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Feb 13 2024

B2B Content Marketing Strategies For High-Quality Lead Generation via @sejournal, @sejournal

Content is key for generating high-quality leads in B2B marketing.

You must know how to leverage content to begin and nurture meaningful interactions. Words and graphics have the power to drive conversions and forge lasting connections.

Ultimately, successful content marketing isn’t just about being noticed but being remembered.

And generating leads isn’t just about numbers; it’s about connecting with real people.

If you’re ready to elevate your content strategy in 2024, our latest ebook, B2B Lead Generation: Create Content That Converts, is your playbook to providing maximum value to your audience next year.

This concise yet powerful guide is full of exclusive insights from high-profile experts, while drawing on our own internal expertise in delivering leads across multiple media types.

Here’s a peek at what you’ll find inside:

Using content innovation for lead generation: The oversaturation of content is a big issue in B2B today – and standing out isn’t just a challenge; it’s an art form. In order to elevate your brand and leave a lasting impression, you need the right combination of innovation and strategy. The key is in surprising your audience with content that feels fresh, speaks directly to their needs, and keeps them eagerly awaiting your next move.
Building sustainable and scalable lead programs: Remember, it’s not just about acquiring leads; it’s about making sure they feel valued and guided, and cultivating long-lasting relationships. To build a strong lead program, you must properly qualify and score your leads to determine how to best engage with and nurture them. Be sure to map out your customer journey, tailor your communication, and provide valuable touchpoints at every step to guide your leads from curiosity to commitment.
Mastering the knowledge exchange: Your goal should be to “add value before you extract value” – as Curtis del Principe, Sr. Marketing Manager at Hubspot, puts it. It’s all about crafting a win-win scenario between you and your audience. When you manage to address their biggest pain points and answer their most pressing questions, they willingly share their information in return. Create the kind of content that can captivate, engage, and inspire your leads to action.
Leveraging consumer psychology to forge meaningful connections: At its core, B2B is about humans connecting with humans. Although interactions can sometimes feel transactional, forging genuine connections and building relationships that go beyond the surface is crucial for success in this space. Try to understand why your audience does what they do so you can adjust your content to their unique needs and preferences. Offer value to them upfront and present solutions in a way that resonates with them personally.

This digital handbook is tailored for the B2B marketing professional, whether you work within a specific brand or with an agency.

Grab your copy of B2B Lead Generation: Create Content That Converts for expert insights and actionable tips to help you start driving qualified leads and building genuine relationships.

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

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Nov 29 2023

How To Create High-Impact Content In A Changing Landscape via @sejournal, @lorenbaker

In an era of user-generated, human-generated and machine-generated content, mistakes are increasingly costlier to make. Learn the ways to revitalize and future-proof your approach to content marketing with Purna Virji, globally recognized content strategist and bestselling author of “High-Impact Content Marketing”.

She and Loren will uncover the common mistakes content marketers make, and how you can avoid them as you plan your marketing strategy.

Tune in and hear strategies for creating genuinely inclusive and relevant content that audiences will actually want to consume, so your content strategy won’t go the way of the dinosaurs.

What we want to think about is what are we solving for. What roles do we play? How are we engaging with the audience and giving them what they are interested in, what they need, and what would be of value to them? – Purna Virji, 03:00

You always want to give your audience something to do next. It all comes down to this concept called backward design. – Purna Virji, 08:58

We found that we get the most social interaction and the highest quality traffic from social media. LinkedIn has just become the most engaged platform there is within social media, and it’s been a complete 360 over the past three or four years. – Loren Baker, 27:30

[00:00] – About Purna.
[02:41] – Strategies for intentional content creation.
[08:58] – How to ensure content effectiveness.
[14:41] – Best practices for content promotion.
[18:01] – How to create content for various audience awareness levels.
[20:13] – Importance of company representation in content marketing.
[23:41] – LinkedIn’s content promotion capabilities.

Resources Mentioned:

Take an idea before you even create the content and think about different ways you’ll use that idea. – Purna Virji, 17:13

The members on LinkedIn tend to see their time on LinkedIn as an investment in themselves professionally and personally. They’re here to learn, grow, share, and put their best foot forward. – Purna Virji, 30:18

Try to understand what makes you money and for that, who are the types of the cream of the crop? Customers who spend a lot are loyal are referring you to others. – Purna Virji, 03:53

Connect with Purna Virji:

Purna Virji, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a celebrated content strategist and marketer, currently the Principal Content Solutions Consultant at LinkedIn. Her career spans leading roles at Microsoft, and diverse experiences in social media, search advertising, and television, giving her a unique perspective on content marketing.

Recognized as an Adweek Young Influential and Search Personality of the Year, she’s also a top-rated international speaker and an advocate for women in technology. Virji is the author of the best-selling book “High-Impact Content Marketing,” showcasing her expertise and influence in the field.

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/purnavirji/

Connect with Loren Baker:

Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker

Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker

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Nov 17 2023

How To Write A Headline: 10 Tips For Getting It Right via @sejournal, @annabellenyst

As digital marketers and brands everywhere struggle for user attention online, the headline is perhaps one of the most important tools at our disposal.

And though crafting a perfect headline might sound easy, there are many considerations that go into getting it right.

To help your content creation, we’ll uncover the secrets of writing headlines that people actually want to click – and that will drive traffic to your content.

We’ll look at the significance of the headline and some common mistakes people make before diving into 10 tips for writing headlines that deliver.

Let’s get started.

How Important Is The Headline?

In the world of content marketing, the headline reigns supreme.

Your headline is the first point of interaction a reader has with your piece of content, and it often determines whether or not someone decides to click through and learn more, or to continue scrolling and potentially never think of your brand again.

Content marketing is more competitive than ever.

Users are producing 70 million new posts per month on WordPress alone – and with so many brands and individuals creating so much content, it’s a struggle to even get your headlines in front of people.

But once they see it, it’s imperative that your headline compels them to engage further.

That means knowing how to craft a strong headline, which is easier said than done. Consider that 90.63% of content gets no traffic from Google – and that can be at least partially attributed to poor headlines.

A good headline will make you stand out from the crowd, increase your chances of drawing in more readers, and ultimately lead to more customers.

In an ideal world, you want to attract readers while offering value, accurately representing your content, and aligning with search intent.

By putting readers first and keeping SEO best practices top-of-mind, you can strike the right balance.

Let’s dive into a few specific reasons why the headline is so important.

First Impressions Are Key

As we discussed above, the headline is the first thing a reader sees, and it lets them know what they can expect from you.

According to Copyblogger, on average, eight out of 10 people will read a headline, while only two out of 10 will then go on to read the content.

You’ve got one shot to make an impression, so you’d better get it right.

SEO Significance

Search is the single largest online traffic source, and this makes it an incredibly powerful tool for reaching new audiences.

A well-optimized headline can help search engines like Google understand what your content is about and help it gain higher rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs), boosting your visibility with searchers.

Social Media Engagement

While newer than search, social media is an important mechanism for driving traffic to your content.

By writing solid headlines that pique people’s attention and drive engagement, your content will see more clicks and more shares, driving earned engagements.

Building A Positive Brand Reputation

Strong headlines don’t just create a positive impression with users; they can, over time, positively impact your brand’s reputation.

If readers know they can come to you for quality headlines that grab their attention and accurately represent the content they’re going to read, they will naturally develop trust and admiration for your brand.

Should You Write A Headline For Search Engines Or Users?

Ah, the age-old question: Should you cater your headlines primarily to search algorithms, or living, breathing humans?

The answer, of course, is a bit of both. In writing a strong headline, finding a balance between user-friendliness and SEO is crucial.

Let’s explore a few reasons why this matters:

Focus On The User

When writing a headline, you should be prioritizing the users who will make up your audience. After all, the headline’s primary goal is to capture people’s attention, and encourage them to read more.

And people are more likely to engage with content that aligns with their needs, interests, and emotions.

If it doesn’t resonate with them, they won’t click through – and your efforts will be for naught.

SEO Considerations

On the other hand, if your headline isn’t search engine friendly, the chances of it being seen are diminished.

That’s why SEO is so important; it helps ensure that users will actually get the chance to discover your content when they’re searching.

Optimizing your headline and including relevant keywords can help you gain visibility in the SERPs, leading to more clicks.

Natural Language And Intent

With developments in technology and the rise of AI, search engines have become extremely good at understanding user intent.

Today, sites like Google are able to decipher the context and quality of content without relying on exact keyword matches.

Because of this and how search algorithms have evolved, writing for users first is often the best way to write for search engines.

Google Discover

Google Discover, which is a section of Google Search that shows users recommended content based on their interests and activity, is becoming a much more prominent source of traffic.

As with other places online, headlines are the first thing users will see on Google Discover – so it’s all about making the most of your brief opportunity.

By crafting engaging headlines that are clear, concise, and timely, you could turn Google Discover into a significant traffic source for your business.

Should The H1 Headline Be The Same As The Meta Title?

One common question people ask when crafting headlines is whether the H1 headline and meta title should be the same.

For context: Your H1 headline is the on-page title that people will see when they click through to your content, and the meta title is what appears on the SERPs when somebody conducts a search.

And while it’s not necessary for your H1 headline and meta title to be the same, you should always remember to aim for consistency.

In a perfect world, your meta title and H1 are as similar as possible, so that you provide a consistent user experience – and readers know exactly what they’re getting into.

However, if you need to tweak either one slightly – perhaps optimizing the meta title with additional keywords, or changing your H1 headline to better suit the flow of your content – you should feel free to do so.

Just make sure both are clear and relevant to your content, and when the user clicks through from the meta title, they land on the content they expect to find.

The safest strategy is to keep them similar, but make slight differences where needed to optimize for each channel.

Common Headline Mistakes To Avoid

Before looking at tips for creating powerful headlines, let’s look at some common mistakes you should strive to avoid.

Clickbait Headlines

Popular on social media, clickbait headlines are designed to elicit curiosity and provoke users into clicking.

They often use outrageous premises in order to target people’s curiosity or promise to reveal something shocking and never-before-seen.

Some examples of what a clickbait headline might look like:

“Woman Grows Tree Inside Her Kitchen – The Result? Jaw-Dropping!”
“10 Insane Urban Garden Secrets Big Plant Stores Hide From You!”
“Why Every City Gardener Is Rushing To Get This Mystery Plant!”

While these might be good at encouraging people to click, they typically misrepresent the actual content and don’t deliver authentic value.

In this way, clickbait can really hurt your credibility over the long term, disappoint your users, and erode trust in your brand.

Keyword Stuffing

We know it’s important to include relevant keywords in your headline so that they can rank higher on search engines – but there’s such a thing as going too far.

Throwing as many keywords as you can into a headline is known as keyword stuffing, and it can deter users and even be penalized by search engines.

Some examples of what a keyword-stuffed headline might look like:

“Rooftop Garden Guide: Rooftop Plants, Rooftop Designs, And Rooftop Ideas!
“Urban Garden Tips: Best Urban Plants For Urban Spaces In Urban Areas!”

Prioritizing search engine ranking over the user experience might sound like a good idea, but search engines are smart enough to notice – and it could do long-term damage to your brand and rankings.

Confusing Or Complex Language

You want your headlines to be easily understandable by your target audience and the general reader – and that means making your language straightforward and accessible.

Unless you’re specifically creating content only for a niche audience of experts and aren’t interested in reaching a broader group of readers, we would not recommend using words and phrases or terminology that is unfamiliar to the average person.

Here are some examples of headlines that use confusing jargon:

“Synthesizing Biophilic Paradigms For Metropolis Greenification.”
“An Examination Of Mesofauna Interactions In High-Rise Agroforestry.”

Punctuation And Grammar Errors

This perhaps goes without saying, but do your best to ensure your headline includes correct punctuation and grammar.

It’s totally normal (and okay!) to make mistakes, but we recommend double-checking for any errors before publishing your headline, as they can hurt your credibility and lead readers to doubt your expertise.

Here’s an example of headlines that feature noticeable errors:

“Your doing it wrong: Plants not to put in City Gardens!”
“Plants; the best ones, for balconies and rooftops!”

10 Tips For Writing Headlines That Deliver

Now, it’s time to dive into some tips for creating headlines that people will want to click on.

1. Keep It Short & Sweet

As internet users, we know all too well that most readers are simply skimming through content at a glance.

Between short attention spans and limited space to play (in areas like search results and social feeds), overly long headlines are not the way to go – they’re often either ignored or cut off.

For this reason, it’s imperative that you keep your headlines concise and to the point. As a best practice, we recommend trying to keep your headlines somewhere between 50 and 60 characters so they’re not cut short.

So, instead of this:

“Check Out Our Comprehensive Guide To Understanding All The Intricacies Of Modern Home Gardening Techniques In Urban Environments.”

You want something more like this:

“Master Modern Urban Gardening With Our Essential Guide.”

2. Consider The Nuances Of Your Audience

Not all audiences are created equal or have the same preferences.

It’s important to cater your headline to the specific audience you’re trying to reach, and align with their cultural touchpoints. This might change based on your audience’s geography, demographics, interest areas, or more.

For example, while you might want to emphasize subtlety and sophistication for a UK audience, you might leverage bolder, more flamboyant headlines to reach an American readership.

Here are some examples of how that might look in practice:

U.S. Audience: “10 Game-Changing Tips To Turn Your Home Into A Plant Oasis”
UK Audience: “10 Proven Strategies For Masterful Urban Gardening.”

3. Address A Pain Point Or Need

What drives you, as a reader, to click on a headline and read more?

I’m willing to bet that you’re more likely to take the time to engage with content if it speaks to a problem you’re facing, a question you might have, or a specific need you’re experiencing.

Powerful headlines are those which identify something your target audience is interested in, and then position your content as a solution or pathway to that interest.

An example of what that might look like:

‘”Struggling With City Air? Try These 5 Air-Purifying Plants!”

4. Remember The 5Ws

You might already know about the 5Ws, which are a well-known principle among writers and journalists.

The idea is that when writing something, you should include the 5Ws – who, what, when, where, and why – as early as possible, to provide people with the necessary information.

When creating headlines for digital marketing and social media, we don’t often have much space. So, you might want to focus on the most critical three: who, what, and why.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to include specific words for each of these. It simply means making it clear who your content is for, what the premise of your content is, and why they should engage with it.

An example of a headline that considers the 5Ws:

“What To Grow & When: LA’s Urban Garden Must-Haves.”

5. Use The 4 U’s Framework

The “4 U’s” is another useful technique to help you craft great headlines. The idea is that every headline you create should incorporate these 4 U’s:

Urgent: Your headline should convey a sense of immediacy, and encourage readers to act ASAP.
Unique: Your headline should convey that your content is different from other pieces of content.
Useful: The headline should make it clear that your content will offer value to the reader.
Ultra-specific: The reader should be able to understand exactly what they’ll find in the content.

It isn’t always possible to incorporate all four of these elements in one short headline, so a best practice is to strive to include at least two of them. This will make the headline much stronger than it would be otherwise.

Here are some examples of what this looks like:

Useful & Ultra-specific: “10 Vegetables You Can Harvest In Just 30 Days In City Spaces.”
Urgent & Useful: “Start Today: 5 Quick Steps For Urban Gardening Success!”

6. Try Numbered Lists

Ever noticed how many listicles there are floating around the internet? Feel like you’re seeing a lot of numbered headlines lately? It’s true – and for good reason.

Research from Buffer and CoSchedule found that list posts are the most highly shared kind of headlines on social media.

Why? They’re easily skimmable; they carry the promise of quick tips and pointers; and they leave a little bit of room for curiosity – what could those 10 tips be?!

Utilizing numbered lists is a great way to reach today’s busy internet users and let them know exactly what you’re going to provide for them.

And here’s a hot tip: According to BuzzSumo, the most engaging number to use in a list post headline is 10, followed by five and 15.

Here are two examples of strong numbered list headlines:

“10 Essential Tools Every City Gardener Needs Today”
“5 Surprising Benefits Of Modern Rooftop Gardens”

7. Tap Into Your Reader’s Emotions

Just like the best content appeals to the emotions of its readers, the same is true for headlines.

A headline that makes you laugh, touches your heart, surprises you, or piques your curiosity can help encourage you to take action and learn more.

Our emotions propel us to action in all areas of our life, and they’re a useful tool for content marketers.

So, keep these ideas top of mind as you craft your headlines. How can you elicit an emotional response from people quickly – whether that’s empathy, shock, or even anger?

Some examples:

“Garden Therapy: 6 Plants To Boost Mental Well-Being”
“Lost A Plant Friend? 5 Tips To Ensure The Next One Thrives”

8. Leverage Power Words

Using powerful adjectives and verbs can go a long way in encouraging people to click your headlines.

Descriptive and powerful words can help connect with people’s emotions and create a sense of urgency to take action – important things we have already touched on.

Examples of impactful words are terms like “essential,” “must-have,” “secret,” “surprising,” and so on.

You want to focus on getting people excited about your content and making them feel like they’re missing out on something big if they don’t click through.

Here are some examples:

“5 Critical Mistakes Every New City Gardener Must Avoid”
“10 Insider Tips To Help You Revitalize Your Urban Garden”

9. Ask Questions

The question is another tried-and-true technique for compelling headlines. Why?

Well, think about it. When you’re confronted with a question, the first thing you do is consider what the answer might be. By asking a question in your headline, you’re inviting readers to think about something and creating an incentive for them to find the answer.

You’re also making it clear that they will find the answer – or at least an exploration of the topic – within your content.

The other great thing about questions is that they allow you to tap into trending conversations, giving you an edge of timeliness and zeroing in on what your audience cares about right now.

Here are two examples:

“Why Are Urban Gardens The Future Of City Living?”
“Are Rooftop Gardens Truly The Solution To Urban Heat?”

10. Test And Analyze

Don’t forget to regularly A/B test your headlines to stay on top of which approaches, phrases, terms, and tactics are resonating best with your audience.

This will help you optimize them over time so that you can ensure you’re getting the most juice from the squeeze.

In Summary

Writing a great headline is no easy feat.

It’s a delicate balancing act that requires a good grasp of the data, intimate knowledge of your audience, an awareness of cultural nuances, and a lot of creativity.

Next time you’re crafting a headline, try leveraging some of the information we’ve shared above. This should help you reach readers where they are, and start driving more traffic to your content!

More resources:

Featured Image: Gustavo Frazao/Shutterstock

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Nov 15 2023

3 New Ways To Use AI For SEO & Keyword Research [Without AI Prompts] via @sejournal, @CallRail

More specifically, advances in AI-powered speech recognition present exciting new opportunities for businesses.

For instance, with CallRail’s Conversation Intelligence, you can get the most important insights faster to proactively address your customers’ concerns and make smarter business decisions.

By turning your conversations into easy-to-act-on data, this technology takes you directly to the source for information, ensuring your audience gets exactly what they need from you.

Want to learn more about how conversation intelligence can fuel your strategy? Download CallRail’s new ebook.

In the meantime, let’s dive into three of the ways you can start using AI to your advantage.

1. Identify SEO Trends & Patterns Without Prompts

One of the key ways AI has revolutionized SEO is by improving the way businesses conduct research.

Now, with the power of AI research tools, you can process vast amounts of data and identify patterns and insights that would be impossible to uncover manually.

For instance, you can use AI monitoring and listening tools to:

Stay on top of industry trends.
Monitor your competitors.
Identify opportunities for engagement with customers.
Track customer sentiment and respond quickly to negative feedback.

Start by using conversation intelligence to analyze the language your customers and prospects use during calls to discover what they really want.

How To Do This

Set up CallRail’s Conversation Intelligence.
Determine which key terms are important to your business and set up Key Term Spotting to automatically detect how often those terms are (or arenʼt) used in conversations.
Use these insights to adapt your marketing strategies or sales talk tracks to get better results.

With tools like CallRail’s Call Tracking, you can gain even more valuable insights into your customers’ journey.

Examine your web visitor tracking data to identify which campaigns, keywords, and ads your leads interacted with along their journey, making it much easier to know what’s actually working.

Get the ebook to learn more about how calls can boost your marketing efforts.

2. Mine Data To Enhance Online Discoverability & Increase Local SEO Market Share

Another advantage of AI technology is that you can leverage the data you collect to enhance your search discoverability.

With conversation intelligence, you can automatically identify key terms spoken in phone calls and map their frequency to spot emerging trends quickly.

You can then see how the most frequently spoken terms and phrases on your calls compare to the keywords you target for your marketing campaigns and use this data to boost your SEO and keyword bidding strategies.

Compare what your customers say they want to what your business actually offers, and fill in any gaps between the words you use to market your business and the terms your customers are using.

By using AI to analyze the top trends in your customer calls, you’re able to spot new opportunities for your business and better serve the needs of your audience.

How To Do It

Review the Key Terms Spotted report in Conversation Intelligence to identify the most commonly-spoken words and phrases at a glance.
Check Call Highlights for recommendations of relevant and powerful keywords and phrases not set up in Key Terms Spotting.
Use insights from both reports to further refine your SEO and keyword bidding strategies and respond to customer sentiment appropriately.

Find out more about how to use AI to turn your calls into a competitive advantage.

3. Use Voice-Recognition AI To Create Human-First Conversational, SEO-Driven Content

Although using AI for content generation is nothing new, only recently have marketers been able to refine their use of the technology for more authentic results.

In the past, there’s been a negative stigma associated with AI writing – for one, the data that some AI models use is outdated, but also, AI tools have been known to plagiarize content from other websites.

Today, however, there are more advanced AI tools for content generation, which allow SEO professionals to create higher-quality content that ranks well in organic search.

Plus, with insights from conversation intelligence, you can ask an AI content generation tool, like ChatGPT, to generate content topics or even a rough draft based on popular keywords and phrases your customers are using.

Then, once you have something to work with, you can go in and add your human touch to make sure the content really resonates with your target audience.

Try this:

Sign up for an AI-based writing service, or use Microsoftʼs ChatGPT or Google Bard for free!
Use keyword terms and phrases surfaced from Conversation Intelligence and ask it to generate interesting topics based on those keywords.
Use your AI writing tool of choice to generate drafts, but remember to put your brand’s personal spin and the human touch on your work before you press publish.

Learn more about how to use call data to improve your content strategy in CallRail’s latest ebook.

Start Using Next Generation AI With CallRail, Now

With recent advancements in AI technology, marketers are able to make significant improvements in their strategies – from research, to search and SEO discoverability, to content creation.

Are you ready to start leveraging AI to enhance your marketing results?

Learn more in CallRail’s new ebook, Unlock your marketing potential: Use AI to turn your calls into a competitive advantage, and try these services today, 100% risk-free for 14 days!

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Oct 25 2023

How To Perform Website Experiments [+ SEJ Experiment Walk-Through & Results] via @sejournal, @Juxtacognition

How do you know what to change on your website or landing page to make it more effective?

Are the tweaks and tests you made to your site really successful? Or do they just look successful?

Could the best practices you’ve been following for years actually be what’s holding you back from achieving your goals and KPIs?

If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions or ones like it, it’s time to run your own website experiment.

Learn a step-by-step process for conducting website experiments to help you get the data you need to make good decisions.

We’ll show you how to set up and design experiments to collect data that will have the most value and impact for you and your audience.

You’ll learn:

When to run an experiment: Learn how and when to run your experiments to get the most informative and accurate data.
How to avoid data disasters: Learn how to prevent other factors from influencing your results and what to do if things do go as expected.
Experiment design: Tips for working with low-traffic sites, reducing costs caused by testing, and other challenges you’ll face when testing and running experiments.

Join our very own Angie Nikoleychuk, Content Marketing Manager, and learn the key factors to focus on when running website experiments, how to manage your data collection, and how to learn about the things that matter to your audience.

PLUS: You’ll get an exclusive walk-through of our new ad experiment, where we examined how ad types and layouts affect user behavior on our website. You’ll never guess what we found. We sure didn’t!

Don’t miss out on this opportunity!

View the slides below, download your copy of the resources, and watch on demand to learn how to run easy experiments on your site.

Join Us For Our Next Webinar!

How To Boost 2024 SEO Performance With Pillar Pages & Topic Clusters

Join SEO experts and Conductor’s Customer Success Managers, Alex Carchietta and Zack Kadish, to learn how effective pillar pages and clustered content improve site structure, internal linking, and on-page SEO.

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Oct 19 2023

The 19 Best Market Research Tools Of 2023 via @sejournal, @annabellenyst

Building a successful business is no easy feat, especially in a world where consumers have more options – and distractions – than ever before.

That’s why market research is essential to any business marketing plan and marketing strategy.

Market research lets you learn more about our target consumers and their behavior, spot emerging trends, uncover important data, and make informed business decisions.

But with so many target consumers out there and so many places and methods to reach them, where should you start?

In this article, we’ll cover some of the best market research tools available to you across a variety of tactics and approaches.

Let’s get started.

1. SurveyMonkey

Screenshot from SurveyMonkey, September 2023

One of the more well-known survey tools, SurveyMonkey offers a broad list of features and capabilities for creating audience surveys.

Whether you want to create your own survey or choose from one of its 250+ expert-created templates, SurveyMonkey offers a user-friendly interface that enables you to customize your surveys to your needs.

It also offers a suite of helpful features, including AI-powered knowledge to help you pose the right questions, as well as built-in reporting and analytics.

Pricing:

SurveyMonkey offers a free Basic tier with unlimited surveys featuring up to 10 questions and 10 responses per survey.
Individual plans start at $39/month with unlimited surveys and questions, and up to 15,000 responses per year.
Team plans start at $25/user/month, starting at three users. This level also gives you unlimited surveys and questions, but offers 50,000 responses per year.

2. Typeform

Screenshot from Typeform, September 2023

Typeform is an easy-to-use tool focused on helping users create intuitive and engaging forms, surveys, quizzes, polls, and more. Its selling point is the ability to create truly conversational, beautiful forms.

With Typeform, you can create slick surveys with customizable interactive elements, such as images and videos, that encourage your audience to take action. Its focus on interactivity makes it an appealing tool for market research.

Typeform offers plenty of useful features – from conditional logic to creating dynamic surveys – that adapt based on answers to real-time data analytics and integrations with tons of popular tools, from Slack to Google Analytics.

The company even offers a standalone video tool, VideoAsk, where users can create “video forms” to prompt responses.

Pricing:

Typeform offers a Free plan with unlimited typeforms and 10 responses per month.
Paid plans start at $25/month billed annually for Basic, $50/month billed annually for Plus, and $83/month billed annually for Business.
The company also offers an Enterprise plan.

3. BuzzSumo

Screenshot from Buzzsumo, September 2023

BuzzSumo is a content research and analysis tool that can help you gather some powerful market insights.

Regarding market research, BuzzSumo can help you understand the content landscape in your industry (and beyond), find out what’s resonating with your target consumers, identify influencers in your niche, and track how your content is performing vs. your competitors’.

The BuzzSumo tool analyzes articles (over 5 billion!) and social media posts across the internet to identify top-performing content. It allows you to comb through five years of data so that you can discover the right content ideas for your audience.

Pricing:

30-day free trial (no credit card required).
Membership tiers start at $159/month billed yearly for Content Creation (individual) plan, $239/month billed yearly for PR & Comms plan, $399/month billed yearly for the Suite plan, and $999/month billed yearly for the Enterprise plan.

4. Qualaroo

Screenshot from Quaraloo, September 2023

Want to capture user feedback and deepen your understanding of market trends? Qualaroo might be the tool for you.

Qualaroo is a customer and user feedback tool that claims to be “10X more valuable than email surveys.” Using Qualaroo, you can add a survey to a page on your website or integrate it into your product.

The tool uses behavioral triggering to show surveys or feedback prompts in response to specific user behavior, so you know you’re targeting the right people with the most relevant questions.

Qualaroo also offers visual customization so you can get the branding right, automatic language translation, a library of survey templates, audience targeting, and IBM Watson Sentiment Analysis to help you organize your results.

Pricing:

15-day free trial (no credit card required).
Plans start at $69/month billed annually for Essentials, $149/month billed annually for Premium, and $299+/month billed annually for Business tier.

5. SpyFu

Screenshot from SpyFu, September 2023

SpyFu is a great choice if you’re looking to conduct competitive analysis as part of your market research efforts.

It allows you to effectively “spy” on your competitors by viewing their marketing strategies, advertising history, what keywords they’ve bought on Google Ads, and more – which can help you find gaps in the market and optimize your own approach.

You can feed the SpyFu tool a URL, and it will instantly show you its results for SEO topics like organic keywords, top pages, backlink analysis, total traffic, competition, and more.

Not only can SpyFu help you gain an understanding of the SEO landscape for your industry and gain a competitive advantage, but it can also tell you how hard it might be to dominate a specific niche.

Pricing:

SpyFu offers paid plans starting at $16/month for Basic, $36/month for Professional, and $149/month for Team (billed annually).

6. Ahrefs

Screenshot from Ahrefs, September 2023

Another great tool for SEO and competitive analysis, Ahrefs is a popular choice of many marketers for good reason.

Using Ahrefs, you can learn more about the search landscape of your market, discover what keywords your customers are searching for, track your competitors, and analyze content in your industry to inform your own strategies.

With its keyword and content capabilities, Ahrefs will help you find gaps and opportunities in the market so that you can improve your content, your site, and your search visibility.

Pricing:

Website owners can sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free limited access to its Site Explorer and Site Audit tools.
Paid plans start at $83/month for Lite, $166/month for Standard, $333/month for Advanced, and $833/month for Enterprise (billed annually).

7. Delve AI

Screenshot from Delve AI, September 2023

User personas are a crucial facet of an effective marketing strategy – and as such, developing them is a common step in any market research process.

Thanks to tools like Delve AI, it’s easier than ever to build user personas.

Delve AI offers a suite of persona-building tools based on your needs and the data available to you. Depending on what stage your business is in, you can generate:

Competitor personas using Delve AI’s data.
Social personas based on your social audience.
Customer personas using your customer information.
Live personas for your website based on Google Analytics data.

Beyond its multi-channel capabilities, Delve AI uses AI algorithms for accuracy in personas, offers behavioral insights, real-time updates to your personas, and more.

Pricing:

The company offers a free Lite plan.
Business plans start at $71/month for Standard, $159/month for the Growth tier, and $439/month for Pro (billed annually).
Agency plans start at $167/month for Standard, $343/month for Growth, and $687/month for the Pro tier (billed annually).

8. Sprout Social

Screenshot from Sprout Social, September 2023

We don’t need to tell you about the importance of social media when it comes to connecting with your audience and driving business success. It can also play a major role where market research is concerned.

Sprout Social offers a robust suite of social media management features. Perhaps the most useful for market research are social listening features – which allow you to track market trends, industry keywords, and social conversations – and its competitor analysis capabilities.

It also provides insights into audience demographics, behavior, and interests, which you can use to inform your marketing approach.

Pricing:

Free 30-day trial.
Plans start at $249/month for Standard, $399/month for Professional, and $499/month for Advanced.
Sprout Social also offers an Enterprise tier plan.

9. Google Trends

Screenshot from Google Trends, September 2023

How can you supercharge your market research efforts? Look to search data.

Google Trends is an incredible tool that enables you to analyze real-time and historical search data to discover market trends, up-to-date consumer insights, and more.

By using this tool to access the latest information on how people search on Google, you can spot emerging interests and opportunity areas, and keep an eye on what consumers are most interested in.

It also offers location filtering so that you can see what’s trending in any given market.

Pricing:

10. Statista

Screenshot from Statista, September 2023

If you’re looking for data and statistics on pretty much anything in the world of business and marketing, you might want to check out Statista.

It’s a business intelligence platform that provides “statistics, reports, and insights on over 80,000 topics from 22,500 sources in 170 industries.” This means that if you’re looking for specific market research insights, Statista most likely has something to fit your needs.

From in-depth reports to data visualizations and industry forecasts, Statista can give you reliable insights into what’s happening in markets around the world, and highlight market and consumer trends.

Pricing:

Free Basic account available.
Paid accounts start at $149/month for Starter and $490/month for Personal (billed annually), with more options available.

11. Qualtrics

Screenshot from Qualtrics, September 2023

If you’re looking for something extremely robust, Qualtrics’ market research platform is an all-in-one, AI-powered solution for your market research needs.

It offers a suite of features and capabilities, including:

Panel Management: Enables you to create research panels from email lists, site visitors, social followers, and more.
On-Demand Respondents: Companies can pay for access to survey respondents that match their target demographic.
Product Development: Get access to early feedback on your new products and services from customers.
Purchase Behavior: Explore data on what is fueling purchase decisions among your target customers.
And more.

While it requires a more dedicated investment, Qualtrics’ software is scalable and powerful. It comes with automation and integration with many other tools, and customers have access to a support team.

Pricing:

Qualtrics offers a free survey maker tool with up to 500 responses.
For pricing details, reach out to the Qualtrics team.

12. Temper

Screenshot from Temper, September 2023

It’s important to stay on top of how your customers feel about your business, services, and products – and Temper provides a super simple way to do just that.

The concept is simple: Come up with a simple question you want to ask your question, and your customers can respond by clicking a smiley face that corresponds to how they feel.

You might want to ask your customers, “How do you feel about our new product?” or “Please rate your experience with our customer support team.” With just a little bit of code, you can place a Temper widget on your webpage, in a blog post, or in an email footer and get quick feedback on audience sentiment.

Pricing:

Plans start at $12/month for Hobby tier, $49/month for Pro, $89/month for Business, and $199/month for White Label.
Temper offers a 60-day risk-free, money-back guarantee.

13. Quora

You’ve likely heard of the question-and-answer site Quora, but have you considered its potential as a market research tool?

Quora is an online community where real people can go to ask questions about anything they’d like, and share their experiences and opinions with others via answers.

It offers a unique opportunity for brands to conduct market research within their specific industry or area by connecting with Quora’s diverse community of consumers, professionals, and others.

Try searching Quora for topics related to your business or niche, and look at what types of conversations are trending. Or, you could ask a question yourself!

It’s a great tool for engaging your audience, keeping an eye on your competitors, and even developing new ideas for content, product development, and more.

Pricing:

Quora is free to use, though it also offers separate business solutions.

14. Crunchbase

Screenshot from Crunchbase, September 2023

Crunchbase is a handy tool for getting a good picture of your industry landscape and how your competitors are faring.

It’s a database of companies that includes information like funding round data, investors, and financial information for each business. It also includes information such as employee headcount, leadership data, and more.

You can search Crunchbase by region or industry, allowing you to see how other companies in your niche are growing, and who is deciding to fund them. This can help you identify investment opportunities and market gaps, or even just gauge the overall health of your industry.

Pricing:

Crunchbase offers a Free plan where you can preview profile pages at no cost.
Paid options start at $29/month for Starter and $49/month for Pro (billed annually).
An Enterprise option is also available with custom billing.

15. Google Market Finder

Screenshot from Google Market Finder, September 2023

Another excellent market research tool from Google is Market Finder. This free, interactive tool is focused mostly on researching target markets – so you can use it to discover which markets might have the most potential for your company, monitor demand for your products or services, and more.

There are two primary features within Market Finder:

Test your export readiness. By providing your company’s URL and completing a short quiz, the tool will grade your “readiness” to expand into new markets abroad.
Dive into new markets. You can take another short quiz that will suggest new market recommendations based on the information you provide, as well as external data like search volume and Google Ads.

Market Finder can also integrate with your Google Analytics data for more accurate information.

Pricing:

16. Semrush

Screenshot from Market Explorer, September 2023

Semrush is a one-stop marketing tool that can be leveraged to gain incredibly useful market research insights.

The company offers features dedicated to this type of research, such as its Market Explorer tool, which enables you to get quick information on your specific industry, conduct an analysis of market share, and benchmark your business against your competitors. You can also use the tool to analyze the potential of a new niche or market region for your business.

You might also find Semrush’s traffic analytics tool useful, as it allows you to go deeper with competitive analysis and target consumer demographics.

Pricing:

Semrush offers a free account with limited capabilities.
Paid accounts start at $108.33/month for Pro, $208.33/month for Guru, and $416.66/month for Business (billed annually).

17. Pew Research Center

Screenshot from Pew Research Center, September 2023

While not a traditional marketing tool, the Pew Research Center is a widely known and respected resource that can be super effective when it comes to market research.

The site hosts a robust catalog of reports, surveys, and research covering everything from tech and digital media to politics, cultural trends, and more. The data is unbiased and credible, offering a unique perspective into what today’s consumers think and feel on various topics.

You can use the Pew Research Center as a tool to further hone your market research efforts, providing you with insights into the attitudes and behaviors of your target consumer, as well as the various factors that are impacting their desires and purchasing decisions.

Pricing:

18. Exploding Topics

Screenshot from Exploding Topics, September 2023

We all know the saying, “I liked it before it was popular” – well, with Exploding Topics, your business can be the one to say this.

Exploding Topics helps you spot trends before they become super popular by analyzing searches, mentions, and conversations across the web to identify products, topics, and industries that are on the rise.

You can use Exploding Topics as a resource to help you predict shifts in the market and consumer interests, which can inform everything from your product design and strategy to your marketing approach.

It’s a lot like Google Trends, with some key differences; it pulls in data from a variety of sources and is focused on highlighting emerging trends before they take off.

Pricing:

Exploding Topics offers a free version of its Trend Database.
Paid tiers begin at $39/month for Entrepreneur, $99/month for Investor, and $249/month for Business (billed annually).

19. Loop11

Screenshot from Loop11, September 2023

In today’s day and age, you can’t build a successful business without an effective website. But how can you know whether your website will resonate with your target consumer?

You can use Loop11, a usability testing platform that helps facilitate user testing of your products.

Loop11 makes it simple to create a usability test and secure participants.

It enables you to view the user’s experience through video, audio, and screen recordings. Then, it presents you with in-depth insights and UX metrics to help you understand what’s working with your website, app, or product and what’s preventing people from converting.

Pricing:

Free 14-day trial with full capabilities.
Paid plans start at $179/month for Rapid Insights, $358/month for Pro, and $533/month for Enterprise (billed annually).

In Summary

Market research is key to any business plan, no matter what industry you’re in, what stage of growth your business is at, or what customers you’re serving.

From competitive analysis to keyword research, user feedback, and more, focusing on your market research efforts will pay dividends to your business in the long run.

And while there are plenty of different ways to approach market research, these represent some of the best tools available to you – and can be a great jumping-off point for you to get started.

More Resources:

Featured Image: LAONG/Shutterstock

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Content SEO Webinar

Oct 9 2023

How To Use AI To Enhance Your SEO & Create Better Content via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell

With AI taking the content marketing world by storm, many are wondering about the big questions: can you use AI to create high-ranking, effective content? And what’s the right way to do it?

How do you utilize AI to your advantage, while remaining cautious and avoiding common pitfalls?

These are questions we get asked time and again across webinars. So, I was excited when the Semrush team decided to talk about merging AI + content in their latest webinar.

If you’re looking for ways to use AI to create high-ranking, effective content for your business, you’ll want to watch this on demand webinar.

Get the key concepts behind successful AI usage, along with real-life case studies from marketers using AI for their SEO and content.

You’ll learn:

Ways to combine SEO & AI: Learn how to supercharge your SEO efforts by merging the power of SEO data with AI technology.
How to think outside the box with AI: Explore unconventional yet impactful applications of AI in content creation that will set your strategies apart from the competition.
Case studies that inspire: Dive into real-world examples that showcase the remarkable impact of AI on content creation, optimization, and SEO performance.

Join Margarita Loktionova, Content Marketing Lead at Semrush, and Andy Crestodina, a globally-recognized content marketing expert and the founder of Orbit Media, as they discuss how AI can redefine your approach to digital marketing.

Whether you’re aiming to create compelling content, enhance your SEO strategies, or simply stay ahead of the curve, incorporating AI into your process could be the key to unlocking success.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to gain the AI insights and inspiration you need to upgrade your content marketing efforts →

Here’s the presentation:

How To Use AI To Enhance Your SEO & Create Better Content [Slides]

Join Us For Our Next Webinar!

How To Perform Website Experiments [+ SEJ Experiment Walk-Through & Results]

Join our very own Angie Nikoleychuk, Content Marketing Manager, and learn the key factors to focus on when running website experiments, so your users stay happy and engaged.

Image Credits:

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

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Sep 28 2023

What Is Quality Data And How It Connects Search, Content, And AI Success

Data is the lifeblood of search.

The remarkable evolution of AI and the introduction of generative AI has been built on data foundations.

However, the success of any innovation, product, or technological advancement boils down to the quality of that data. Utilizing the correct data is essential when connecting generative AI, search, and content marketing.

Data is exploding, with the IDC projecting that the size of global data will reach 175 zettabytes by 2025.

This is twice the amount produced last year, signaling a significant growth trend. I actually predict more!

To adapt to this data boom, professionals utilizing generative AI must evaluate their data sources and identify the most valuable functionalities for the future.

Poor Vs. Quality Data

The detrimental impact of poor data on businesses is undeniable.

Poor-quality data is the root cause of operational disruptions, inaccurate insights, and poor decision-making.

According to a report by Gartner in 2021, organizations suffer an average annual cost of $12.9 million due to bad data quality.

In the past, data quality efforts were primarily focused on structured data in relational databases.

However, marketers now face new challenges with the rise of big data systems, cloud computing, and unstructured data types like text and sensor data. Managing data quality across cloud systems has become essential.

In search and content marketing, data has never been so important. However, 57% of marketers misinterpret data, resulting in costly mistakes.

This can result from that data via disparate data sources and the related problems with processing large data sets at scale

What Is Quality Data?

Quality data combines crucial factors such as accuracy, connectivity, completeness, and reliability.

Image created by author, September 2023

The accuracy of the data you use defines success in search – ensuring executives, content, digital, product, marketing, and sales departments are equipped with accurate information is essential.

Reliable data is driving increasingly intelligent search decisions that impact business performance.

Additionally, quality data management plays a central role in connecting the dots between SEO and Content marketing performance.

In addition to accuracy, several other dimensions contribute to good data quality, including:

Completeness: Data sets should contain all the necessary data elements.
Consistency: Data values across different systems or data sets should not conflict.
Uniqueness: Duplicate data records should be avoided in databases and data warehouses.
Timeliness: Data should be regularly updated to remain current and readily available.
Validity: Data should contain the expected values and follow proper structure.
Conformity: Data should adhere to the standardized formats established by your organization.

By meeting these factors, data sets become reliable and trustworthy and align with data governance efforts to ensure consistent and effective data usage across organizations.

Data, Search, And Generative AI

A combination of humans and machines creates a data and content marketing battleground where quality and connectivity are crucial to success.

The adoption of AI tools, machine learning applications, real-time data streaming, and complex data pipelines has further complicated the data quality process.

Compliance with data privacy and protection laws, such as GDPR and CCPA, has increased the demand for accurate and consistent data.

While the volume of global data grows exponentially, at the same time, SEO is changing as consumer demands continue to evolve, and search engines cater to these changes by creating new experiences and experimenting with the integration of AI in search engine results pages (SERPs).

As a result, marketers need to carefully reconsider their approach to data, technical SEO, and generative AI outputs.

Data Inputs And Generative AI Outputs

The quality of generative AI outputs depends on the quality and connectivity of the data that feeds it.

Many of you will have experienced this, especially in the early days of generative AI and ChatGPT, Bing AI, and Google Bard.

This is why we see more and more prompt engineering and fine-tuning of data from large language models (LLM).

Generative AI, along with tools like ChatGPT and Google Search Generative Experiences (SGE), has been the subject of much discussion.

Generative AI based on quality data analysis is already saving time and efficiency for SEO pros.

Percent of marketers on titles and metadescriptions

Image from author, August 2023

Generative AI can help SEO and content marketers complete repetitive tasks at a faster pace and with accuracy.

Over 98% of our customers are saving valuable time crafting SEO titles and descriptions utilizing BrightEdge Copilot (Disclosure: my company).

However, the value of quality data feeding generative AI also extends beyond time savings.

By utilizing quality data, marketers can enhance their understanding of consumer and conversational intent (the key to generative AI results in the SERPS) and understand datasets by incorporating external industry classification data, ultimately reducing processing times.

Additionally, generative AI can create training and synthetic data sets to support the further development of AI and machine learning models.

However, this evolution does call for marketers to adjust their approach to data and ensure;

Quality and Connectivity of Data: AI outputs are only as good as the inputs. Ensure the sources you use are complete and combine historical and real-time data. Avoid multiple disparate data sources that give an incomplete picture of your consumer behavior to avoid GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Integration into Enterprise Data Strategy: Generative AI should be considered an integral part of the data strategy. Ensure its inclusion from the outset and align it with your broader enterprise marketing goals.
Proactive Challenge Addressing: Proactively address security, bias, and accuracy challenges specific to generative AI. Assessing and mitigating these risks is essential for successful implementation and future compliance issues.
Focusing on Analytics Cycle Components: The initial adoption of generative AI should target specific components of your marketing campaigns and specific use cases. Testing outputs continuously to ensure applications work and guarantee success, especially when outputs are being produced at scale.
Prioritizing Business Impact: Prioritize programs that drive measurable business impact to your campaigns. Ensure any technologies you use are tried and tested, and innovations in generative AI are validated and backed by foundational quality, high-fidelity data sets.

Moving Forward With Data In SEO

When looking at how AI impacts SEO, it’s good to consider that every webpage has human and machine visitors: people seeking relevant content that answers their questions and needs and search engine spiders or bots analyzing technical content.

Data processing has become indispensable for assessing site content and informing digital strategies.

SEO marketers are now inundated with incremental data additions that can be overwhelming to decipher. We are fortunate that AI and automation in SEO are not new, and automated technologies can reduce manual data efforts and improve business decision-making such as;

Collecting and structuring big data to generate smaller, more valuable, actionable insights.
Improving tasks like data classification, tagging, and cleansing.
Online research, site auditing, and intent modeling.
Uncovering valuable insights into how consumers are interacting with search engines.

This also helps marketers who lack the necessary degrees or experience in data science to do this effectively.

Marketers who leverage data correctly can adapt to changing consumer expectations, keep up with granular search changes, and meet Google standards.

Utilizing a combination of unique knowledge and high-fidelity data (propriety) is crucial for staying competitive and ensuring that AI applications are successful on solid data foundations.

Marketers can harness the power of data to extract meaningful insights from the noise.

For example, retail marketers can uncover the issue of duplicate content, while marketers in banking can focus on concise content. Tailored best practices and industry-specific problem-solving give marketers a competitive edge.

This all helps create better, faster search experiences.

Image created by author, September 2023

Conclusion

Many SEO pros still do not fully utilize the value of data due to its overwhelming complexity. However, with the help of advanced AI, these hidden insights can be uncovered and understood.

By harnessing the power of AI-first technologies, marketers can optimize their content for maximum impact across multiple digital channels, adapting to changing technologies and consumer behavior.

As organizations forge ahead with their generative AI strategies, it is vital to remember the success of applications relies on the data that feeds it.

Ensure quality and connective data are central to your AI roadmap. Without it, success will be limited.

More resources:

Featured Image: 3rdtimeluckystudio/Shutterstock

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