As Online Businesses, our time is divided between analyzing traffic trends, fixing technical issues, building links and interacting through social media. Content creation always takes a back seat. Many companies have writers on its payroll to perform this task. But as businesses, we solve customer problems on a regular basis and learn from each interaction. This gives us a unique advantage over writers who can only create peripheral articles about our Business; we have learned the hard way on what works and what does not.
The first step in content creation is Keyword research. Finding topics for creating content is a tough task. Keyword research tools can only give you popular keyword ideas. But are those keywords profitable?
Let us take the example of a car dealer – Dealer X.
a) Create Psychographic segments: The first step in keyword research is to segment customers based on psychographics. There are many attributes when it comes to doing so. But focus on a few attributes that are relevant for content creation. For Dealer X, the relevant information are:
Social Class
Education: MBA
Profession: CEO
Income Range: $500000 to $600000 (research and find the range)
Personality
Innovator: Risk takers
Achiever: Prestige
Traditional: Doesn’t take risk
Aspirers: Want to be accepted by the peer group
Motivation (based on current responsibility and plans)
Marital Status: Single
Car Ownership: Previous Cars/Model (Same Brand or tried different brands?)
Initial Interest: Mid-Segment/High-End?
Debt: Low
Plans: Get Married (Ready to take more debt?)
b) Find profitable psychographic segments: Before we open our keyword research tool, find out top contributing markets segments for the Business. Spend 80% of your time on that segment.
For Dealer X, Achiever’s might contribute highest margin per sale but the sales volume of Aspirers gives 10x more revenue. List the top two segments from your customer list.
c) Create keyword list
It is time to create the keyword list for each segment. Almost all car researchers start with ‘top’ and ‘best’. Once you start your keyword research, you will begin to notice the subtlety in the use of words from different personalities.
Innovator: best diesel car in india within 10 lakhs
(This segment is ready to take the risk but knows the limit)
Achiever: the best diesel car in india
(This segment is not worried about the risk. It is all about getting the best)
Traditional - best average diesel car in india
(Not motivated to get the best diesel car)
Aspirers - best selling diesel car in india
(Wants to be accepted by the peer group)
The next step for Dealer X is to visit top review sites for this market and note down the
a) Best Selling Diesel Cars
b) Best Diesel Cars for each budget – 10 lakhs, 5 lakhs etc.
d) Create a landing page
After noting down the best diesel cars in various categories, create landing pages for each personality. Host the brochure with the latest information about the cars on the page. The motivation that we have listed in a) will be useful for creating copy for each landing page.
e) Test your Market
Although we have mapped our keywords to each personality, test the market with PPC campaigns. Create an Ad for each keyword (visit AdWords and PPC sections to learn more)
Best Diesel Car – Under 10 lakhs
Download latest information about
<Car X> and go for a free test drive
f) Create content plan
Now you might ask – Why should I go through all these steps to create a content plan? After these tests, you will have enough information about your customers; their motivation and profitable (high conversion) keywords that they use. The articles that you create should target each keyword. Each article should have a pre-defined conversion action (Download, Sign-Up, Click, Video View). Unlike landing pages, the primary goal of articles is to inform the market. The tone, format and reasoning of the article should persuade the visitor to take the next logical step – perform the pre-defined conversion action.