Content marketing has become indispensable for digital brands to connect with their audience, build trust, and drive business growth. But its process involves a series of steps, from understanding your target audience to creating and distributing high-quality content. Perhaps one of the critical parts of it is research.
This guide explores the essential research techniques, valuable tools, and resources we experts use to conduct effective research for your content marketing campaigns.
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What is Content Research?
Content research involves gathering information and insights from competitors and the target audience to inform effective content creation. It identifies your target audience's pain points, preferences, and needs and helps you understand the competitive landscape and industry trends. It’s essential for marketing campaigns because it ensures your content is relevant, valuable, and resonates with your audience.
Content research differs from other types of business research, such as competitive or market research, but the last two critically help how you make your content, so they are not mutually exclusive.
Content research is conducted throughout the content marketing process:
Before:
- Target audience research: Identify your target audience's demographics, interests, and behaviors.
- Competitor research: Analyze your competitors' content strategy and performance.
- Keyword research: Identify relevant keywords and phrases that your target audience is searching for.
During:
- A/B testing: Experiment with different content variations to determine what works best.
- Social listening: Monitor social media conversations to identify trends and opportunities.
After:
- Analytics: Track the performance of your content to measure its effectiveness.
- User feedback: Gather feedback from your audience to identify areas for improvement.
How Important is Research for Content Marketing?
Research gives marketers the insights to create content that resonates with their target audience and drives results. Here's why research is so crucial:
To Understand Your Audience
Delving deep into your target audience's demographics, psychographics, and behaviors helps you create content that truly resonates with them. This audience data helps you identify their needs, interests, and pain points, which you can target and provide valuable solutions for. A personalized approach for your target customers increases engagement and fosters a stronger connection between your brand and audience.
To Identify Content Gaps
Thorough research uncovers areas where your content strategy falls short. Researching identifies content gaps in your website and social media platforms and fills those voids with relevant and valuable content. This can involve exploring new topics, formats, or perspectives that align with your audience's interests. Addressing these gaps positions your brand as a trusted authority in your industry and attracts a wider audience.
Optimizing Content Performance
Research is essential for tracking and measuring the effectiveness of your content. You look into your key metrics, such as website traffic, engagement rates, and conversions, and identify areas where your content performs well and could be improved. A data-driven approach allows you to make informed decisions about your content strategy and optimize your efforts to achieve better results.
Improved SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for increasing visibility and attracting organic traffic. Thorough keyword research identifies the relevant keywords and phrases that your target audience is searching for. Strategically incorporating these keywords into your content can significantly improve your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your website.
Enhanced Credibility
Research-backed content demonstrates expertise and authority in your industry. When your audience sees that your content is well-informed and backed by credible sources, they are likelier to trust your brand. This can help you establish your brand as a thought leader and build long-lasting relationships with your audience.
Better ROI
Creating relevant, engaging, and effective content significantly improves your content marketing efforts' return on investment. When your content resonates with your audience, it is more likely to be shared, liked, and commented on, increasing brand awareness and customer acquisition. Additionally, optimizing your content for search engines attracts more organic traffic and generates leads without incurring additional advertising costs.
Effective Content Research Process
Here's how expert marketers do content research;
Before You Start
Know Your Goals
Setting clear and measurable goals is essential for effective content analysis. Consider what you want to achieve with your content, such as:
- Increase brand awareness: Are you aiming to build recognition and visibility for your brand?
- Generate leads: Do you want to attract potential customers and collect their contact information?
- Drive sales: Are you looking to increase conversions and boost revenue?
- Establish thought leadership: Do you want to position your brand as an expert in your industry?
Know Your Audience
You should know your target audience well, as it is crucial for creating content that resonates with them. Conduct in-depth research to identify their:
- Demographics: Age, gender, location, income level, etc.
- Interests: Hobbies, passions, and areas of expertise.
- Pain points: Challenges, problems, or frustrations they face.
- Online behaviors: How they consume content, where they spend their time online, and what platforms they prefer.
This information helps you tailor your content to their needs and preferences, increasing engagement and conversions.
Know Your Competitors
Analyzing your competitors' content strategy can provide valuable insights into effective content marketing tactics. Consider the following:
- Content topics: What topics are they covering?
- Content formats: What types of content are they creating (e.g., blog posts, videos, infographics)?
- Content quality: How well-written and informative is their content?
- Content performance: How well is their content performing regarding engagement and reach?
Knowing competitors' strengths and weaknesses helps you differentiate your content and offer unique value to your audience. Additionally, you can identify gaps in their coverage and fill those voids with your content.
Conduct an Audit
Begin by evaluating your website's current content and identifying its strengths and weaknesses.
Use tools like Google Analytics to identify which web pages bring in the most traffic and how your audience found your link. This data can be found on metrics like page views, time on site, bounce rates, and conversions.
Monitor your brand's social media performance by tracking likes, shares, comments, and mentions. This will allow you to identify your popular posts and where you can improve your social media engagement.
Knowing where you stand lets you gain insights for a more effective social media campaign. For example, if your goal is to provide more content that is highly relevant to your audience, you need to identify first what your audience typically looks for. They may look for guides rather than listicles more often, and they may react more positively to a social media post with a specific tone.
Look for Content Opportunities
Conduct keyword research to identify potential content topics. You can do this manually by looking at Google Search, but most marketers use tools like Ahrefs to do this effectively.
Here are some approaches you can take to look for content ideas:
- Audience search intent: This highly depends on how you know your audience. But just because you know their pain points doesn’t mean that you can simply create content to address it. It also matters in the manner in which you create content. For example, a younger tech-oriented audience might get bored and bounce if you create content that is too ‘beginner,’ and a casual audience might get lost in a blog with too many technical details.
- Study competitor articles: Create a list of your competitors and check out how they do their content. Recognize the pattern in their blog structure, brand voice, and personality. This helps you refocus your efforts on competing with their audience or differentiating your brand that addresses pain points. Moreover, looking at your competitor's content marketing strategy also helps you avoid target keywords that are too difficult to rank with, especially if your competitors are already established.
- Utilize alternative keywords: For startups and small businesses, targeting broad keywords is a challenge no marketers want to spend time and money with. Consider using long-tail or related terms that are less competitive but still relevant to your target audience. Moreover, try to look for related searches for keywords as well for content ideas.
Compile and Organize Your Content Ideas
Once you've researched and identified potential content topics, organize your ideas into a cohesive content calendar. This will provide a clear roadmap for your content creation efforts.
- Create a content calendar: Develop a detailed plan that outlines your content's topics, formats, and publication dates. This will help you maintain a consistent publishing schedule and avoid content gaps.
- Organize your research: Store your findings in a centralized location, such as a shared drive(e.g., Google Drive) or any project management tool. This will make it easy for you and your team to access the necessary information when creating your content.
- Collaborate with your team: If you're working with a team, ensure everyone can access the content calendar and research findings. This will help you in collaborating with your team and prevent duplication of efforts.
Track Your Content Consistently
Track your content's performance to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.
Define specific, measurable KPIs for your content, such as increasing website traffic, improving engagement rates, or generating leads. Utilize analytics tools to track the performance of your content. Monitor metrics such as page views, time on site, bounce rate, and conversions to gain insights into how your audience interacts with your content. Remember that tracking your efforts happens throughout your campaign so that you can make improvements in a timely manner. This might involve changing your content topics, formats, publishing frequency, or simply making minor changes to existing articles.
Best Practices for Effective Content Research
Now that you know the basics of a marketer’s content research, here are some tips you should do as a business owner;
Work with Experts
Content marketing agencies have specialized knowledge and experience in creating and distributing effective content. Their expertise can help you optimize your research process, identify target audience needs, and develop a content strategy that aligns with your business goals.
Agencies often have access to specialized tools, data, and industry insights that can enhance your research efforts. These resources can include keyword research tools, social listening platforms, and market intelligence reports. By leveraging these resources, you can better understand your target audience, identify emerging trends, and optimize your content for maximum impact.
Outsourcing your content research to an agency frees up your team's time to focus on other core business activities. This can be particularly beneficial for small businesses or teams with limited resources. Additionally, agencies can often provide a fresh perspective and bring new ideas to the table, helping you to maintain your content strategy.
Diversify Your Content Opportunities
Explore various content formats beyond traditional blog posts to cater to diverse preferences and reach a wider audience. Consider planning for videos, infographics, podcasts, and webinars in your content strategy, depending on how effective they are to your audience. Each format has strengths, and the insight you gain from your content research helps you find the format that works for your campaign.
Moreover, center your research on content encouraging your audience to create and share content related to your brand. User-generated content builds a sense of community and provides fresh ideas and perspectives. This can be a valuable source of inspiration and help you connect with your audience more personally.
Look into industry trends and emerging technologies to identify new content opportunities. This will help you stay ahead of the curve and create relevant, timely, and engaging content for your audience.
Leverage Marketing Tools
Here are some of the list of tools to assist you in your content research efforts:
- Google Keyword Planner: A free tool from Google Ads that provides keyword suggestions, search volume, and competition data.
- SEMrush: A comprehensive keyword research tool for competitive analysis, and backlink tracking.
- Ahrefs: Provides deep-dive keyword research, competitor analysis, and backlink auditing.
- Google Analytics: Track website traffic, user behavior, and demographics to understand your audience.
- SurferSEO: A content optimization tool that makes sure they rank well in SERPs.
- Hotjar: Record user sessions to observe how visitors interact with your content.
- SurveyMonkey: Create and conduct online surveys to gather direct feedback from your audience.
- BuzzSumo: Find the most shared content on social media to identify trending topics.
- Grammarly: Improve your writing with grammar, spelling, and style suggestions.
- Cliche Finder: Identify and remove clichés from your content.
- Hemingway Editor: Assess the readability of your content and suggest improvements.
- Brandwatch: Monitor social media conversations, identify trends, and track brand sentiment.
- Hootsuite: Manage multiple social media accounts, schedule posts, and track analytics.
- Buffer: Schedule social media posts, analyze performance, and collaborate with team members.
However, if you are hesitant to use these tools, as they often cost money, consider working with an agency like Evolv. Not only can you get the best of these tools, but you also have experts who can use them effectively.
Use AI Tools
AI technology has become much more powerful today and is a heaven-sent for marketers struggling with their campaigns. Consider using AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini to assist with content research. They can help generate keyword ideas, write outlines, or create summaries for your campaigns.
Nowadays, many marketing tools employ AI tools to gather data, analyze trends, and identify relevant information autonomously. This can save you time and effort, allowing you to focus on creating high-quality content like a blog post.
But remember, while AI tools can be helpful, reviewing and editing the generated content is always crucial to ensure accuracy and quality. Use human judgment to ensure the content aligns with your brand's voice and message.
Final Thoughts
Effective content research is the foundation of successful content marketing. Make sure that you have the strategy and tools needed to conduct thorough research, create high-quality content, and achieve your business goals.
Let us know how Evolv can help you!
Also, check out our blog page for more insights on digital content marketing.
