Content marketing research: lay the groundwork for content strategy
In an earlier blog post, I showed a visual template for content strategy and how to fill out each section.
But before you get to that step, you’ll need to lay the content strategy groundwork. Then, you can reference this work throughout your strategic planning.
Here are four elements that act as the groundwork for content strategy:
Customer Research - Determine personas and their pain points.
Competitive Analysis - Understand your differentiators.
Keyword Research - Find where you have rankings and where there is opportunity.
Performance Data - Evaluate which techniques have worked well in the past.
Updating this information on a quarterly basis is unnecessary; however, you’ll need to make sure this information is well documented and kept up to date on an annual basis. That way teams can reference clear data to inform plans.
Customer Research
Purpose: Define your audience and see what people love about your product. What pain points do you help solve for them?
Methods:
Survey your existing customers.
Interview your company - talk to customer-facing roles about conversations they are having.
Read your product reviews and look for trends.
Perform user testing - whether that is A/B testing on the website or with focus groups.
A content marketer won’t be able to perform all of these methods, and they shouldn’t have to. Use the information you already have at hand, and run basic surveys and company interviews for the rest.
2. Competitive analysis
Purpose: Cover your bases, find where the industry gaps lie, and determine your differentiators.
Methods:
Use tools like SEMRush and Similar web to scope digital competition.
Review competitor websites to see what they cover.
Talk to customers who have worked with competitors.
A competitive analysis doesn’t have to be complicated. Take a quick look at competitor websites and blogs and document any trends you see. What categories do they use? What types of topics do they write about? How frequently, and in which formats, do they publish?
3. Keyword Research
Purpose: See how people search related to their pain points and product needs. Choose content topics based on your keyword research.
Methods:
Keyword research tools - Use a tool like Google’s Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, or Clearscope.io to plug in terms. These tools will generate search volume and recommended terms. Be careful - make sure you’re choosing terms that are relevant to your brand and do not already rank!
Content inventory - A content inventory goes hand in hand with keyword research. See which pages are already ranking and which topics you already cover.
Use your customer research to guide you through keywords; plug in pain point related terms to start. You’re looking for keywords that intersect with low-funnel pain points and provide search volume. Gathering handfuls of these keywords is a valuable start for content ideation.
4. Performance data
Purpose: Leverage performance data to evaluate which types of content drive conversions.
Methods:
Find top channels- Do people reach your content through paid channels, organic search, or email newsletters?
Find top content types - What are your top content formats? PDFs, blog posts, service pages, or case studies?
Find themes/structures that perform - Do people spend the most time on your vs. content? Do they tend to reach out after viewing a case study? Do they prefer to browse industry news or product feature breakdowns?
After pulling this information, you’ll have everything you need for a data-driven plan. Remember that while you’ll want to zero in on content types that perform well, you might also leave room for testing.
Build your Content Strategy
Now that you’ve gone through these four steps and compiled the information, you have everything you need to move forward. By tying in this research, you’ll craft a pain-pointed focused, competitive, SEO-friendly, and data-driven content strategy.
Next, my content strategy template will walk you through organizing this information into an actionable plan and schedule.
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