Content Marketing Part 3 – Know Your Market

Transcription

As with any form of marketing, there are always lessons to be learnt from the competition’s content, and when I say competition, I don’t just mean your obvious, direct competition, but any brand that is trying to engage your audience with similar messaging. So if, for example, you are a law firm in London seeking to target business owners, you’re not only going to look at other law firms in London, but you’re going to look at other brands selling to business owners, regardless of their products or services.

What you’re trying to find through this research is two things:
– You’re trying to get a sense of where these brands are spending their time and money, because it’s probably an indication of where you need to begin.
– Secondly, you’re looking for examples of content that seems to be effective in engaging your audience, but that is not being fully exploited by your direct competition. Those gaps represent your opportunity.

As with any market research, this is all front loaded and you’re going to learn 80% of your lessons during the pre-launch phase. However, it is something that of course evolves so you’re going to want to check in on these brands every few months.In fact, it can be a great source of ongoing inspiration for your content calendars, which we’re going to come on to in a subsequent video.

So in summary, you need to ensure you are allocating sufficient time to proper market research. It may not sound exciting but it’s no coincidence that the best marketers, and business people for that matter, are always the ones that spend the most time scrutinising the competition. While it may feel like wasted time in the moment, it’s going to make the value of everything you do thereafter so much greater.