Every problem is an opportunity to make your audience happy. SEO insights are invaluable for identifying what content will drive revenue by solving for your audience’s problems. Those insights are a great way to identify customer pain points that not only surface in their online habits, but also manifest at other customer touch points throughout your company. Perhaps the very same issue that people search for also takes up a large volume of resources inside of your call centers, at retail or in the social space. Smart, insights driven content strategies can not only help solve those audience problems, but also provide a perfect opportunity for SEO, content, PR and social teams to work together to solve larger company-wide issues. In this presentation, we look at how to identify search insights from Google and how to use that information to create omnichannel eCommerce content strategies. Take a look at how we helped footwear giant UGG Australia use content to put their audience first with tightly woven content strategies.
Short on time? Here’s a 2 minute takeaway…
1. Put the Other Fellow First Ruthlessly prioritize your customer needs above that awesomely distracting shiny “fun” project. Sure, it’s easy to get pulled by the new hero product, celebrity endorsement or attention grabbing content project, but it’s important to stay focused on listening to your customers. What are they searching for? Not only on Google, but also on your site. At bare minimum, use the Google Keyword Planner Tool and Google Trends. Start there, then…Start there, then…
2. Solve Problems Once you’ve identified what it is that people are asking you for via search, begin your company wide quest to determine where else this problem surfaces. Are customers calling into your call center, showing up at retail, voicing their needs on social? Great. That means that you now have multiple manifestations of the same problem which builds the case for getting the time and resources to solve it. Now start solving and…
3. Build Bridges With Cupcakes The more complex the problem, the more people need to be involved. Often, these issues sit in the grey area of “who’s job is it?” This can be a danger zone for the problem becoming everyone’s responsibility = no one’s responsibility. Or, it can also mean that you’re stepping on people’s toes because suddenly, you’re trying to develop content that touches upon other people’s turf. My advice here is similar to Facebook’s Jonathan Colman’s advice to “be empathetic”. The way to get people to help you solve your audience’s problem is to understand what’s important to them, what they’re measured by and what makes them happy. For me, chocolate cupcakes will do the trick. If you find people you need to work with, but they’re reluctant to be a team player, contextualize your case with what matters in their world. Let them know what’s in it for them and show them you give a damn about what matters to them. This means that you actually have to take the time to learn about them and follow up by showing them that you care. The thing is, when you start to learn about what’s important to people, you actually do start to care. Now, you’ve got employees across the organization who previously had no reason to collaborate, start to bond. Imagine the magic that can happen…
4. Create, Measure & Share Success When that morning finally comes that your content is ready to share with your audience, it’s pretty damn exciting. It’s exciting because you know you’re delivering something that people actually WANT! You’ve solved their problem and now it’s time to deliver the goods. I urge you to take a lot of time in your planning phases to think about where to host the content, what channels to push it out on, what SEO (always back to SEO!) needs to be in place and who else in your company may need it. That planning phase is also the right time to identify what success will look like, what KPIs you’ll use and how you’ll optimize or course correct as you begin your content distribution strategy. So, let’s just say that all goes well. You’re audience loves you, your teammates are stoked and your dashboards are smiling. Now is the time to share the glory. Remember #3. It’s cupcake time. As you publicize the results of your insights driven content strategy, be sure to call out everyone that helped you. Make them shine in front of their bosses. It feels good.
5. Keep Solving While it may be tempting to say “Ok, I’ve done my part to make our audience happy, now back to all that other stuff”, my advice here is to dig back into the data and see what problem you can solve next. I can guarantee that even the best of companies will always have audience problems to solve. That’s exactly what we did at UGG Australia. Once we’d created content that helped our audience take care of their boots and saw how successful it was, we continued on our quest to solve even more problems. We started looking at queries around sizing and fit, style suggestions, and out of date product searches. For each one of these incidents we were able to find stakeholders throughout the organization who benefited from the content and quickly rose to the occasion to put their audience first. It’s ok if you can’t come up with the perfect content solution in your first try. Be iterative. Try SOMETHING, listen for feedback and optimize until both your internal stakeholders and your audience tells you that you’ve nailed it. Sometimes, taking those smaller steps can be enough to get buy in and show your audience you value them and you’re trying to “get it right”.
…Summing it Up Magic happens when you collaborate and use channels in nontraditional ways. Use SEO to identify search trends that serve as a launching off point for content, social, email and PR campaigns. We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again, every problem is an opportunity to make your audience happy. So go ahead, take a look under the hood and start up those conversations, your audience will thank you. After all, that’s what it’s all about in the first place.
