Great content marketing depends on understanding your audience. If you don’t know what they care about, what they’re trying to accomplish, or even who they are, how can you build compelling content?
What’s more, marketing isn’t just a megaphone anymore. You’ll be more successful if you create content that’s hyper-focused on what your audience needs instead of blasting them with paid ads and hype.
In the Content Bounce House, I asked some of the best content marketers in the world about their approach to audience research. Here’s what I learned.
What is audience research
“You have to really place yourself in the shoes of the audience and learn something that maybe you weren’t as familiar with before.“
Alex Heinz, Director of Content at North Star Inbound. Listen on episode one.
“We heavily immerse ourselves with every client. It’s heavy, heavy research, lots and lots of research. We will audit and analyze every aspect of their content marketing performance.”
Melissa Zehner, Head of Content at Foundation. Listen on episode eight.
Research the competition
“The key to audience research? Read a lot. My audience research process is completely unscalable. I will go to your top competitors’ blogs and read the first 300 posts. I’m not joking. This is not hyperbole. Look for ebooks, webinars, anything that they’ve made publicly available.
I take handwritten notes on what they’re strong at, what they’re weak at and where are the areas that we can jab.
Don’t just do what competitors are doing better, but do what they can’t do because of their size or resourcing.”
Tommy Walker, founder of The Content Studio. Listen on episode four.
“I like to show a competitor analysis. What are their competitors doing that they’re not? And if there’s a way to put any type of dollar signs to those metrics, that’s always great – whether that’s traffic value, comparison with ad buys.”
Alex Heinz, Director of Content at North Star Inbound. Listen on episode one.
“We also assess where areas of opportunity are. What are they doing well that they need to capitalize on and expand? What are areas where their competitors may be missing? And that’s an opportunity for them to move in and grab a market share.”
Melissa Zehner, Head of Content at Foundation. Listen on episode eight.
Ask customers questions
“We ask people, Hey, why was it that you didn’t buy? Those people who did buy, we ask another question: what made you almost not buy? That’s all stuff that you can bake into the content.”
Tommy Walker, founder of The Content Studio. Listen on episode four.
“If you find subreddits that your audience is spending time on, you can do a lot of target market research right there. You can see the questions they’re asking. You can see what they’re complaining about, what a pain point is. You can see the challenges they’re trying to overcome, and they’re talking in really authentic ways.
So go to the watering holes, spend time there. Spend your time connecting with people.”
Melissa Zehner, Head of Content at Foundation. Listen on episode eight.
Take the road less traveled
“Be your audience by being a thought leader. At Animalz, everything we wrote was something that we had done or were in the process of doing. I would talk to other people on the team all the time, very rarely would we go out and interview somebody else.
Not every business has the appetite for that. There’s like a bunch of work that goes into doing it. And you’re not using the standard content marketing playbook.”
Jimmy Daly, founder of Superpath. Listen on episode six.
Go forth and research
Whether you opt for a completely unscalable process or becoming a thought leader, audience research is at the heart of content marketing. It helps you generate great content ideas, produce great content, and connect with your potential customers.
Go forth and research your audience!
