet your business goals.
Create content to meet your customers' needs
There are several different types of content. Each of these different types fulfills a specific purpose a business is trying to achieve with its content.
If you are trying to encourage your customers to buy a new product, a video would be more useful than say a podcast or newsletter. Whereas if you're trying to increase your lead generation and draw people to your site with information about your business, blogs or infographics would be the right tools to use.
Choosing the right types is key to a successful content strategy, so make sure you are basing your decisions on data-driven analytics.
Headlines, keyword research, and search engine optimization (SEO)
Headlines
These are what pull people in and make them want to click on your content. Companies like Moz and Headline Studio have devoted themselves to creating algorithms for this sole purpose. Take advantage of their hard work and create headlines people won't be able to swipe past.
Keywords and SEO
Using the keywords your customers are searching for and optimizing your content to rank high in search results are two more components of content creation and are directly responsible for creating effective content marketing campaigns.
Again, there are businesses out there with the sole purpose of making this task easier for you. SurferSEO, UpfireSEO, and many others can provide you with the metrics you need to maximize your content creation for the best return on investment.
Combine all these elements together by using the right words and phrases throughout your content and structuring it logically with attention-grabbing headlines and visually appealing images and you will see an increase in traffic to your site and more people interested in interacting with your content.
But what if writing and graphics just aren't your thing? Where do you go to find quality content?
Do business owners have to create all their content themselves?
Since data-driven content marketing campaigns are proving to be the best way for businesses to be successful, your business needs to develop and implement one even if you are struggling to do the creating.
The good news is you don't have to be the one to create all the content for your business to succeed.
Written content specialists like Words You Want can do the keyword and SEO research for you and provide you with data-driven content which will not only appeal to your customers but will result in you meeting your content goals and seeing your business grow.
There is also the option to utilize guest bloggers, influencers, or other specialists in your niche to help create the content you will push out.
One of the main goals of your data-driven content strategy is going to not let your business fall stagnant and be limited by your ability or inability to push out content. Instead, utilize the experience and knowledge of others who are already successfully implementing data-driven content marketing and piggyback off their results.
No matter which route you take to develop your content, use the language of your customers, be professional or personable depending on the content, and only push out valuable and trustworthy information that will have meaning while also meeting your consumers' needs.
The Fourth Step - Repurpose Content in Your Marketing Efforts
You've just written this awesome blog or created this amazing video and posted it to your site. How are your consumers going to learn about it? How will it reach potential consumers who haven't heard of you yet?
This is where repurposing content becomes an effective element of your content marketing strategy.
What does it mean to repurpose your content?
It means taking one piece of content on its original platform and transforming it into different forms for other marketing channels.
For example, you wrote a blog article on 'Why Hydration is Important.' Here are some ways to repurpose this content.
Use Instagram and Facebook to challenge your followers to increase their hydration for 30 days and link back to your original article.
Use weekly email campaigns to encourage those who are participating in your 30-day challenge, including ideas on how to increase their water consumption.
Make a few reels talking about how you increased your hydration and what benefits you've seen as a result, and post them on various social media channels.
Create social media posts encouraging everyone to increase their hydration and give them tips on how to do so.
Ask an influencer to use your blog as a guest post.
The possibilities for repurposing your content are endless. There is no limit to the ways you can manipulate one piece of content to drive more traffic to your site.
The best part about repurposing is it does not have to be used on new content only. You can use existing content from months ago and repurpose it for results in the present.
Remember though, all this work is pointless if it's not helping you meet your content goals. So after you've gone through all these steps above it's time to see if your data-driven content marketing strategy is working or not.
The Fifth Step - Measure Your Results
At the very beginning of this delve into data-driven content marketing, the first step was to set content goals.
Now that you've done that and gone through all the other steps, it's time to see if your content strategy is meeting those goals with data-driven analysis.
It's a four-part process that is repeated over and over with each piece of content and each marketing channel used.
First choose a metric - page views, shares, likes, comments, revenue results, etc.
A second look at each channel - Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Podcast, TikTok, and wherever else you posted your content.
Third, measure your content goals - site traffic, sales, lead generation, lead conversions, followers, and views. Have you met these goals in the way you wanted?
Lastly, choose key performance indicators and measure them - cost per lead, marketing ROI, sales qualified leads, and sales revenue. What changes have you seen in these indicators? Are they moving in the direction you want?
Google Analytics and Google Search Console can provide the data you need to answer these questions. They will tell you what worked, what didn't work, and why.
It is vital for the success of your content marketing strategy to take in this information and make adjustments where needed.
Then you start the whole process all over again with your next piece of content.
After repeating this process several times, you will have a solid data-driven content marketing framework that will power your own content-creating machine.
Key Takeaway
Data-driven content marketing is not something you will be able to implement overnight, but it is a necessary component to be a successful business operating in today's digital world.
This data-driven approach will require time and energy on your part but you'll see the rewards almost immediately. More leads, better consumer engagement, and increased revenues.
It won't take long to see these results and it will be worth all the hard work you put into developing your content strategy.
So, take it slow. Don't try to match what the top competitor in your niche is doing right now. They've likely put in the time and effort to get their content-creating machine operating in full swing.
You won't be able to match them right away, but you can use them as a benchmark for where you'd like to be in six months, a year, or two years. Move at a pace that doesn't burn you out or overwhelm you.
Look for help when you need it. Countless businesses have dedicated themselves to helping you with keyword research, SEO, content creation, data-driven content marketing, and more. Utilize their knowledge and expertise to get you moving in the right direction toward meeting your content goals.
Data-driven content marketing might seem impossible, but you can incorporate it into your content strategy one step at a time.