How to engage with consumers

In content marketing, the necessity of "high-quality content" is often discussed. However, the most crucial factor for quality is whether the content genuinely engages with the target audience.

The task of "setting personas," often described in content marketing textbooks, requires two things: defining the target audience and deeply understanding that target. Since content is "information that is beneficial and persuasive to the recipient," the latter point is especially crucial for creating high-quality content.

In advertising campaigns, after defining the target, it's standard practice to conduct quantitative surveys, group interviews, and carefully analyze the insights gained from them.

However, unlike advertising, content marketing operates 24/7, 365 days a year. It's difficult to dedicate the same level of effort and time to research and analysis for every content plan. Therefore, one key point is to build mechanisms for engaging with users into your day-to-day operational work.

For example, having a community within your owned media where users can converse with each other, or including open-ended surveys about your content, allows you to consistently hear user feedback. This feedback can then become the starting point for new content ideas or help verify whether the information you intend to share is actually resonating with your audience. Another approach is to conduct social listening daily (or weekly) to hear consumer voices. Interestingly, by consistently listening to the world's voices like this, you develop a visceral understanding of who exactly you're creating content for.

This "method for deeply understanding your target audience" is the most crucial point in content marketing. How do content marketing professionals overseas approach this?

An interesting report appeared on the blog of the U.S.-based Content Marketing Institute. ( http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2015/08/personas-audience-wants/ )
It's an article interviewing speakers and content marketing authorities from Content Marketing World 2015, held this September, about "how they discover what their target audience truly wants."

Here's a glimpse at how they responded:

"Step outside the office and meet with customers."
"Ask the users."
"Put personas aside and meet prospects face-to-face. Buy a Frappuccino."
"Make time to talk with your target audience."
"Find ways to talk to customers anytime, anywhere, any way possible"
"Try becoming the target yourself"

These basic, analog methods were discussed more than I expected.
On the other hand, there was also the opinion that "We can learn from data. How many people clicked on which articles? What happens if we deliver similar articles to them again? Will they click on similar articles? Or will they click on other articles? We need to look at it on an individual level."

"I'm a huge fan of social listening. I think the internet is a massive ethnography," said Julie Fleischer, Senior Director at Kraft Heinz.

Rand Fishkin, founder of SEO consulting firm Moz and a content marketing influencer, stated: "Talk to real customers. Listen to their frustrations, watch communities and social media to see what resonates and what sparks debate, and immerse yourself in the customer's world. Feel their same struggles and emotions. That experience sharpens your sense of understanding the target audience beyond personas."

Michael Brenner, another content marketing influencer and founder of NewsCred, states, "What businesses need is to understand consumers. But starting with profiling limits your view of what your target is interested in. I think it's better to start with what keywords people use to search for solutions, what questions they're asking, what content they share, what sites they use as information sources, and which influencers they listen to."

Even those at the forefront of content marketing, like us, continue their daily, steady work. There's no magic bullet for deeply understanding your target audience; persistence, and perhaps even analog methods like direct conversation, is the reliable path. To create quality content and move even one step closer to solving marketing challenges, focusing on this steady work is actually the fastest route at this point.