Last updated on November 23rd, 2022
Content marketing is not a one-step process. In fact, it requires ample time and thorough research. The most crucial step, which should be the guiding light of your content creation process, is effectively targeting the content.
It is imperative that your content grabs your target audience’s attention to prevent your competitors from overtaking you.
Content targeting can be your biggest strength and is the key to marketing success. Unlike SEO, content targeting is more than just matching the keywords with a search query. Instead, it is about matching the content on your website with the search queries. It is a mix of organic SEO practices and paid inclusions to reach your market.
Here Are a Few Important Content Targeting Tips That Will Increase Your Visibility
1. Define Your Target Audience
Before undertaking any form of writing, one of the most important content-targeting tips is to identify your target audience. ‘Who do you want to reach?’ is a question you have to ask yourself.
Following this, you have to bifurcate your target audience under different criteria, such as age, gender, financial status, likes, dislikes, etc. The most important question here is to ask yourself if your service or value proposition is relevant to the identified target audience.
For example, Netflix will not target a middle-aged housewife who regularly views regional daily soaps as their content does not cater to her needs. It will look out for content targeting google ads because its target audience is active users of the search engine and surf the internet for films and web series.
An easier way to thoroughly understand your target audience is to create customer or audience profiles. Here, you reproduce the personality and behavior of your audience.
For example, a viewer profile for Netflix would be along the following lines – Rohan is a working professional residing in Delhi. He works at an advertising agency and enjoys traveling or taking short trips over the weekend. He earns enough to support himself regardless of the fact that his overindulgence in fine dining sets his savings back.
You can also take a free ‘Who is my target audience quiz’ online to aid you in target marketing.
2. Conduct Online Research
In this era of digital marketing, it is important to know how to find your target audience online. Knowing where to find your audience is one of the best content-targeting tips you can implement.
While there are numerous software solutions and agencies that charge a premium to identify your target audience, social media and digitization have made it possible to connect with your target audience for free.
Facebook Analytics, LinkedIn Insights, Instagram Insights, and Google Analytics are some of the free content analysis tools you can use to get real-time insights about your target market. You can conduct online surveys using services like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey, which also tabulate the results for you.
Apart from these, short dipstick surveys can be conducted on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook using their poll features. Following hashtags which are relevant to your service help you with qualitative and in-depth research about your target audience.
Moreover, these hashtags are key to formulating long-tail and short-tail keywords for your content marketing strategy. For example, if Zomato wishes to understand its target audience’s outdoor dining behavior, it will be easier to follow hashtags such as mumbaifoodies, foodlovers, weekendvibes, etc., and using a location tag along with it to gain a better understanding of people’s activities.
3. Determine Your Voice And Tone
Speaking with your target audience in a voice that seems familiar is one of the most important content-targeting tips for all marketers. Your audience should be able to relate to you and identify with you. Personalizing your content is always helpful as the brand doesn’t seem aloof and detached.
However, using a friendly or formal tone depends completely on the type of product or service offered and your brand personality as a whole. People expect a serious and formal yet understandable tone when reading or watching a sensitive piece of information. But on a general basis, a light and friendly tone of communication is preferred by most.
In short, your content targeting depends partially on your target audience’s persona and your brand personality. Regardless of your preferred tone and voice, it should be consistent throughout your content marketing campaign.
4. How to Identify A Target Audience in Writing?
Before asking the question, ‘how to identify a target audience in writing?’, ensure that your target audience is inclined towards reading. Today, visual and innovative content is directed toward the younger strata of the population due to its effectiveness and transparency. Your survey and analytics results will help you understand this in greater detail.
Once you are sure that your target audience is interested in reading, you have to classify whether they prefer graphic listicles, informative white papers, technical blogs, or narrative pieces.
In fact, one of the top SEO tips for 2023 is to write content dedicated purely to a section of your target audience, so everyone gains distinct value from your website.
5. Brainstorm Your Content
One of the most crucial contents targeting tips is to create novel and engaging content. Viewers actively seek new and interesting content. And therefore, imitating your competitors is a bad idea.
Brainstorming sessions are an ideal way of coming up with new content ideas. The brainstorming process should be guided by factors like the purpose of your content, media platforms, and desired response.
Content targeting examples that can arise out of a collective brainstorming session could be coming up with an interesting quiz instead of a blog to inform the target audience about good dietary habits by a packaged food brand. Moreover, interactive content is preferred by 88% of viewers, as opposed to static content.
6. Use Google Adwords
Google is the most widely used search engine, and Google AdWords reaches 90% of global internet users. Content targeting AdWords is an effective way to generate leads and gain visibility for newer businesses as organic SEO builds over a period of time.
Whenever a user enters a search query, a number of results appear on the search engine results page. At the top of the page, there are at least 2-3 websites that appear with a green box, signifying that they are ads. Users are likely to click on these owing to their higher rank.
Google AdWords asks you to bid for certain keywords, and the highest bidders with relevant content are placed at the top. It makes content targeting easier as it allows the marketer to focus on a certain location. Apart from simple search ads, it also allows you to run specialized campaigns such as dynamic ads, mobile app promotions, video promotions, etc.
7. Evaluation
Measuring and monitoring the results of your content targeting campaign against the results and leads generated is an important content targeting tip.
It helps you understand if you should invest more in paid promotions or revise your SEO strategy. You should always ask your audience for feedback and actively assess it based on the channels of communication used.
Also Read: 25+ Content Marketing Tools – Drive Growth For Your Business
In Conclusion
By integrating these content targeting tips you can not only enhance the effectiveness of your content but give it a proper flow, making it easy to understand. Moreover, this makes it easier to identify the gaps in your strategy and work on them to increase business and achieve marketing success.
