Audience Analytics.
Who is your target audience? And who is interacting with your content? Do you really know they are? Like really really know them? Who are they? How and where do they spend their time? How do they engage with your competitors? What do they need, want, and love? Most marketers don’t have the knowledge to truly answer these questions – or, they have bits and pieces, but not the full picture. That’s because the metrics most marketers rely on today barely scratch the surface. Most marketers track things like:
- page views
- traffic
- shares
- bounce rate
- engaged time
However, these metrics don’t tell us anything about who our audience is or what they care about. They don’t equip us with the insights needed to translate content into consumer value, or set up for global reach and scale. How valuable is your reach if it doesn’t coincide with your target audience?
What metrics should we use to analyze our current vs our target audience?
Yes we want traffic, and yes we want to see how long viewers stay on pages and their page flow – but want those viewers to be the “ideal viewersâ€. We want that traffic to be the “ideal traffic†from our target audience. If the traffic, views and users aren’t buying, then you aren’t making money. We want customers and clients that convert. Traffic is great, and the more traffic the better for SEO, but if they aren’t converting – then you aren’t making money. At Be Bold, we believe that the foundation of smart marketing decisions starts with a strong understanding of who your audience is, who your target audience is, and what they all want:
- demographics
- interests
- identity
- intent
That might seem obvious, but in reality, there’s a huge gap between the soft metrics we all track today and the audience insights we really need. We’re working hard to reinvent marketing analytics from the ground up. At the core of our philosophy is a single belief: it’s not just about reaching more people; it’s about reaching the right people.
While thousands or maybe even millions of people share your brand’s content, how do you identify the people who are important to your brand? The handful who are ready to act? Or your biggest fans who are constantly telling their friends and family about your brand? How do you serve your entire audience while elevating these conversations and converting your target audience?
Marketing Needs A New Approach
Most think about marketing analytics as the metrics needed to measure success and failure. Their content marketing process starts with strategy, creation, publishing, distribution….and analytics are thrown in at the end to determine what’s working and what’s not. At Be Bold, we take a different approach.
We Start with Analytics.
We believe that a strong focus on data is needed to give us a clear picture of the entire consumer journey – before content is ever created. These marketing analytics should tie the entire content marketing process together, providing insight into the consumer research process, identifying audience needs and pain points, and helping marketing funnels build and execute a more informed content strategy. Why does this matter?
Efficiency and Results.
Data-driven processes enable you to create content you know your audience wants so you can stop wasting time guessing or creating content duds and actually optimize your strategy for the exact right person, place, and time. More importantly, this process directly informs your paid, owned, and earned media strategy, ensuring even greater reach, engagement, and conversions across platforms. We need to help our customers understand exactly who they’re reaching and engaging, and if they’re really making a meaningful impact on the business.
A deep understanding of real people is the only way to measure content marketing ROI.
To make it simple, we have created a three-step process to inject marketing analytics into every step of the content marketing process:
- Know your current and target audience – Understand who your audience really is and what they want
- Know what content and copy works – Get an in-depth look at the content journeys of your audience and understand what sticks and gets shared.
- Drive content marketing ROI – Optimize your paid, owned, and earned media strategy by reaching the right people, at the right time and place.
The future of marketing is about connecting with individual people – like you and me. The way to connect with real people and win brand love is through meaningful content and conversations.
The only way to achieve relevancy with your target audience is to truly understand who they are and what they want. Your marketing platform should be able to help you identify, analyze and act on these individuals and content trends at every step of the buyer’s journey.
Get Help
If you’re just getting started in the business marketing journey this is the BEST time to find your ideal audience analytics. Don’t waste time or money by targeting the wrong people. Maybe you’re a seasoned business that feels like you are missing out on potential customers? Or getting a lot of traffic, but few closed leads and conversions? It's time to do a full analysis and comparison between who your current audience is and who your ideal audience is.