The first important step in a marketing campaign’s conceptualization, Search Marketing included, is to assiduously define its target audience – a set of users who you’re going to focus your product/service pitch on – so as to enhance conversions. The process plays a major role in effectively reaching out to both new and existing customers. It traditionally involves ascertaining broad parameters such as geographic locations, age, sex, and especially their aspirations as well as needs (pain points).

Defining the core of your content strategy

You obviously want to offer content and tools as useful and relevant as possible to your target user base.  Providing pertinent and informative, factual and meaningful stuff in itself is linkbait. Say, for instance, you’ve a health/wellness site. It consists of several types of essays on health issues, diseases and conditions medication, drug information etc.  You are primarily targeting seniors. Based on the usage pattern, it you realize that they are more interested in information regarding prescription drug plans, you know what your core content activity should be – to offer details specifically on generic drugs. This will also allow you to focus on that market segment and de-prioritize other content categories.

Specifics of keyword research activity

Ideally, you will want to perform keyword research on basis of what the target audience potentially seeks, instead of solely on what information your site already has (or looks to offer sans audience targeting). You could conduct keyword research on different health conditions and drugs (what you currently have on the site) and then decide what the general population is largely searching for, to optimize it. Conversely, you may follow a broad-based approach, cast your net wide and consider what your target audience actually wants.

On basis of their specific needs, you carry your keyword research activity only to realize that there are certain needs your site is failing to meet at present.  Knowing that seniors are primarily interested in prescription drug plans, you can take steps to emphasize on that area by providing relevant content, and then further define the top key phrases/ terms in these segment, to use them in high visibility areas on your site.

So how exactly you can derive target market info?  Say, you know who your target audience is, but you do not know in-depth about their pain points.

• You can approach experts for market research online, incorporating social media sites and tools.
• You may conduct independent surveys by putting up a questionnaire on your own site, sending emails, doing on-field research, or using survey sites.
• You may consider social media listening platforms like NetBase, Nielsen Buzz Metrics etc. They offer inputs regarding topic buzz volume & sentiment by demographic. Forrester’s demographic profiling tool is handy for deciphering social behavior online.
• Forming focus groups both offline and online within your targeted demographic is highly recommended.

This is especially critical to ensure better lead generation and higher conversions. The above explanation should fairly establish the vital link between targeted keywords discovery and your SEO-driven content strategy.