It’s the ultimate goal for any marketing pro – getting the right content in front of the right audience, and capitalizing upon trends to maintain brand relevance. The best way to do that? Follow the data.

Applying a data driven content strategy allows you to understand what content viewers want to see, supported with tangible data. To understand where this data comes from, and how to harness it for your organization, here are five ways to develop a data driven content strategy.

1. Look at On-Site Search Queries

Have you heard the saying “consumers vote with their dollar?” The same principle applies to search queries. By searching on your site, consumers are essentially voting for what content they want more of or would like to access. Dig into what your existing visitors are telling you. Create the content they are looking for and keep them coming back. By providing the answers they are looking for, you are building trust, ethos, and strengthening the consumer relationship.

2. Talk to Your Sales Team

Your sales team will have an ongoing list of common questions from potential customers. Get ahead of the questions by providing content that fills any gaps. For example, if customers are asking for creative ideas on product use, a blog or explainer video would excite and educate in a compelling way.

3. Use Google Search Console

Google Search Console monitors what searches are driving visitors to your page by mining technical data. Check the query data for question words – who, what, where, when, why, how – to uncover the questions that are leading people to your website, and then write the content that answers those questions. This is easy to set up if your organization is already using Google Analytics. Be patient if you are not seeing immediate data, as it may take time to build enough data for actionable insights. This can also lead to better user experience, increase engagement, and a deeper exploration of your website.

4. Discover Top Keywords

After discovering the queries that are driving the most clicks to your page, run them through AnswerThePublic. This site will generate a massive list of questions related to a specific topic, giving you endless content ideas, all scraped from actual searches. Optimize your content to show up in search results and earn more engagement.

5. Understand High Level Ideas with Google Trends

Now that you have zeroed in on the type of content that will answer your customers’ questions, validate high-level concepts with Google Trends and use the data to narrow down various options. Test different phrases and words against each other to understand which are receiving the most search queries, and then create content around the most popular topic. For example, try entering specific keywords like “water fountain,” “drinking fountain,” and “bubbler” to see which will yield the best search results for your audience. Similarly, you can pit trending words and topics against each other as well, like “Lady Gaga” and “Taylor Swift” to see who at the moment is receiving more traffic. This will guarantee you are delivering timely and relevant content to all audiences.

Learn more about data driven marketing and how Wilks Communications Group can help your business grow by emailing us at hello@wilksgrp.com.