When it comes to launching a successful marketing strategy, content marketing has been the secret weapon for companies that are looking to utilize different forms of content to add value to their brand and grab their audience’s attention. Now, more than ever is the time to market with intent. You want to use content and SEO to raise awareness to your company’s brand and produce engagement amongst your consumers. One of the biggest challenges with content marketing is conversion. However, according to Curata, about 74% of companies feel that their strategy helps them increase both the quality and quantity of the leads they generate.

With more people becoming involved with the online world, it brings a wealth of new data which can allow marketers to understand what their typical consumer wants and how to include that in their content marketing strategy. So, here are a few ways to create a data-driven content marketing strategy.

 

Understand Your Target Audience

One of the biggest reasons to engage in a data-driven content marketing strategy is to get a better understanding of your target audience while bringing them closer to your brand. But, to do so, you will need to get an idea of their habits, preferences, and needs. Through adequate data, you will be able to understand your customers’ reactions to pre-existing content, their favorite types of content, preferred methods of communication, their browsing habits, and the channels they frequently use. You can use this information as the groundwork for an approach based on actual insights rather than assumptions.

 

Content Discovery

One of the challenging aspects of your strategy will be coming up with content. However, data can be a key in helping marketers create content that aligns with their goals. For example, keyword research can be a great tool to figure out popular terms and topics that can be successful without being predictable. You can also use data to see the performance of the content you are putting out. This will allow you to determine what topics are fostering the most engagement. Content discovery can also help you monitor the things your competition is writing about. You can get a grasp of their most successful aspects and tailor that into your strategy.

 

Measuring Your Success

One of the most popular tools for content marketing is their analytics platform according to CMI’s report. As more and more data becomes available, marketers are able to gain a better insight into how their content performs and how it brings them closer to their Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). Some of the aspects that marketers look to track are blog visits, time spent on a page, bounce rate, number of comments, shares, mentions, etc. and the number of conversions. Paying attention to these statistics shows how important it is for marketers to blend their creative side with their analytical side.