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Kristina Pronyaeva

First-year student master’s degree

Faculty of Marketing

Plekhanov Russian University of Economics

Scientific Suprvisor

Fominykh Nataliia Iurievna

Professor

Foreign Languages Department #1

Plekhanov Russian University of Economics

Everyone knows the quote “The customer is always right,” but how does it refer to content marketing?

All Customers have their own opinions, desires and needs. A smart marketing specialist will devote some of his time and energy to listening to his customers. The reason is that content marketing is a user-centric platform. Companies that have nothing to offer will soon find themselves out of the market. That’s why in order to be competitive companies should search new “insider” information from their customers.

In the world of content marketing, there is nothing more important than client. The client determines website content, methods of distribution, an amount of posts in social media and of course the success of the company.

Companies that want to create a successful marketing strategy have to devote time to finding offers from customers. Today you can find a lot of useful information in the Internet. If users do not like the information you provide, they will simply leave your website and continue searching for a more suitable web resource. This is good for your competitors, but absolutely not profitable for you.

According to the Business Insider, companies have only seven seconds to make the first impression to the client. It is very important to make sure that the content of the page meets the needs and interests of visitors. If you have done all the necessary work, it is most likely that it will help you make a favorable impression on users.

Behavioral limits

Despite of the fact that some companies believe that it is enough to make a simple analysis of behavioral factors data, this is not true. Instruments, such as automatic web analyzer are useful, they provide information about the way of user, location, actions, where visitors came from, how long they stayed on the website, how many pages they viewed and whether they shared content.

However, such analyzers do not show the following data:

• demographic data, interests, goals, etc.;

• how many people liked or did not like the content you are offering;

• search interest;

• what decisions regarding purchases were made by people who viewed the information on the site;

• offline actions of people who visited website.

Without a complete picture obtained by combining behavioral factors and forms of customer information, such as surveys, a company will not be able to get the necessary information about the quality of its own activities.

Even if 10% of your blog posts drive 90% of the total traffic, it’s impossible to say exactly how this is happening and what actions the company should conduct to repeat similar results. Therefore, behavioral factors are limited in their and for full effectiveness should be compared with the data of customer’s surveys.

How to create an effective survey

Now that it’s reliably known that clients run a business – it’s time to listen them. How to do this? The answer is simple: you ask questions, and then acts according to the answers that were received. Asking website visitor, company should create relevant content on the website, change the marketing channels or find new ways to interact with visitors.

The best way to get user feedback is to conduct a survey. This allows you to get information about the preferences, behavior and needs of customers. It will also help you to understand the needs of your customers, which will help you to run more effective digital campaigns.

Surveys are conducted on the basis of certain data: characteristics, preferences and customers behavior.

The survey should provide the following information:

• the impact of content on users;

• relevance of content;

• roles and demographic data of users.

When to use surveys

Keep in mind that surveys are not suitable for all types of content and work better combined with blog or email newsletters. Surveys are an interactive format that is most effective on interactive platforms.

In addition, it should be noted that there are several types of surveys. For example, a company can make a blog post and run a survey through the SurveyMonkey platform, or post a message on Twitter with a special question. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages.

7 key points of a good survey

To be effective and gather the necessary information, the survey must satisfy the following requirements:

Brevity: follow the principle of brevity. Ask a question, choosing, if possible, the most concise formulations to avoid loss of customer interest. Reduce excess words and create surveys that won’t take a lot of time. No one will spend 20 minutes on answering questions. Or, if they still find the time, they will randomly respond, randomly choosing answers in an attempt to complete survey faster.

Details: do not ask questions for which you do not need answers. Also, do not combine multiple goals in one survey. If you are trying to figure out why customers are on your web site, ask only those questions that will lead to the your marketing goals. Each question has a specific focus. If you do not need a username, do not ask about it. Everything is very simple.

No restrictions: every question should be well-formulated and open. By asking such questions, you give the opportunity to answer in a broad manner, which will allow you to get more accurate information. Moreover, asking questions, such as “Why do you think so?”, after the usual “Yes” or “No”, you can describe a more complete picture.

Gradual: each question should be asked individually. If you post one poll on Twitter, that’s great. If you are creating extensive polls, be sure to consider each item separately. Do not force users to view all the information in advance or to overload with data.

Consistency: even if you manage to compose the best survey in the world, most likely it will not help if you do not compile a constant scale for comparing all your surveys. For example, on a scale of one to five, five should always mean one. This will help to avoid inaccuracies in both customer responses and your own interpretation.

Neutrality: One of the mistakes is the creation of tricky questions. It is not in your deal to write questions that lead visitors to a specific answer. This will only confuse and give incorrect results. For example, you should not say, “Recently you abandoned service provider X due to poor service and moved to our company, which will provide the best service. How do you feel about our company?” Instead, it’s better to just ask, “What do you think of our company?”

Timeliness: studies show that polls sent via e-mail are best opened and worked out on Monday, Friday and Sunday. Perhaps the results will vary depending on the clients, so analyze the existing behavioral factors and send out letters in accordance with this.

By creating surveys that incorporate these traits, marketing department receive reliable and accurate data from customers. This makes it possible to evaluate the quality of the content and determine if customers are willing to receive any other information. This allows you to grow your business and give visitors exactly what they need.

Conclusion

Content marketing has a long road to success. In 99% of cases, most likely, you will not be able to get immediate results.

Joe Pulizzi gave the following advice: “Build your content first, and then create the product.”

Analyze your audience, then create products that meet the needs of customers, as well as content. In the long run, this will give good results. Customer-oriented content marketing is the most successful form of content marketing.