relevance: quick guide for content marketing research

QUICK GUIDE FOR

CONTENT MARKETING RESEARCH

THE 4 ESSENTIAL RESEARCH ASSESSMENTS

QUICK GUIDE FOR CONTENT MARKETING RESEARCH

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THE FOUR ESSENTIAL RESEARCH ASSESSMENTS

According to the Content Marketing Institute, more than three-quarters of content marketers claim to have a strategy in place, but fewer than one-third have actually documented that strategy. A documented strategy is proven to increase effectiveness in all areas of content marketing, especially when that strategy is backed by quantitative and qualitative research.

With all marketing initiatives, digital or otherwise, it’s crucial to conduct research to build the foundation of your strategy. An intimate understanding of who your audience is, what they’re looking for, where to find them, and how to deliver the most effective message is often the difference between success and failure. It’s no different with content marketing, and research to determine the who, what, where and how can be nicely translated into four key assessments: audience, trends, media, and competition.

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AUDIENCE ASSESSMENT—THE “WHO”

WHAT IT ISAn audience assessment is the key to understanding the behavior of your target audience. It’s the foundation for creating target personas, developing the buyers’ journey maps and connecting pain points to purchasing considerations.

WHY YOU DO ITThis analysis will show you how your audience seeks information, how they evaluate brands and products, how they’re influenced throughout their purchase paths, and how they make purchases.

HOW YOU DO IT

Keyword Research: Identifying target keywords and any related search terms generated by the target industry and audience is crucial for understanding how they are searching for products and services. Keywords should be organized based on the main stages of the buyer’s journey: awareness, interest, decision, and action. Pay attention to the types of pages that rank well (blogs, knowledge center articles, and product pages).

User-Generated Content Analysis: Researching forums and relevant social media platforms will provide a better understanding of customer pain points, the terminology used, and the preferred formats for content. This tactic is generally not as applicable for B2B companies as for B2C companies.

Customer Interviews & Surveys: Interviewing brand employees and customers will help you better understand the target audience, demand drivers, and pain points. Connections should be found between interview information and data gleaned from all other assessments and tactics.






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Expert Interviews: You can better understand the relevant conversations happening in your space by interviewing industry experts to learn their perspectives. These insights can shape your content strategy and add more tangible pain points to back up data findings.

Web Analytics Assessment: A successful analytics implementation is key to not only measuring success, but also executing a data-driven content strategy. An analytics assessment helps you understand who the target demographic is, how they interact with the website, how to leverage current content that already exists, how to track conversions, and how to optimize your website for conversions.

Recommended Audience Research Tools: • Google Analytics• BuzzSumo• LinkedIn






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TRENDS ASSESSMENT—THE “WHAT”

WHAT IT ISA trends analysis goes beyond keyword research and search volumes to better understand the dialogue happening in your space and how your brand can find a voice in the conversation.

WHY YOU DO ITThe goal of a trends assessment is to determine the format and subject matter of your content. By compiling and analyzing the most engaging content in your space, you can use hard data to identify trending content patterns and determine opportunities for contributions that are likely to resonate with your audience.

HOW YOU DO IT

Response Analysis: The objective here is to deep dive into the ways the audience’s conversations are taking place. What is the difficulty level of a content piece? Is it tactical or strategic? What types of calls-to-action resonate best with the target audience?

Angle Identification: Many times the media and content analyses reveal trends in how information is shared. What are the forms, voices, popular social media outlets, and dynamic features that make for the most compelling and engaging content? These are the characteristics that take a keyword-driven piece of content to the next level and motivate readers to engage and share.

Topic Identification: What are the trends and subtopics being searched and discussed across the digital landscape, and how do these relate to previously identified keywords? Think about this as tracking and understanding long-tail keyword searches that are geared at solving specific pain points or audience issues.






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Compelling Questions Identification: These are the questions and pain points that become evident throughout the audience, media, and trends assessments. What content can you create that will answer the most compelling questions in the most compelling ways?

Resources Cited: How is information shared in this industry, what are the most reliable resources, and who are the overarching figures of authority?

Quoted Experts Identification: This tactic takes a more traditional marketing spin by interviewing experts, industry influencers, and internal members of your company to better understand internal pain points as well as the engagement between the business and customer.

Recommended Trends Research Tools:• Google Trends• BuzzSumo






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MEDIA ASSESSMENT—THE “WHERE”

WHAT IT ISA media assessment identifies the top online media and influencers in your space. Creating a media profile for not only your target audience, but also your target media outlets, will better inform your subsequent content creation and promotion strategies.

WHY YOU DO ITIn conjunction with the trends assessment, the media assessment will help you understand how best to create content that will resonate with your audience and how to maximize the amplification of that content.

HOW YOU DO IT

Industry Publications Analysis: Creating a database of successful industry publications will not only help with the media analysis, but will also be crucial for developing an integrated promotion strategy. These publications will provide an idea of the most popular topics and concerns among the target audience.

Industry Social Influencers & Experts Analysis: By utilizing social networks, groups, and lists, you can aggregate data and identify existing social influencers. This data can be analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively to understand which content is most successful and where content resonates the best.

Social Engagement Analysis: Knowing what’s popular on social media can help shape a content strategy, and content analysis tools can measure engagement across social media platforms to identify and better understand what content has the most overall engagement.






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Recommended Media Research Tools:• Share Tally• Followerwonk• Cision• GroupHigh• BuzzSumo• Anewstip






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COMPETITIVE ASSESSMENT—THE “HOW”

WHAT IT IS The competitive content assessment is a mix of qualitative and quantitative data to understand the story each competitor tells and then identify how those stories resonate with your shared target audience.

WHY YOU DO ITA competitive assessment is an essential process for understanding your content marketing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats by taking the pulse of the competitive landscape. In particular, this process is useful for identifying middle- and bottom-of-the-funnel opportunities that your competitors may or may not be targeting.

HOW YOU DO IT

Content Inventory: Building a content inventory of your competitors’ websites will provide you with an overview of the work being produced. It will require scraping your competitors’ sites and hand-building a list of key pages, content, and resources.

Sentiment Analysis: This type of analysis gets beyond just engagement and comments to better understand the emotional and mental connection the audience has with content. This analysis takes a qualitative inventory of format, tone, emotion, and readership level.

Keyword Gap Analysis: Based on your keyword research, you can build a list of primary keywords for your brand and its top competitors to locate content gaps and opportunities. Match up the ranked pages for each of these keywords to competitively evaluate pages for content, layout, and architecture.

Site Architecture & Navigation Audit: Here the site architecture and navigation from an SEO and UX perspective are assessed to identify how the navigation affects the customer’s purchase path and how to make the journey as clear and concise as possible.






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Local SEO Evaluation: Local SEO audits allow you to narrow in on your product and service opportunities. Although the size and scope of operations vary by brand, local SEO audits will uncover prime conversion opportunities by geographic region.

Recommended Competitive Research Tools:• Screaming Frog• SEMrush• Google Keyword Planner






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TAKE THE GUESS WORK OUT OF MARKETING

Content strategy should be determined by research and hard numbers, not hunches. With the proper tools and processes, you can use data to take the guess work out of marketing and give your brand the best chance to win.

Teradata Applications, an industry leader in data-driven marketing software, partnered with Relevance to expand its business into a new industry with a highly specific niche audience. Download the case study below to see first-hand how an in-depth research process built the foundation of a content marketing campaign deemed ‘one of the most successful B2B lead gen campaigns’ in the company’s history.

If you want to learn more about how a research-backed content strategy can take your marketing game to the next level, the pioneers of the practice are here to help you.

TECH SALES AND MARKETING AWARD WINNER Teradata won a Mira Award for an integrated marketing campaign that included The Big Data Marketing Hero ebook. The various components of this marketing initiative earned Teradata an eight-digit bump in revenue.

30 GlobalBRAND MEETINGS

36xROI

8-DigitREVENUE INCREASE

24%CONVERSION RATE(Coverage referral conversion rate)

3Mil+MEDIA IMPRESSIONS

OUR TEAM OF EXPERTS KNOWS WHAT IT TAKES TO GET CONTENT NOTICED

BY SEARCH ENGINES AND USERS ONLINE.

We start with industry-leading research and get to know both your audience and the media outlets they trust. Add in some unbeatable creative work to produce content that commands respect, and finish with targeted promotion to get that content picked up by the most relevant media outlets in your industry.

THE RESULTS ARE IN THE

DATA*:

*as of August 2014


For results like these, contact us.

SmartData Collective

MediaPost

Successful Workplace

Startup Mover News

Blogging4Jobs

Fast Newsletter

AJNews

AgingTech

Cooperative09

Firmology

CustomerThink

The-Edge Marketing

Business2Community

Keep America at Work

Global Big Data Conference

The BlogTest

IntegritySt.

iContemplate

Tech Expo

The Marketing Robot

Palm Beach Post

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

WTOVWGNCKnoTop

93QWBLIDayton Daily News

WEDRJournal News

5th Element Technology

Wavpin

Star945

Statesman.com

WHIO-TV

WHIOMiddletown Journal

APEX M&A

The Edge International

News XS

World News

Linkedin Today

Business Intelligence

Crazy About Startups.com

Power Oregon Blog

I4U News

“The Big Data Marketing Hero campaign

was one of the most successful B2B

lead gen campaigns in our history.”

—Lisa Arthur, Teradata, CMO; Teradata Applications

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