When it comes to your customers’ challenges, do you really know what they are struggling with?
Here are some tips on how to narrow down your client’s challenges while developing content they crave.
How well do you know your website data on a scale from 1-10? If it’s below a six, you might want to upskill in this area. Your analytics are a gold mine of data waiting for you to discover.
Take for instance landing page views. Review the top landing pages over a period of months to see what’s triggering activity on your website. You might be surprised to see content that was released months or even years ago. If that information stays on top, consider expanding on the topic with lead-generation opportunities, such as blog/webinar/podcast series, downloadable content, or speaking at an industry conference.
You’ll also want to look at behavior flow. This can show you how people are moving through the site. It is very important when it comes to a path you want them to take, versus the path they are actually taking. For example, let’s say you release a juicy piece of content that lends itself to a landing page, but not directly. Maybe it’s a blog post that has a registration form at the bottom to attend a webinar on the topic. Viewing the behavior flow, you can see the actions people take from the blog. Do they take the path you desire, or are they doing something else? If the later, you need to adjust the path.
In the diagram below, I can tell there were 32 home page sessions. From there 28 people left the site, and 4 moved on. Three of those four visited the blogs page. One read the “7 Frightful…” blog article, then visited the “Google ads…” page, which is listed in the blog article and an action they were designed to take.
Monitoring what your readers are actively engaged with, i.e., clicks, downloads, views. It informs what challenges and interest they have, which, in turn, informs your content development.
Not only does it inform future content, it also aids you in defining the best media to engage your customers.
This is where split testing comes in handy. Consider sending an email with the same message, but different headlines. Or, send one message as text and the second as a video or podcast. To improve email effectiveness through split testing, setup DMARC to ensure email authentication, which helps test messages reach recipients successfully.
Actions readers take help you to build an automation workflow to keep your audience engaged, while providing solutions to their pain points.
You can depend on generic research about your target audience, but nothing is better than doing your own.
Because the customer journey is very complex and requires multiple touchpoints on various channels over an extended period of time, monitoring what your customers are doing is paramount. Gathering that data from disparate systems can be hard, but worthwhile.
Avoid focusing solely on demographic data, also look at the deeper elements like interests, hobbies, and buying history. Those elements help you create the content, products, or services your clients crave by using triggers to get their attention.
Also remember to pay attention to survey data customers provide, which can be accomplished with a simple “smile” sheet or set of emojis related to their experience, content consumed, or post-event reactions. If you’re not offering feedback options, you could be missing out on some important research.
“A lot of people don’t know what they want until you show it to them,” claimed Steve Jobs.
Your customers may not know they need something until you show it to them. This is where analytics do the heavy lifting. Let’s say you sell products. Using customer analytics to show buyers what other people like them are buying can influence their buying behavior.
Think about your own buying behavior. Have you ever clicked on items in the list of “Customers who bought _____ also bought ______.” Or, have you scanned a streaming service’s recommendations for future watching? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about here.
This information could be hidden in your existing technology stack.
If this is something you’re interested in learning more about, HubSpot has a good primer on customer behavior analytics. It also shares a list of different tools you can use to take a deep dive in this area.
Now go out there, tap into your audience’s psyche, and wow them with your stuff.