7 Ways to Effectively Use Big Data in Content Marketing Strategy

Big data has given businesses an opportunity to make smarter and data-driven decisions. That approach can be applied to content marketing strategy as well. When you consider that good content marketing can drive more leads, bring more conversions, and increase ROI, you won’t doubt its importance for business growth.

What big data can do is help you create a targeted approach for your content marketing. It will eliminate assumptions and steer you in the right direction. All the information that users generate both online and offline is stored in big data. Use that massive amount of information to your advantage and strengthen your content marketing strategy.

To prove the effectiveness of big data in content marketing strategy, consider the following ways in which you can use it.

1. Identify Your Target Audience

Your approach to potential customers is what determines the success of your business. Big data can help you personalize that approach and make it more effective. To create a targeted content strategy that will compel your target audience, you first need to determine who they are.

Use big data to examine the demographics of your target audience, identify their interest and preferences, get the idea of the type of content they like, etc. For this purpose, you can access the information through:

• Social media (tools such as Facebook’s Audience Insights, Instagram’s Audience Insights, and Twitter Analytics can help you out)
• Your website (use data analysis software such as Google Analytics)
• Google Alerts (get notified when someone mentions your brand)
• Competitors’ websites (their target audience is your target audience)
• Interactive websites like Quora (read other people’s comments about your niche or directly ask questions that will help you pinpoint your target audience)

Forming a content marketing strategy based on a detailed overview of your target customers can truly transform your business.

2. Measure the Success of Different Channels

Knowing which channel performs well with your audience and which doesn’t will help you make corrective decisions. Based on information from big data you can assess the performance of content distribution channels.

The analysis should be done across all channels — Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, blog, email, etc. Measure the engagement metrics, response rate, referrals, and other success metrics.

If you realize that a certain channel is outperforming the others, you can either focus your attention on gaining more traffic from that channel or use it for the promotion of others. For example, if your email marketing is your strongest asset, add notable social media buttons or share with email recipients interesting blog topics.

3. Improve Conversion Rate

One of the main purposes of content marketing is to convert. Big data can help you figure out the type of content that works best for conversions. Map out your customer’s journey on your website. Use information such as how long they stay within the purchasing cycle and at what point does the conversion happen.

The analysis will reveal more about customers’ behaviour. It will also reveal triggers that turn them from website visitors into customers. Besides website analysis, you can also analyze your email marketing efforts for this purpose.

Conversion rate can be improved through a content marketing strategy if you deliver, relevant, clear, and valuable content. Big data will give you the insight that will help you plan and create such content.

4. Increase Retention Rate

The correlation between retention and content is very important for content marketing strategy. To retain the customers, your content needs to be seamless. Figuring out what type of content retains customers isn’t an easy process. Luckily, big data can deliver important information that you can use for that purpose.

Measure consumer metrics such as the time users spend on site, click-through rates, the number of returning customers, number of subscribers, and similar. The data will help you discover the overall satisfaction of your customers with your site. If you find the numbers not to be satisfactory, focus on improving the lower metrics.

You can also segment the loyal customers and unsatisfied customers based on big data insights. After that, customize and push your content marketing towards different groups of consumers.

5. Find and Exploit Trending Content

Trending topics are what get people to click on the link or get more interested in the content. Use trending topics to improve the popularity of your content.

There are big data sources that can reveal what’s trending in your niche. Google Trends is a great tool that provides you with information on trending topics in the whole world and any niche. Type in a keyword and you’ll be provided with popular search terms at the moment.

Incorporate trending topics into your content marketing to attract more attention to your website or blog. Big data will give you all that you need to create trend-oriented content and enhance your marketing strategy.

6. Strengthen Your Credibility

The information you share will be more impactful if you back them up with real data. People trust more in content that is based on facts and statistics. On Forbes list of ways to increase content’s credibility, backing up the content with statistics is in number one place.

Whether the goal is to make your blog posts more trustworthy or to enrich your landing page, statistics can help you out. The source of those stats and facts is big data.

Ensure that your data-driven content isn’t dry or dull by presenting them as infographics. You can also include statistics to storytelling to mix the credibility with engagement. Also, keep in mind that the sources of the statistics and facts should only be credible websites.

For the purpose of incorporating information from big data into a story, you can hire a professional writer. Whether you team up with a freelancer or look for a writer on thesis sites, ensure that the result is of high-quality.

7. Build Awareness

Spreading awareness is an essential part of growing a business. It is also a crucial aspect of content marketing strategy. Building awareness might be even your number one goal for the current content marketing strategy. To achieve that goal, use big data to track the following metrics:

• Your website traffic
• Social media followers number, shares, likes, influencer mentions, and other social media metrics.
• Other websites that link to your content
• Visibility of your brand in search results (when using different relevant keywords)
• How often users search your brand

Tools that you can use to collect this data are some of the previously mentioned tools such as Google Analytics, Google Alerts, but also HootSuite and others. Collect reports on this data on a monthly basis to keep the results organized and usable.

Final Thoughts

Big data can open the doors to an endless source of information. Whatever you want to know about your brand or customers can be found out. The data-driven approach to content marketing can help you create a more precise strategy. Such a strategy will have a better chance of success.

Author’s bio- Daniela McVicker is a passionate digital marketer. Daniela is interested in everything related to SEO and blogging. She collaborates with Essayguard and other websites where she shares her experience and helps marketers make their names in the online world.