Deciding topics for content marketing strategy

Everyone wants customers to come to their site. But, we don’t want customers coming through a misled route meaning, if a customer wants to buy books he should not land on a page selling shoes. This is bad both for the customer as well as the business. This is something which the content marketing strategy be about, making sure your content reaches the right audiences. In this context topic selection becomes important, as you need to think over what kind of customers might be looking for your product and when. This will help you increase the effectiveness of your inbound marketing strategy. In this chapter of inbound marketing certification course, we will look at things to be kept in mind that can help you in topic selection

1. Buyers Persona or identification of prospect

We have been repeatedly using this term, to improve our inbound marketing strategy. Buyer persona helps you know who your ideal customer will be. It helps in identifying potential customers for business.

Suppose, you have a company that runs digital marketing courses, how will you decide which customers should you target and what should be the topic of your content? It’s simple, you will want customers that want education about digital marketing courses. But, this would give you a broad picture about what your customers should be how will you narrow it down? We will discuss it in next step. You can learn more about creating buyer persona from our previous posts.

2. Analyzing searches done by your prospects

After you know your buyer persona, you would like to know what are the ideal search terms your customers might be using. For this you can use Google Adwords and enter broad classification or industry or nature of your work. You can check our previous post to look at how Google Adwords works. When you search for the terms, it will show your ideas as related keywords. Then, you can choose a topic similar to keyword.

Things to consider while searching on Google Adwords

• Number of searches

You will have to look at number of searches for keyword so that you can decide topic similar to that. It is similar to SEO strategy, except the fact SEO strategy is implemented when content is thought of or ready. Higher the searches, more will be your audience.

• Competition

You will also have to look at the competition in space to make sure your content is able to rank. Hence, your topic should be chosen accordingly

3. Buyer journey

You will also have to look at the buyer journey in order to make sure at what stage of it would you like the viewer to reach your content. This will also play a part in deciding the topic. After you have done your keyword research, you will have to look at whether you want prospects who just have figured out a problem or someone who is really looking to buy things. You can use this to decide the topic along with keyword research.

For example, your website deals with digital marketing courses, but you figured out that internet marketing courses will be the keyword around which content and topic has to be after keyword research. But, after buyer’s journey analysis, you will be able to decide the stage, say he is looking for a certification. Then we can use a topic like “The best internet marketing course” or “Learn internet marketing courses from the best faculty”. There can be thousands of topics you can think upon. These are just examples.

This is what I use for choosing topics for content for businesses I consult for. For learning and reading more about content marketing strategy, you can check out our inbound marketing certification course. As a SEO company in Delhi NCR, we use the same strategy to help our partner businesses rank higher.