Reading Time: 3 minutesHow well do you really know your target audience? Do you know them or do you just think you do? Most of us, marketers included, can be guilty at times of trusting our instincts a little too much, and while instincts can be great, sometimes they can be misleading. So how do you test your instincts when it comes to knowing your target audience? Today’s Tool Tip Tuesday will show you how to do just that! Discover what questions and queries your target audience is asking Google with an insightful tool called AnswerThePublic.com.
You probably already have personas that you built using market research, consumer surveys, social listening, and more, but imagine a tool that can essentially spit out what your audience is asking Google right now. I’m sure you’re already familiar with Google and Bing’s auto suggest function, which is great for coming up with content ideas. Just start typing and see what pops up:
Now, imagine auto suggest, but magnified! AnswerThePublic.com compiles powerful search engine insight into actionable data that you can use to shape your content, so you can give your audience what they really want to know. But enough talk, let’s see how it works!
Let’s say for example, Sarah has a site selling dresses and is working on her editorial calendar for Winter. She’s brainstorming blog topics from sparkly holiday dresses to winter dress styles and decides to check out AnswerThePublic.com for ideas.
Sarah does a quick search for “dresses”, and soon discovers her audience is looking for more than just holiday dresses and winter dress styles. Check out the results below, and note that these visual diagrams of the queries can also be exported to csv files for easier sorting:
This multitude of questions from Google searchers has sparked ideas for more content topics, series of blog posts, maybe even a video series! Browsing through the queries, Sarah notices that there are lots of dress questions having to do with events like weddings, graduations, etc. Perhaps she’ll decide to post a blog series on “Dresses to Wear to Every Event This Season”. There are also lots of queries for “dresses like ___” celebrities, which would make a popular series of blog posts as well:
Let’s say you’re less of a visual learner and would prefer seeing the data in a linear format. As I mentioned previously, you can export all of the data into a csv file, or Answer The Public also sorts the queries alphabetically for you:
All visuals are easily exported or saved as PNG files for easy and convenient sharing with your team.
So, now that we know what our target audience is asking, it’s up to us to take the next step and answer them. Our goal in all of this should be to understand our target audience better, to answer their questions, and as a reward for our efforts, to rank higher in Google’s search results because we have the best, straight forward answers. Of course, we all know it’s not as simple as just answering questions; we also have to optimize and properly promote our content to get the most bang for our buck (so to speak). Check out how to: Get the Most out of Your Content with These Quick Tips.
AnswerThePublic.com gives us a springboard for jumping off in the right direction, with the right content. Plus, who doesn’t get stumped for blog topics from time to time? New content inspiration is always a good thing!
We hope you found this Tool Tip Tuesday helpful and will take a few minutes to explore AnswerThePublic.com. Happy brainstorming!
