A Cool Tool to Figure Out What Your Audience Wants….and GIVE It to Them!

We’re all competing for the attention of our audience, of our ideal customer. No matter how obscure your industry or market, the fact is competition still exists and always will exist. Consumers today are relentlessly bombarded with advertisements and marketing campaigns.

This is the case throughout all advertising mediums, but especially true in the digital world online. Email is the cornerstone of relationship marketing, sequentially leading consumers through the journey from prospect to buying customer.

But how do we go about getting members of our target audience on our email list in the first place? The short answer, is we need to give them something of VALUE. Basically, we need to give them an ethical bribe.

The most effective way to do this is by offering something that helps solve a glaring problem or provides a specific benefit. Lead magnet is a common term you see used in the marketing community. This can be delivered many ways: an eBook, video, email series, podcast, webinar and the list goes on.

Ok, so we know what type of media we can provide as our “ethical bribe” to get someone on our email list, but what content should we provide in the process? This is where things can get tricky. In our minds, we may “think” we know what our target audience wants, what content they crave and will ravenously devour. But assumptions are not enough, and they can be downright dangerous. Why waste hours of time and hard earned dollars creating content that our audience could give two hoots about?

If you want to maximize your chances of success and hitting a home run right out of the gate, you need some data to support your ideas. A great tool to quickly gather some of this data is BuzzSumo.

Here’s how it works: you type in your niche/topic and hit search. BuzzSumo then pulls up popular pieces of content relating to your niche that have been widely shared on social media. It even gives you an estimate of how many times each piece of content has been shared. Obviously the more shares, the more popular the content.

And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if something is popular or goes viral on social media, it’s probably something that your audience actually cares about or enjoys. Did the light bulb in your noggin just turn on? I sure hope so! Because now you can use this data to create your own content. You know what specific topics or information resonates with your audience. The guesswork is gone.

Let’s take a look at an example.

I went over to BuzzSumo.com and searched the phrase “dog training tips”. Below is a search result for Top 10 crate training tips that’s been shared 9,500 times on Facebook:

 

If you’re targeting people interested in “dog training tips”, this is an article you want to pay attention to and borrow from. You can click the link to open the article right up.

“Dog training tips” is still pretty broad. So let’s try getting more specific, and search for the term “stop barking”. Here’s an interesting result that turns up:

As you can see, this article from the Humane Society about how to get your dog to stop barking  was recently published and has already been shared over 7,000 times on Facebook. You would simply read the article, and take note of what topics and information they talk about. If you’re creating a lead magnet targeting people who want their dogs to bark less, you’ll want to swipe info from this article for your own content.

It goes without saying you never should plagiarize or just “copy and paste”. Instead, put your own twist on their content using your own words and in a context that applies to your specific audience.

Creating a savory lead magnet or “bribe” to entice people to sign up to your email list doesn’t have to be torture. Thanks to simple tools like BuzzSumo, we can know with certainty what type of content our audience loves to consume.

FYI, this doesn’t just apply to creating a lead magnet for email subscribers. You can use tools like this to create products to sell too. With a little thought and creativity, the possibilities are endless! Are you excited yet?