Well-written, attention-grabbing content is what can set you apart from your competitors.<\/p>\n
It can also create loyal customers who will want to continue to engage with you. Commonly referred to as Content Marketing<\/a>, it’s the holy grail of any marketing strategy.<\/p>\n Generating valuable insights from data and applying the findings to your Content Marketing strategy will be more critical than ever.<\/p>\n Let’s explore what a Content Marketing strategy is, why it’s essential to your marketing efforts, and how data-driven Content Marketing strategies give you a competitive advantage.<\/p>\n In this article, we will cover:<\/p>\n Often, business entities struggle to generate traffic and convert them into leads, keeping the top of their sales funnel full.<\/p>\n Paid advertising can be complex and risky if you don’t know what you are doing. It can also be super expensive if you get it wrong.<\/p>\n Content Marketing is a marketing approach designed to distribute informative and consistent content<\/a> tailored to your buyer persona.<\/p>\n The content is geared towards answering the pain points your buyer persona<\/a> suffers. It addresses these needs in a way that attracts and engages your audient.<\/p>\n A Content Marketing approach is designed to boost conversions by increasing brand awareness<\/a>, and bring more traffic to your website.<\/p>\n There are several factors that determine the success of your Content Marketing strategy. One is to choose the right type of content, which may include some or all of the following:<\/p>\n It’s best to choose the type of content best suited to your audience, the marketing channels<\/a> you use and your marketing goals.<\/p>\n Data-driven Content Marketing is an analytics approach used to optimize marketing strategies. <\/p>\n Data <\/a>is collected<\/a> from a targeted audience that matches a company’s customer profile or buyer persona. The data is then used to create effective Content Marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n You can take a spray-and-pray marketing approach or create a targeted marketing approach through the use of data.<\/p>\n A data-driven Content Marketing strategy will always outshine a spray-and-pray tactic every time. This is because data-driven Content Marketing uses real data acquired through customer feedback and interactions<\/a>.<\/p>\n This feedback gives you insight into buyer motivations and their preferences as it analyzes their behavior online.<\/p>\n Data-driven Content Marketing strategies ultimately help companies optimize how a marketing channel performs.<\/p>\n Coupled with marketing attribution, it allows them to track performance in real-time. Using data as the foundation of a Content Marketing approach enhances the customer experience<\/a>, ultimately leading to increased revenue and greater profits.<\/p>\n You can’t be everything to everyone. Consumers have preferences that guide their buying behavior and path to purchase.<\/p>\n Using the data that sits behind a buyer’s journey gives companies a greater chance of converting them into paying customers with a targeted marketing approach.<\/p>\n You don’t want to be spending money, time, and effort on Digital Marketing <\/a>efforts that don’t work.<\/p>\n Data-driven analysis in a niche allows companies to uncover a snapshot of their customer’s buying habits.<\/p>\n With that information, it enables them to tailor sales and marketing strategies directly to their target audience.<\/p>\n The added advantage of using a data-driven Content Marketing strategy is being able to use the data to identify which marketing channels are performing the best.<\/p>\n In the business-to-consumer marketplace (B2C), you might want to collect data that includes demographics, psychographics and data collected from social media.<\/p>\n CES (customer effort scores) and Net Promoter Score (NPS) are also valuable pieces of information that can be gathered, along with other data sources.<\/p>\n By studying these data sets, you will reveal segments of consumers that demonstrate similar preferences, behaviors, and inclinations.<\/p>\n The data helps companies refine their marketing messages to include offers that closely align to the segment of the market where their ideal customers can be found.<\/p>\n It’s critical before launching into a data-driven Content Marketing strategy that you start with your goals.<\/p>\n The overarching goal of a Content Marketing strategy is to build a relationship with your audience by creating value-added content. Once you understand what your goals are, you can tap into appropriate data sources.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to gloss over the actual work of digging around in data, but this hands-on part is where you sometimes spot things nobody else does. Maybe you notice most of your best leads come from one oddly specific piece of content, or perhaps there\u2019s a question your audience keeps asking that doesn\u2019t show up in top-level reports. The real insights usually aren\u2019t in the dashboards\u2014they\u2019re in those little patterns you only find when you poke around, wonder a bit, and resist the urge to rush the process. Data-driven isn\u2019t just about spreadsheets; it\u2019s also about curiosity, and some intuition thrown in for good measure.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t get discouraged if you don\u2019t get massive revelations at first glance. Not every dataset is going to serve up the next big idea on a silver platter. More often, it\u2019s about stringing together small, almost mundane observations. That could mean realizing, say, that your audience prefers educational content over listicles, or that a particular call to action gets ignored time after time. Each small learning point is another step toward content that genuinely lands, and over time those add up to a strategy that feels almost effortless\u2014even though it\u2019s really built on a lot of behind-the-scenes fine-tuning.<\/p>\n You can either use a data-mining company to deliver the research, or you can procure data yourself through a variety of methods.<\/p>\n These methods include case studies, surveys and data you have already collected from your existing customers. This could include:<\/p>\n Once you’ve collected the data, you can begin to plan a data-driven Content Marketing strategy to generate better quality leads<\/a>.<\/p>\n There are two approaches to using data. One is the content creation phase and the second is the post content phase.<\/p>\n The data needs to be used in a way that defines how the content will connect with your buyer persona. This helps to guide the creation of your content from the start of your project.<\/p>\n In the planning stage of using data to guide your content creation strategy, you must create content with your buyer persona in mind.<\/p>\n It’s not good enough to guess if your content will resonate with your persona. You must design and write content targeted to a specific audience; not trying to reach the largest audience possible.<\/p>\n Using the data in the content creation phase starts with defining your marketing goals. Do you want to attract new customers, grow your sales revenue, increase your profits, build brand awareness, enhance the customer experience?<\/p>\n You might want to look at metrics like the time visitors spend on an individual webpage. Another metric to look at is if, when and where they abandon the site.<\/p>\n All marketing campaigns need to build trust and rapport with your audience to build an ongoing relationship with them.<\/p>\n When ready to create content, clearly define the topic and angle you wish the content piece to take.<\/p>\n It needs to address a problem or opportunity that sits within your niche. You can identify this from your buyer personas.<\/p>\n From here, research possible headlines you could use that come up on a Google search using key phrases that address the problem or opportunity.<\/p>\n If writing content in the form of a blog or article, use 8-10 headings. Some of these headings should contain keywords along with clickable links.<\/p>\n Readers tend to skim-read online, so headings, bullet points, and short paragraphs are critical in the body of the article.<\/p>\n Ensure you include inbound and outbound links to other content you’ve created. Including several links to other non-competitive websites creates credibility.<\/p>\n Unless your Content Marketing strategy is well defined, you could be trying to connect with the wrong audience by hanging out in the wrong places.<\/p>\n Data can provide feedback on who is interacting with trending topics. This approach highlights what channels your target audience are currently using. It also enables you to identify the most relevant influencers within these groups.<\/p>\n Begin with your audience in mind. Use buyer personas and existing customer data to identify your ideal audience.<\/p>\n Once you understand the audience for your content, you can choose what type of content to use and seek out the marketing channels you are most likely to the audience.<\/p>\n Tap into the data that informs you of the best channels to use to reach your intended audience.<\/p>\n The form and tone of your content will depend on the marketing channel you use to deliver your content.<\/p>\n Different demographics and different marketing channels suit different audiences. Some types of content will suit certain channels over others.<\/p>\n To maximize your reach, leverage influencers<\/a> who already operate in your space. By co-producing content and sharing across each other’s platforms, the influencers will help you leverage new networks.<\/p>\n For example, the retailer GNC was able to leverage this strategy to gain more than 380,000 new Facebook fans simply by tapping into small niche groups online.<\/p>\n As with any marketing campaign, data-driven or not, it’s important to measure critical aspects of what works and what doesn’t.<\/p>\n This means that as you define your marketing goals, choose key performance indicators (KPIs) that will measure value and engagement.<\/p>\n It’s easy to track sales which is an essential component of effective Content Marketing. Remember to include other metrics like customer retention rates and loyalty, along with engagement.<\/p>\n Here are a few metrics to consider, including your KPI’s when designing a data-driven Content Marketing campaign.<\/p>\n You want to monitor the size of the audience your content is reaching. Additionally, you need to measure what percentage of the audience is your target audience.<\/p>\nWhat Is Content Marketing?<\/h2>\n
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What Is Data-Driven Content Marketing?<\/h2>\n
Why Is Data-Driven Marketing Important?<\/h2>\n
How Data Can Guide Your Content Creation Strategy<\/h3>\n
How To Build the Data For a Data-Driven Content Marketing Piece<\/h2>\n
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How Can I Apply Data-Driven Content Marketing?<\/h2>\n
Begin With Strong Planning<\/h3>\n
Ensure You Are Using Accurate Data<\/h3>\n
Clearly Define Topics For Your Audience<\/h3>\n
Research<\/h3>\n
How To Create a Data-Driven Content Marketing Strategy<\/h2>\n
Create Your Buyer Personas<\/h3>\n
Map What Channels You Will use<\/h3>\n
Leverage Influencers in Your Space<\/h3>\n
Evaluating Your ROI<\/h3>\n
Traffic<\/h3>\n
Engagement Rates<\/h3>\n