Do you ever feel like you're creating content simply for the sake of content? No real, research-backed strategy in place, but just creating content because you know it's the right thing to do? If you know this pain, you're not alone. And it ends now. Our marketing team has spent the last couple months collaborating with our services team to bring you the brand new Quick Guide for Content Marketing Research. Consider it a crash course on revolutionary research that drives content strategy (not just for us, but our clients, too). This 10-page guide includes: - The four essential research assessments for determining the who, what, where and how of your content strategy - Critical tactics for ensuring your content gets the traction it deserves - Relevance's recommended content marketing research tools

1. QUICK GUIDE FOR
CONTENT MARKETING RESEARCH
THE 4 ESSENTIAL RESEARCH ASSESSMENTS

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THE FOUR ESSENTIAL RESEARCH ASSESSMENTS
According to the Content Marketing Institute, more than three-quarters of content marketers
claim to have a strategy in place, but fewer than one-third have actually documented that
strategy. A documented strategy is proven to increase effectiveness in all areas of content
marketing, especially when that strategy is backed by quantitative and qualitative research.
With all marketing initiatives, digital or otherwise, it’s crucial to conduct research to build the
foundation of your strategy. An intimate understanding of who your audience is, what they’re
looking for, where to find them, and how to deliver the most effective message is often the
difference between success and failure. It’s no different with content marketing, and research
to determine the who, what, where and how can be nicely translated into four key assessments:
audience, trends, media, and competition.

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AUDIENCE ASSESSMENT—THE “WHO”
WHAT IT IS
An audience assessment is the key to understanding the behavior of your target audience.
It’s the foundation for creating target personas, developing the buyers’ journey maps and
connecting pain points to purchasing considerations.
WHY YOU DO IT
This analysis will show you how your audience seeks information, how they evaluate brands
and products, how they’re influenced throughout their purchase paths, and how they make
purchases.
HOW YOU DO IT
Keyword Research: Identifying target keywords and any related
search terms generated by the target industry and audience is crucial for
understanding how they are searching for products and services. Keywords
should be organized based on the main stages of the buyer’s journey:
awareness, interest, decision, and action. Pay attention to the types of
pages that rank well (blogs, knowledge center articles, and product pages).
User-Generated Content Analysis: Researching forums and relevant
social media platforms will provide a better understanding of customer
pain points, the terminology used, and the preferred formats for content.
This tactic is generally not as applicable for B2B companies as for B2C
companies.
Customer Interviews & Surveys: Interviewing brand employees and
customers will help you better understand the target audience, demand
drivers, and pain points. Connections should be found between interview
information and data gleaned from all other assessments and tactics.

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Expert Interviews: You can better understand the relevant conversations
happening in your space by interviewing industry experts to learn their
perspectives. These insights can shape your content strategy and add
more tangible pain points to back up data findings.
Web Analytics Assessment: A successful analytics implementation
is key to not only measuring success, but also executing a data-driven
content strategy. An analytics assessment helps you understand who the
target demographic is, how they interact with the website, how to leverage
current content that already exists, how to track conversions, and how to
optimize your website for conversions.
Recommended Audience Research Tools:
• Google Analytics
• BuzzSumo
• LinkedIn

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TRENDS ASSESSMENT—THE “WHAT”
WHAT IT IS
A trends analysis goes beyond keyword research and search volumes to better understand the
dialogue happening in your space and how your brand can find a voice in the conversation.
WHY YOU DO IT
The goal of a trends assessment is to determine the format and subject matter of your content.
By compiling and analyzing the most engaging content in your space, you can use hard data to
identify trending content patterns and determine opportunities for contributions that are likely to
resonate with your audience.
HOW YOU DO IT
Response Analysis: The objective here is to deep dive into the ways
the audience’s conversations are taking place. What is the difficulty level
of a content piece? Is it tactical or strategic? What types of calls-to-action
resonate best with the target audience?
Angle Identification: Many times the media and content analyses
reveal trends in how information is shared. What are the forms, voices,
popular social media outlets, and dynamic features that make for the most
compelling and engaging content? These are the characteristics that take a
keyword-driven piece of content to the next level and motivate readers to
engage and share.
Topic Identification: What are the trends and subtopics being searched
and discussed across the digital landscape, and how do these relate
to previously identified keywords? Think about this as tracking and
understanding long-tail keyword searches that are geared at solving
specific pain points or audience issues.

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Compelling Questions Identification: These are the questions and
pain points that become evident throughout the audience, media, and
trends assessments. What content can you create that will answer the most
compelling questions in the most compelling ways?
Resources Cited: How is information shared in this industry, what are the
most reliable resources, and who are the overarching figures of authority?
Quoted Experts Identification: This tactic takes a more traditional
marketing spin by interviewing experts, industry influencers, and internal
members of your company to better understand internal pain points as well
as the engagement between the business and customer.
Recommended Trends Research Tools:
• Google Trends
• BuzzSumo

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MEDIA ASSESSMENT—THE “WHERE”
WHAT IT IS
A media assessment identifies the top online media and influencers in your space. Creating a
media profile for not only your target audience, but also your target media outlets, will better
inform your subsequent content creation and promotion strategies.
WHY YOU DO IT
In conjunction with the trends assessment, the media assessment will help you understand
how best to create content that will resonate with your audience and how to maximize the
amplification of that content.
HOW YOU DO IT
Industry Publications Analysis: Creating a database of successful
industry publications will not only help with the media analysis, but will
also be crucial for developing an integrated promotion strategy. These
publications will provide an idea of the most popular topics and concerns
among the target audience.
Industry Social Influencers & Experts Analysis: By utilizing social
networks, groups, and lists, you can aggregate data and identify existing
social influencers. This data can be analyzed both qualitatively and
quantitatively to understand which content is most successful and where
content resonates the best.
Social Engagement Analysis: Knowing what’s popular on social
media can help shape a content strategy, and content analysis tools can
measure engagement across social media platforms to identify and better
understand what content has the most overall engagement.

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Recommended Media Research Tools:
• Share Tally
• Followerwonk
• Cision
• GroupHigh
• BuzzSumo
• Anewstip

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COMPETITIVE ASSESSMENT—THE “HOW”
WHAT IT IS
The competitive content assessment is a mix of qualitative and quantitative data to understand
the story each competitor tells and then identify how those stories resonate with your shared
target audience.
WHY YOU DO IT
A competitive assessment is an essential process for understanding your content marketing
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats by taking the pulse of the competitive
landscape. In particular, this process is useful for identifying middle- and bottom-of-the-funnel
opportunities that your competitors may or may not be targeting.
HOW YOU DO IT
Content Inventory: Building a content inventory of your competitors’
websites will provide you with an overview of the work being produced. It
will require scraping your competitors’ sites and hand-building a list of key
pages, content, and resources.
Sentiment Analysis: This type of analysis gets beyond just engagement
and comments to better understand the emotional and mental connection
the audience has with content. This analysis takes a qualitative inventory of
format, tone, emotion, and readership level.
Keyword Gap Analysis: Based on your keyword research, you can build
a list of primary keywords for your brand and its top competitors to locate
content gaps and opportunities. Match up the ranked pages for each of
these keywords to competitively evaluate pages for content, layout, and
architecture.
Site Architecture & Navigation Audit: Here the site architecture and
navigation from an SEO and UX perspective are assessed to identify how
the navigation affects the customer’s purchase path and how to make the
journey as clear and concise as possible.

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Local SEO Evaluation: Local SEO audits allow you to narrow in on
your product and service opportunities. Although the size and scope of
operations vary by brand, local SEO audits will uncover prime conversion
opportunities by geographic region.
Recommended Competitive Research Tools:
• Screaming Frog
• SEMrush
• Google Keyword Planner

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TAKE THE GUESS WORK OUT OF MARKETING
Content strategy should be determined by research and hard numbers, not hunches. With the
proper tools and processes, you can use data to take the guess work out of marketing and give
your brand the best chance to win.
Teradata Applications, an industry leader in data-driven marketing software, partnered with
Relevance to expand its business into a new industry with a highly specific niche audience.
Download the case study below to see first-hand how an in-depth research process built the
foundation of a content marketing campaign deemed ‘one of the most successful B2B lead gen
campaigns’ in the company’s history.
If you want to learn more about how a research-
backed content strategy can take your marketing
game to the next level, the pioneers of the practice
are here to help you.
TECH SALES AND MARKETING AWARD WINNER
Teradata won a Mira Award for an integrated marketingcampaign that included The Big Data Marketing Hero ebook.The various components of this marketing initiative earnedTeradata an eight-digit bump in revenue.
30 GlobalBRAND MEETINGS
36x
ROI
8-DigitREVENUE INCREASE
24%
CONVERSION RATE(Coverage referral conversion rate)
3Mil+MEDIA IMPRESSIONS
OUR TEAM OF EXPERTS KNOWS WHAT IT TAKES TO
GET CONTENT NOTICED
BY SEARCH ENGINES AND USERS ONLINE.
We start with industry-leading research and get to know both your audience andthe media outlets they trust. Add in some unbeatable creative work to producecontent that commands respect, and finish with targeted promotion to get thatcontent picked up by the most relevant media outlets in your industry.
THE RESULTS
ARE IN THE
DATA*:
*as of August 2014
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For results like these, contact us.
SmartData Collective
MediaPost
Successful Workplace
Startup Mover News
Blogging4Jobs
Fast Newsletter
AJNews
AgingTech
Cooperative09
Firmology
CustomerThink
The-Edge Marketing
Business2Community
Keep America at Work
Global Big Data Conference
The BlogTest
IntegritySt.
iContemplate
Tech Expo
The Marketing Robot
Palm Beach Post
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WTOV
WGNC
KnoTop
93Q
WBLI
Dayton Daily News
WEDR
Journal News
5th Element Technology
Wavpin
Star945
Statesman.com
WHIO-TV
WHIO
Middletown Journal
APEX M&A
The Edge International
News XS
World News
Linkedin Today
Business Intelligence
Crazy About Startups.com
Power Oregon Blog
I4U News
“The Big Data Marketing Hero campaign
was one of the most successful B2B
lead gen campaigns in our history.”
—Lisa Arthur, Teradata, CMO; Teradata Applications
Does your content make
HEADLINES?
Content Promotion for Serious Content Marketers
ASCOVEREDBY
888.603.7337
CONTACT US
(888) 603-7337
sales@relevance.com
CLICK BELOW TO TALK TO A CONTENT STRATEGIST TODAY.

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