Understanding Your Content Marketing Data

It’s clear why you need content marketing. 47% of buyers will view 3 to 5 pieces of content before making a purchasing decision, and companies with blogs get 67% more leads than those who don’t. But how do you apply the data you generate to a content marketing strategy? How do you know what to do with your content marketing data?

 

Understanding your content marketing data begins with knowing how you rank for specific keywords to focus your strategy. What audience are you trying to reach? What relevant keywords are you using to get there? 

 

Next, build an understanding of your overall data set, compiling your overall domain authority and traffic to assist in your online marketing efforts. These processes can be easier than they might seem. Engaging in them successfully will help you propel your business to greater ROIs. 

 

Here’s what you should know.

Keyword Rankings

For effective content marketing, you need a good keyword strategy. This helps you both understand what your customers are interested in and how to engage with them. Content marketing serves a clear purpose. It reaches a specific audience with intended targeting. To achieve that purpose, you must start with understanding your keyword rankings.

 

A good place to begin is by tracking keywords with tools offered by search engines themselves and by third parties. For example, Google Ads Keyword Planner can give you a useful understanding of how keywords are used among a general online audience and with what frequency. This helps you understand how your customers are searching. It also shows what keywords your competitors are focusing on and paying to advertise. This research alongside other tools like AnswerThePublic can help you compose keyword tails that assist you in targeting and specifying your content. 

 

These tools allow you to see the competitiveness of a phrase and direct content based on your marketing resources. You want to go with medium- or low-competition phrases. You can use them to generate a decent audience while not having to compete too aggressively with businesses that may have more resources than you.

 

The key in this is specifically targeting your keywords, which is why you want to use long-tail keywords wherever possible. Long-tail keywords are great because, by nature, they come with less competitive usage, allowing you to generate higher rankings. Additionally, they better allow you to target searches and information that will bring users to your content.

 

Generate long-tail keywords that will suit your demographic as you understand it. Accommodate for voice search by thinking of ways people might actually phrase a search. Then, design a less-competitive keyword tail to help you boost rankings and drive customers to you with specific targeting. 

 

Understanding and utilizing keyword data for your market strategy can be as simple as the following steps:

 

1. Use free keyword analytical tools to help you devise keywords for your content strategy.
2. Develop specific long-tail keywords that will reach your intended audience and boost your rankings.
3. Focus on less competitive keywords for a more effective strategy.
4. Maintain awareness of how your keyword approach affects your click-through rate.

 

Keywords are a great way to get your content to an audience. However, you will need to then decipher the data you accumulate for a more specifically targeted strategy. 

Deciphering Compiled Data

There are a wide variety of tools and processes you can implement in your content marketing strategy to better understand your accumulated data. First, you can generate information from your users with helpful online applications. Then, you can compile and analyze that data to tell a story about your buyers. 

 

Data gathering should start with the basics. You need to first understand your performance metrics to learn how your content is helping — or failing to help — your strategy. This approach should utilize the following steps:

 

1. Create and define your key performance indicators (KPIs).
2. Define clear goals and measurement procedures.
3. Detail a plan for following up on your KPIs and goals.
4. Set clear responsibilities for performance tracking for yourself or team members.

 

Then, you can utilize the data you bring in from outside sources, like Facebook or Instagram insights, LinkedIn analytics, or Twitter data. Most social media has built-in resources that can help you track demographic and user engagement with your content. This is useful in charting the effectiveness of your content while honing in on your target audience with more specific content. 

 

Platforms like Twitter and YouTube even offer handy poll templates to help gauge audience interest and gather data. Simple, on-platform questionnaires like these are useful because users do not even have to leave the site to provide information that can help you better your content marketing strategy. These tools, alongside email surveys and traditional A/B testing, bring you a clearer understanding of your audience and their content needs. 

 

This specificity allows you to segment your audience for greater personalization and targeting. For example, Gen Z as the upcoming buyer generation makes up 40% of U.S. consumers. Marketing in ways that appeal to this generation of customers can help you swell interest in your products. 

 

With enough compiled data from social media and beyond, you can begin to paint a picture of your audience as a whole, their personas, their needs, and their values. You want your data to tell a story about who your audience is and why they might seek out your products. What are their needs? Wants? Challenges? Content marketing is all about telling a story. 

 

Data should give you the tools to answer these questions with that story. You can attempt analysis on your own or use helpful artificial intelligence tools. These tools help you put your customer data for content marketing into broader terms, but the outcome should be a narrative you can work with. With such a strategy in place, you can then best craft content for the future and your super-effective marketing campaign. 

Build a Better Marketing Strategy

Understanding your content marketing data comes down to thorough keyword research and specification, while you amass your compiled data into a narrative you can work with. Content marketing is all about storytelling, and the more data you have, the better you can craft the needs of your customers into targeted content that draws in sales. 

 

By understanding your data, you can build an effective content marketing campaign, spread your message to your ideal audience, and boost your revenues. All it takes is the right tools and effective analysis, and you’ll be able to build a better marketing campaign for your business.