Are you a copywriter or business owner wondering how to increase engagement? Wherever you sit in the content-creation canteen, your disappointing analytics could be down to your understanding of audience research. But don’t worry; we’re here to explain (in layman’s terms) why audience research should be the cornerstone of your content strategy - with a handy case study for good measure.
What is audience research?
Conducting audience research means gathering and compiling information about the people who use (or might use) your service or product so that you can communicate with them more effectively. Done properly, it allows you to form a coherent content strategy and marketing plan that will increase engagement, retain customers and ultimately drive sales.
Most people involved in content creation already have some notion of ‘target audience,’ but make the catastrophic mistake of deciding upon a large, generalised demographic and calling it a day. The truth is, there is massive variation within any demographic, so deciding to target ‘university-educated women aged 18-24’ is like shooting into the sky and hoping to hit a bird.
So while establishing your target audience is indeed a pivotal first step, it by no means constitutes ‘audience research.’ Robert Mills calls this the difference between ‘knowing’ and ‘understanding’ your audience, and that’s a great way to think about it. You need to know where to deliver your content, when to publish it, how to increase engagement, and why you’re providing it in order to plan a successful content strategy.
Think of it this way: producing content without having conducted audience research is like pinning your CV to a lamppost in hopes of finding a job; every once in a while, someone might see it, but the chances of that person being an employer, in your industry, looking for someone with your skills, right now, are so slim they’re almost microscopic.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at five reasons why audience research is so important when planning a content strategy:
Understand the difference between demographics and psychographics
Too broad a target audience (i.e. ‘men aged 18-24’) can leave your content flailing in the blogosphere ether. In contrast, a proper understanding of the difference between demographics and psychographics can improve both your content and its delivery.
Demographics are data concerning overall characteristics such as age, gender, profession, location, income and education, and can give you a broad idea of the kind of person you’re appealing to.
Psychographics, on the other hand, are less tangible; they concern your target audience’s attitudes, habits, values and interests. This gives you valuable insight into the motivations of your audience, which in turn will allow you to produce content which addresses their needs.
Find out what your audience wants
Once you’ve figured out your audience psychographics, you’ll want to establish exactly what your audience is looking for. Not what you think they’re looking for; what they’re actually looking for. Web/social media analytics data, surveys and interviews are all great ways of finding this out.
This allows you to up your SEO game and deliver relevant, useful content. Naturally, if you’re addressing an applicable customer need, you’ll see increased engagement.
Exploit a niche
It’s often better to provide high quality content within a specific niche than it is to cast a wide net and hope for as much engagement as possible. This may seem counterintuitive, but if you think about it, it makes sense: the keyword ‘best dog food’ is so saturated that your content will almost certainly never see the light of day; while ‘best cheap all-natural dog food’ may have a lower search volume, cornering that market will lead to higher engagement because there is a more favourable search-to-content ratio.
Improve your content distribution
Understanding not only who your audience is but how they consume content is critical for content distribution. An article about marketing skills aimed at 30-something professionals will probably perform better on LinkedIn than Instagram, whereas a piece about family days out in [specific area] will likely reach a larger audience on Facebook, where over 50% of users are aged 40 to 60.
Getting to grips with this principle will streamline your planning and improve your content strategy.
Budget more effectively
Learning the importance of audience research is also financially beneficial. Not only does it prevent you wasting time producing ‘dead-end’ content, but a proper understanding of your audience psychographics can also help you figure out where and when to allocate your marketing budget.
Take a look at this case study
There are countless examples of campaigns that missed the mark when it comes to audience research. One such example is Pepsi’s 2017 ‘Live for Now’ ad - a film so catastrophically ‘tone-deaf’ that it was pulled after just one day and seriously damaged Pepsi’s global messaging strategy.
In the ad, Kendall Jenner and Pepsi selflessly team up to unite the world in peace and love and, it’s implied, soothe political tensions following the Black Lives Matter protests in the USA.So what went wrong? Clearly, Pepsi had not understood the seriousness with which their audience - especially young cosmopolitan consumers likely to be active on social media - took the issue. And this mistake had a hugely negative impact on Pepsi’s brand.
Of course, a giant like Pepsi has the funds and expertise to minimise fallout from a blunder like this, but a smaller content team may not, meaning that poor audience research can harm your brand authority and overall content strategy.
Get expert insight
Copywriting networks and marketing hubs are a great place to find expert audience research and content strategy tips, as well as to connect with other copywriters. Get involved with platforms like this to stay up to date with the copywriting industry and level up your writing.
With this article and many such others on The Author’s Pad, you’ll be conducting water-tight audience research and building transformative content strategies in no time.
