How To Carry Out Research In Digital Strategy
The purpose of the research in Digital Strategy is to learn as much as possible before developing a strategy. We often enter into the strategic process with assumptions. When faced with a challenge, we often feel like we know the answer. Research is not necessarily to prove you are wrong, but can also confirm you are right and support your decisions.
The Research phase plays a core role in learning as much about your target audience, industry and environment as possible. This information will be the backbone of your strategy, ensuring it is built upon insight, instead of assumption.
The following activities conducted during the Research phase are intended to develop key insights that guide your strategic direction:
- Research Mapping: identifying all of the points of data that will input to strategy.
- Channel Analytics: utilizing your existing data on existing channels to make decisions.
- Audience Research: finding out more about the target audience that you can use to reach them effectively.
- Keyword Research: taking insights from how your customers utilize keywords in search engines.
- Social Listening: observing how people talk about your brand, category or industry on social media.
Research Map
A research map is a plan that ensures all areas of research are being read correctly and allows you to map this research to derive insights.
Think of it like a simple mind map. When creating one, plot the things you begin to learn about your audience/challenge throughout the entire process. We do this so we can look at all of our information in one place to identify patterns and connections between our findings. You should identify your audience and challenge at the centre and begin to plot findings around the challenge.
There are key things to look out for to ensure the information you are using is accurate and useful:
- Are there sources listed?
- How recent is the information?
- If it is audience research, how large is the sample? Is it representative of your audience’s population?
- If you are focusing on one nationality, is the research relevant to your country?
Owned Research
Owned research is research that your business owns, has easy access to and is directly related to your business. Owned research is valuable for the following reasons:
- Provides a clear insight into your own opportunity.
2. Gives the most accurate insights directly relating to your business and customers.
There are many different types of owned research but the most commonly accessed for digital are:
1.Social Channel Insights
2.Current Customer Reach
Social Channels Insights
Social Channel Insights: This is about using the insights that are readily available on existing social channels. Who is your engaged audience? What are the common demographics?
Current Customer Research
Current Customer Research: Does your business carry out any regular research with customers? Can you influence this research to discover more about their social habits?
Website Analytics: What way are visitors using your website? What pages are popular? What pages are not as popular?
Accessed Research
Accessed research is the research that is carried out by large research bodies and then made available online. This type of research is an excellent source of looking at multiple research studies to uncover a series of simple insights. There are costs involved so often this is something that larger organizations access. Look to organizations like Google, Facebook, etc. They have research and insight groups that regularly release free information and insights.
The following are resources available for accessed research:
Premium: WARC, ANA, etc.
Free: thinkwithGoogle, Consumer Barometer, etc.
Desk research is quite simply the research you can access easily through a simple Google search. It involves finding free to access articles, studies and research papers online. Discover demographics, insights and trends. Desk research is also the most cost-effective research tool as it allows you to easily access information for free.
Google is a highly effective desk research tool. It allows you to use the right keywords but also dictates the time you wish to look at them to ensure the research is relevant.
Google is a highly effective desk research tool. It allows you to use the right keywords but also dictate the time you wish to look at them to ensure the research is relevant.
Typically the best way to treat Google is to ask it questions about people. You can find articles or sources then with your answers. What do you want to know about people?
Audience research is great for building key insights as it allows you to identify the specific interests, channels and demographic identities of your target audience. This information allows you to build a clear picture of your customer and understand their online movements and where you might reach them.
There are a number of tools that you can use to begin to identify specific insights into your target audience:
- Facebook Audience Insights Tool: This tool is highly effective at looking at a specific demographic and their use of Facebook. This allows you to start to make assumptions based on your audiences’ interests (sports, beauty, fashion), location, device usage right down to how many ads your audience click on in a month (which shows how open they are to being served content in paid formats). This is accessed from your ads dashboard.
- Twitter Audience Insights Tool: Has the same features as the Facebook Audience Insights tool. Access from within the ads platform.
- Google AdWords: This is the platform through which search and display ads on Google are placed.
- Google Consumer Barometer: A series of tools that Google deliver for marketers to gain more audience insights. They include:
- Graph Builder: Insights about specific audiences on Google
- Trends: How search is used over time
- Audience Stories: Segment insights
- Curated Insights: Charts and data about consumers
- Google Keyword Planner: Google is often underestimated as a research tool. The Google Keyword Planner allows you to search for specific keywords relating to your business goals or audience. You can then see how those keywords are used in google queries. What are your customers asking about your product? And how can you address it with content?
- Brandwatch/Pulsar: Both are examples of social listening tools that can be used to track mentions of you brand, product or category online. They involve costs.
Writing audience personas can help you build your audience insight by seeing them as real people.
This is Trudy. Trudy is 30 years old and lives in the city. She is an accountant. She lives in a rented apartment with her boyfriend. Trudy likes sports, mainly tennis. Facebook helps her keep up with the latest Tennis Open results. She has plenty of discretionary income so she is a member of her local tennis club and tries to travel to Wimbledon each year if she can get tickets.
Now Tell Us Your Own Side Of This Story.
We would also like to hear what you feel about the topic we discussed today. Your feedback is very important to us. Feel free to drop your comments and recommendations. If you have a contrary opinion, you can drop that too.
You can also join our Facebook Page CRMNigeria for more updates. You can do that by clicking on the link or searching for our page on Facebook.
You Can Also Join Our WhatsApp Group Here.
Finding the right Long-tail Keywords? Start Your Journey Here.