The concept of building an in-depth understanding of the target audience is nothing new to most marketers. Standard practice is to create target personas around which a brand’s overall positioning and marketing campaigns are then structured.
Yet when it comes to content marketing, most marketers are still focusing on the ‘what’ and the ‘where’ while tending to neglect the ‘who’. By the ‘what’, we refer to the types of content and messaging that resonate most with consumers, as measured by interaction and engagement. And by the ‘where’, we simply mean on what platforms content is best placed to attract attention.
These are both invaluable insights when it comes to effective content marketing, yet they only take brands two-thirds of the way to an optimal strategy.
So let’s dig a little deeper into the ‘who’, by which we mean the target audience that a brand is trying to attract with content.
Any attempts to gain a deeper understanding of the ‘who’ need to, as a starting point, compare the attributes of the actual audience against those of the target persona in a bid to answer crucial questions such as:
1. Whether your content is actually reaching audience segments that align with your target personas (assuming that you have pre-determined target personas).
2. If the answer to the above is yes, suggesting your targeting is spot-on, the next question is whether it is improving metrics including brand awareness, leads generated and actual sales/conversions.
3. If the answer to 1 is no, then who is the audience that your content is reaching? Do they have the potential to evolve into productive new market segments, or are you ineffectually expending time and resources on content that isn’t delivering?
If you’re investing budget into a content marketing strategy then, clearly, you expect it to deliver measurable results. Integrating target personas and audience data into both your planning and measurement processes is vital to ensuring your content works hard for you.
This leads us on to the issue of content marketing measurement and which metrics are needed to keep track of the efficacy of efforts. Fortunately, there are only four critical content metrics:
1. Consumption metrics
2. Sharing metrics
3. Lead metrics
4. Sales metrics
To establish an effective content plan and justify content expenditure, you’ll need to gather these metrics over the long term. Measuring page views and the like on a week-by-week basis only offers a small slice of the overall pie.
So there it is – and perhaps somewhat of an anti-climax. The four areas of measurement for effective content marketing are very similar to every other kind of sales and marketing process before the internet even existed. Yet success in content marketing entails nurturing relationships over the long-term. With precision targeting and excellent content, the results will come – just don’t expect the smash and grab effect, brilliant content marketing and social media marketing take time to play out.
Photo: Doug Belshaw
