Innovation & data-driven digital marketing.

Data-driven content marketing is a hot topic among digital marketers, and for a good reason. When you pay more attention to the numbers, you eliminate guesswork and empower marketers to make informed decisions.

Once you integrate data into your marketing strategy, you should see noticeable improvements in your campaign outcomes. But what is data-driven content marketing, and how can you start incorporating it into your process?

What Is Data-Driven Content Marketing?

Data-driven content marketing begins when we ask, “what data can inform this decision?” instead of saying, “I think this is what our consumer wants.” And that data should be derived from thorough, unbiased research and analysis to ensure accurate business decisions. 

For example, your intuition might tell you that your audience will engage with your brand most on Facebook, but data from a customer poll might indicate that your target audience spends much more time on TikTok. If you were to make a business decision based on your instinct here instead of the data, you would risk wasting time and capital.

5 Steps to Integrating Data into Your Content Marketing Strategy

So, how can you use data to create a content marketing strategy that works? Our team of experts at 10x digital recommend these five initial steps:

1. Start with a Foundation of Data

The best time to add data to your content marketing strategy is at the very beginning rather than retroactively trying to make it fit your existing plan. Analyze and apply data at every step of the process, including:

  • Setting campaign goals
  • Researching your competitors
  • Defining your target audience
  • Conducting keyword research
  • Selecting content topics and formats
  • Choosing the right distribution channel
  • Tracking and analyzing performance

Once you have identified every component of your content marketing framework, you will be able to zero in on opportunities to use data to enhance performance. Ask yourself what areas are ambiguous or seem vague to your team, and how can data fill those gaps?

2. Use Data to Understand Your Audience

You can understand your audience with comprehensive customer data and research. Start with demographic data:

  • Who is buying your products?
  • Where do they live?
  • What do they do for a living?
  • What are their interests?
  • Where do they go for news or social updates?

Much of this information already exists within your CRM and sales history, but it’s all about building a usable story from that data. You can also gather information through polling and surveying customers or tools like Google Search Console.

3. Define an Data-Backed Audience for Every Piece of Content

Generic content doesn’t evoke an emotional response or motivate people to answer your call to action. Conversely, when you specifically target your content to a subset of your audience, you can better connect with the reader.

Use what you have learned about your audience and their habits to fine-tune your content. Everything you produce should target a specific audience segment at a particular stage in the sales funnel.

4. Emphasize Data Within Your Content

Data shouldn’t only influence your content strategy and delivery—it should be a core component of every blog post, article, whitepaper, and video. Content creators should use reliable data sources to build trust and authority. And for brands, it’s essential to use credible information because data-backed content tends to earn more backlinks and shares.

5. Revisit Your Old Content with Data in Mind

You can use analytics data to identify your top-performing content and maximize its impact by repurposing it for different platforms. For example, you can take a blog post that has earned a lot of engagement and transform it into a video for your YouTube channel. You can also identify content that isn’t serving your audience based on its data performance and apply what you’ve learned from your better-performing pieces to improve the outliers.

Start Data-Driven Content Marketing Now

If you want your content to help your brand stand out from competitors, establish thought leadership, and increase conversions, you need to integrate data into your strategy now. Otherwise, you’ll be left struggling to keep up with brands that have already recognized the value of data in a content marketing strategy.

Still trying to figure out where to start? 10X Digital can help. Our team of content marketing experts is on hand to discuss your strategy development and execution. Contact us to learn more!