When I first started blogging professionally, I would write about 500 words for each blog post because that was the minimum word count recommended by Google. When I finally started writing blog posts for my own business (not just clients) I continued to write 500-word posts, even I knew a lot of other content marketers were writing long posts. I figured my target audience was busy professionals who didn’t have a lot of time to read anything longer than 500 words.
Did I ask any of my readers (or clients) how long the content they tend to read is? No.
Did I do any A/B testing to see whether shorter content performed better than longer content? No.
Did I do any research into the length of content from other websites that was getting traffic, social media shares and engagement? No.
I just assumed. And you know what they say about when you assume…
It wasn’t until a few years later when I started to really get serious about my blog and my website as a way of attracting, engaging, and converting new leads that I started doing some research into the types (and length) of content that was really getting results for B2B businesses. I also started targeting a different market, which meant different marketing personas, a new brand and website for my business, etc.
When done right, market research can tell you a lot more than how long your target market wants your content to be. It can tell you the types of content they consume, where they consume it, the topics they find most interesting, the tone of voice they find most engaging, etc.
Without market research, you can waste a lot of time creating content no one cares about and distributing it in places where your target audience will never see it, so let’s talk about how you can avoid making that mistake.
Table of Contents
Use Your Tools
When it comes to methods of conducting market research, you can go very broad, or very narrow. I’ll start with the very broad and get progressively narrower with each tactic.
Probably the most broad way of conducting market research is SEO tools, such as Answer The Public or your SEO tool of choice (mine happens to be Serpstat). Enter a keyword into Answer the Public and it can tell you all the questions asked via search bar using that keyword, but it can’t tell you anything about the people asking the question.
A keyword research tool such as Serpstat can give you a little more information on each keyword, but it’s still pretty broad. It can tell you the monthly search volume, CPC (cost per click), SEO difficulty score, etc. It can even tell you which websites are currently ranking highest for that search term, which is helpful, but still pretty broad.
I should point out that Google has a keyword research tool that, while not always the most reliable, can tell you the general geographic location of where people are located when they’re searching for certain keywords. That doesn’t make much difference to a digital business like mine, but if you have a brick-and-mortar location, or you’re only licensed to help people in certain states, that information can be super valuable.
Social Media
I love using social media as a way to conduct market research. There’s so much information on there and it’s completely free. It does take some time to dig through it all, though, so be prepared to make that time investment or to pay an assistant to make the time to go through it all.
You can look at the influencers in your industry and related industries and see what they’re posting about. You can also see who’s following them, then check out their profiles to see who else they’re following and the kinds of things they tend to post about on social media.
You can also search for keywords and search terms on each social media site. I recommend searching them as hashtags and then conducting a separate hashtagless search where you write out the word/phrase as normal because you’ll get different results with each type of search.
Most social media sites also let you filter your searches by “top” or “most recent.” By selecting “top,” you’ll get an idea of what’s trending, but “most recent” can reveal some hidden gems, so I recommend doing both.
Mention is a tool that allows you to leverage everything from Google mentions to social media mentions on certain topics without spending all the time and manual labor of going through all that content yourself. Just give Mention a topic or two and it will crawl the internet for all the posts using that keyword or search term. You’ll still need to do some digging to sort through the information, and to see who’s following whom on social media, but Mention can give you a good starting point.
A/B Testing
As I mentioned in my introduction, neglecting A/B testing is a great way to waste time creating content no one cares about. While tools like Mention and Answer The Public can give you broad answers as to what people are talking about, A/B testing is a great way to see what resonates most with your audience because the results you get will be from people visiting your site and either engaging with your content or clicking away.
I won’t go over the details of A/B testing, because I already covered it in this blog post.
Just Ask
Finally, we come to the most obvious method of doing market research: just ask. But just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it’s easy. I was just talking to someone last week who said he did cold calling to do some market research and couldn’t get anyone willing to take the time to talk to him.
I sent out a one-page survey to all my clients a few months ago and only three people filled it out and returned it to me. I got some good information from those responses, but imagine how much better the information could have been if even half my clients had filled it out and returned it to me.
That said, asking people doesn’t have to come in the form of a cold call or a survey. It could be a question you ask a client or a prospect when you’re already on the phone with them. You could even ask people at networking events what they think, or what their experience with XYZ has been like. The more casual you can make it, the more likely they are to answer. You probably don’t want to whip out a pen and notebook while they’re talking, but have a method of discreetly taking notes shortly after you ask the question so you can remember their answer later when you need it.
Use the Information from Your Market Research
It doesn’t matter how much you know about your market if you never implement that information into your marketing strategy.
I should point out that, while you can use the information from market research in all areas of your business, this is a marketing blog, so I’ll be focusing on the marketing uses of market research, including understanding:
- What topics to cover in your marketing content;
- What types of marketing content to create;
- How to create a buyer journey that attracts, engages, and converts more leads;
- Where to distribute your marketing content;
- Which call to action (CTA) to put at the end of each piece of marketing content.
Do you see how much more effective your marketing efforts can be when you invest the time and resources into conducting market research before you do any marketing? You can’t grow your audience without first understanding your audience.
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