“Data-driven marketing” is a fancy term that gets lots of airtime these days, and for good reason. With fierce competition for audience attention online, marketers can’t rely on guesswork and gut feelings.
Use data to build a content strategy and guide your decisions in order to generate more leads and conversions for your business (or your client’s). Here are 12 ways to use data in your content creation process.
Use Data Before You Create Content
Data insights can help you decide what type of content to create, the topic, the audience, the best format, and the channel with the best engagement. To find this data, you’ll want to:
- Look at keywords and topics the audience is interested in.
- Identify the audience or segment of the audience to create for.
- Decide on the marketing channel you’ll publish it in.
- Choose the right format for them and the marketing channel.
Use Data as You Create Content
Think about how to responsibly frame data that aligns with the goal of the content and the audience. By putting it into context and using it to strengthen your point, you give the audience information that’ll stick with them. Consider these techniques when adding data to the content:
- Demonstrate a change: This brings weight to the discussion and evokes an emotional response from the audience.
- Show discrepancies: Give context to the data to highlight discrepancies, which lead to clear calls-to-action (CTAs).
- Show a connection: Connections between two or more different things help people make better decisions. It also helps align their mindset to what you want so they act.
- Demonstrate scale: This helps people understand the point of the content faster and better, so add visual representations of the data or compare the data to something they’re more familiar with.
Use Data After Content Creation
Now it’s time to use data after publishing the content to ensure it works well for you and your audience.
- Track your content with measurement tools like Google Analytics, SEMRush, and Ahrefs to see how the content is performing.
- Update or refresh low-performing content to try and increase engagement.
- Identify the best-performing content to repurpose it for other marketing channels.
- Analyze the audience engagement to see if and how people engage with it. Use heat mapping tools like HotJar to see what they’re looking at most or clicking often. Use social media listening tools to track shares. Add UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) codes to links in emails and other pieces to see what’s clicked and what’s not.
More Data Equals Better Content
There you have it: 12 ways to use data in your content creation process. Adding any or all of them to your process will help you create content that resonates deeply with audiences and drives results. You’ll know what you’re after and how to persuade your audience to help you achieve it.
Data can help you create a sustainable, measurable marketing approach that adapts well to the changing landscape and gives you real results.
