What is content marketing research?
Learn why it's important and what topics you should start exploring.
Introduction
Marketers often focus on their product's unique value proposition and forget that the best content is based around what resonates with your target audience. This is where content marketing research comes in: it helps you understand your target customer as well as the content, resources, and materials they respond to. We've put together this guide to help you understand what content marketing research is, why it's important, and how you can get started researching for your brand.
What Is Content Marketing Research?
Content marketing research is the exploration of a topic for the purpose of creating content. It's an often overlooked part of content marketing, but it can help you learn about your audience and what they want, as well as how to reach them through your content.
Content marketing research isn't market research (the study of the entire market), SEO (search engine optimization), or social media. Instead, it's focused on understanding what readers want from your business and how you can create that value for them through your articles, blog posts, ebooks, and other types of content.
How is content marketing research different than market research?
Content marketing research is different than traditional market research because it is more in-depth and focused on understanding your audience, product, competitors, and sales.
Content marketing research is conducted with the goal of creating compelling content that will engage your target audience. Marketers often use data to drive their decisions—but they don’t always know how to extract the right insights out of it. The purpose of content marketing research is not just to collect as much information as possible; it's to find out what matters most so you can make informed decisions when creating your strategy and content plans.
Why Is Content Marketing Research Important?
As you can see from the list above, there are many reasons why content marketing research is important. By understanding your audience and their wants and needs, you will be able to create better content that they will want to consume. If you are not providing what people want or need, they will not engage with your brand as often or at all. In addition to this, by understanding how people use content and how they intend on using it in the future (such as whether they prefer reading articles or watching videos), you can create more engaging experiences that are tailored specifically for them.
What Should Your Content Marketing Research Tell You?
To begin your content marketing research, the first thing to do is figure out what you want to learn. This may seem obvious, but it's actually a critical step in your research process: deciding what kinds of answers you need and how they'll help guide your overall strategy.
For example, if you're looking for ways to increase sales, start with an audience persona that describes the people most likely to buy from your company (and also those who will never buy). What are their pain points? Their goals? How can they be helped by the kind of content you offer? The more specific these answers are, the better equipped you'll be when it comes time to planning and creating actual content pieces.
Where to Start With Content Marketing Research
Before you even begin to think about executing content marketing research, you’ll need to set up a few tools in your arsenal. If you don't already have them in place, there are plenty of free resources available for all major platforms.
In this section, we’ll cover the basics: how to use Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Google Keyword Planner; how to use Moz Pro; and some other free resources that can help you get started with content marketing research.
Once those tools are ready to go—and if possible, before starting the analysis process—you should also do some research on your own!
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As a marketer, content marketing research lets you understand your audience and develop the right product for them.
As a marketer, content marketing research lets you understand your audience and develop the right product for them. The more you know about your audience and what they want, the better positioned you are to create content that meets their needs.
The key is knowing where to find this information. This can be done through surveys or interviews with current customers (or potential ones), looking at sales data from previous promotions, analyzing social media comments and reviews left by users on blogs or websites hosting your content—the possibilities are vast! In fact, there's no limit to what kind of information could be useful for determining whether people are interested in buying a product or service like yours.
Conclusion
Content marketing research can help you understand your audience and develop the right product. By uncovering which topics are important to your customers, you can create content that is highly relevant to them. This will result in more people reading and engaging with your materials, ensuring that you have a strong base of readers who will be interested in what you're selling.
As mentioned before, there are many tools out there that can help with this type of research; many of them are free! But if you're looking for something more robust than just a social media analysis tool or Google Trends report, then check out our Data Studio by clicking on the link below - it's designed specifically for marketers like yourself.
