How to Leverage Data for Creating Effective Content

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Is your content good?

It’s a simple question that may have a stinging answer. You, however, need to be honest with your answer and start employing ways to make it better.

And it all starts with data.

Like any marketing venture, ad copy, social media ads, landing pages, blogs — any deliverable a person might consume — need to be crafted for your audience, not just an audience. But who is that audience? How can your content meet them where they’re at in the purchasing journey and with the message that will resonate best with them?

Setting the Tone for Paid Search and Social Media

Ad copy for paid search campaigns is formulaic, but that doesn’t mean it’s limited. In fact, some simple data from Google Analytics can drive the concepts behind your landing pages, social media campaigns, and ad copy.

For example, let’s say you own a Honda dealership. And that people who visit your website are 60% female with a nice spread across baseline age of 25 up to 65+. Looking further into the details, we see a portion of these women have in-market shopping behaviors that include new and used SUVs, as well as shown affinities for cooking and DIY — which, let’s be honest, we can find some creative connections between the two. Don’t get too hung up on the percentages while keeping in mind that it represents the percentage of total sessions for a given date range, among other things like email, Facebook, et cetera. There’s enough significance here to capitalize on.

Google Analytics graphs showing information

So your ad copy could potentially read like this:

Your New 2017 Honda Pilot

The World’s Perfect SUV Recipe

The 2017 Honda Pilot mixes safety and comfort features for 3 rows of passengers.

 

And your Facebook ad could mirror this approach:

2017 Honda Pilot Facebook Ad

 

Your images for social media posts can mirror Instagram DIY posts or model it after recipe images you see in Google or in actual cookbooks — imagine that! A physical book! What is this sorcery!? — to work within this theme and resonate with our audience. With Facebook ads, of course, you can create such an incredibly tailored audience well beyond what we pulled from Google Analytics to target female shoppers, 25-34, who are max-in-market, and own or have shown interest in sport utility vehicles.

Getting the Message Right — Where. Why. How.

It’s important that you understand what keywords require high-quality, user-friendly landing pages — based on where they’re at in the funnel of stimulus and intent. Using those keywords, you can leverage a tool like Moz Keyword Explorer to get some long-tail versions, as well as just Google the keyword, to get a sense of user intent.

What is it that people want to accomplish when they are searching for that term or phrase?

You want a robust website that provides the …

  • Right information with the …
  • Best message delivered to the …
  • Interested customer who can take …
  • The desired action.

When you’ve built that foundation, you can start to create other deliverables that provide greater authority and drive traffic to that page.

Once you’ve determined the purpose page(s) you want to drive traffic to, you can begin exploring specific keywords and topics around the intent of that page in Ahrefs, which will provide a solid foundation for finding a query. Within the results this platform delivers, you can decide which metrics have the most significance to you:

  • Search volume
  • Clicks
  • Keyword difficulty
  • Return rate
  • SERP ranking insights

Graphs and Charts from Ahrefs

Within that framework, you can set thresholds that determine whether or not the keyword is viable.

Does it not rank well enough? … or … Is there not enough of a percentage of clicks?

… or .. Is the keyword just too difficult for your domain authority?

You need to set the parameters and a method of assessing them — perhaps you want to consider all of the metrics listed above.

Some Tools to Live By

You have a number of tools, like Answer the Public (free), that can help you determine a query that’s relevant to your selected keyword. Take into consideration your consumer’s intent for a keyword (e.g. honda pilot towing capacity — learn), then select the query that can best address the intent of the search.

Google your query to see what’s already been produced. I personally suggest leveraging the Moz Toolbar to look at the Domain Authority, compared to yours, and the Page Authority to properly determine if the query is worth your time and effort for producing. If it is, then start thinking about how you can create better, more engaging content than your competitors.

Our choice method through all of these steps has led to a number of blogs ranking at the top of SERPs.

Experiencing Tailored Content Thanks to Analytics

Google Analytics compiles an incredible amount of data — as I’m sure you know. In my opinion, there are three areas that will best serve you to create a tailored message: demographics, affinities, and device use.

The importance of demographics is indisputable. Crafting a message for a 23-year old male should be vastly different than a message for a 57-year old female. Whether you’re looking for a reference or pun to make — or just for general blog topics and landing page content — you want to create deliverables that resonate with your consumer.

 

As seen with the paid search ad, affinities can offer insight about your potential customers’ interests.

  • Notice common themes or similarities?
  • Do their interests reveal anything?
  • What language or images will be best to mirror those interests?

 

What device a consumer uses will help dictate what types of content you create.

  • Animations can appear skewed on mobile.
  • Images can affect page loading speed.
  • Long blocks of text look daunting on mobile.
  • Too little of content looks bad on desktop.
  • Featured images need to be carefully formatted for both.

The list can go on. Making the right choices takes time and deliberation. Executing the right choices takes talent and know-how.

It’s not easy. But it’s worth it.

How to use data for creating content is the question of 2017 for marketers. It’s paramount to continue finding ways to dive into platforms that provide data, then leverage it to reach the right audience. It benefits you because you’ll become an authoritative source; it benefits the consumer because he or she gets the answer to the query.
Make sure your content is good. And you can begin to do that by finding the right people to follow through on a comprehensive process like outlined above — or you could always use a quality agency (*cough* *cough*) that already knows how to make it all work.

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