5 Methods for Audience-Driven Content Marketing Ideas

When you’re coming up with topic ideas for your content marketing efforts, it can be easy to create content about your business, your own goals, or your own interests.

But all good content marketing starts with your audience, meaning it’s critical to develop your content from an audience-first perspective rather than a business-first perspective.

This can be tricky to do, and can take some mindset-shifting to really get it right. But a good first step is to remember that no matter if you’re a B2C or B2B company, you’re still ultimately talking to a person on the other side of the screen.

Someone, one singular someone, is reading or watching your content, and that’s who you need to brainstorm ideas for.

So how can you actually put this into practice and find audience-driven content ideas? Let’s get into it:

5 Ways to Come Up Content Marketing Topics that Your Audience will Love

To create content that resonates with your audience, you first have to spend some time getting to know your audience and understanding what questions they’re asking and what problems they have.

Here are five ways you can gain insight into your audience and come up with topics that they actually care about.

5 ways to find audience-driven content marketing ideas

1. Groups and online communities

Places like industry-focused Facebook groups or Slack communities are great places to see what topics are relevant to your ideal audience. Reading through questions or wins that people post in these groups and seeing how others respond to them is a great way to see what problems people have and how you can use your content to position yourself as a solution.

These groups are also great places to find contributing writers or content creators, which helps reduce your workload while also building your community and credibility.

This same idea applies to in-person groups; if there’s a local networking or community group that you can attend, you’re sure to get some great insights into questions and pain-points of your audience.

It’s important to note here that these groups aren’t typically designed for plugging your solution—many groups have rules against that kind of post to begin with, and you’re also not here for yourself. Your aim in these communities should be to learn more about your client. Even if you don’t see a return on that right away, insight into your ideal buyer is always worth it.

2. Answer the Public

While online groups can be super helpful, certain industries may not have them, or they may not be super active. So let’s look at some alternative content-generating methods to have in your back pocket.

Answer the Public is a website that uses Google search data to show you what questions people are typing into search engines.

You can enter a term, brand, or product, and the tool will generate questions people have searched about this topic. By using this tool, you get a ready-made list of questions you can create content to answer, ensuring that they’ll be providing value.

**Example: Answer the Public**

Get dozens and dozens of questions from a simple prompt.
In this example, we searched for “content marketing” to get 116 questions.

One thing to note about tools like Answer the Public is that you aren’t able to get super granular details about who is searching for these questions. Some of them may be questions your ideal client knows the answer to already, or may be technically unrelated to the pain point your audience actually has. Use these questions as a starting point, but always filter which ones you choose to answer through the lens of what will be most valuable to your audience.

3. Google’s “People also ask”

Another way to unearth the gazillion questions that other people are searching online is to check out the “People also ask” feature on Google. You’ve probably seen the “People also ask” section or the related questions down at the bottom of the page. Now it’s time to make real use of these questions!

Not only will they give you other angles on common questions that you can answer, but Google may show you a question you wouldn’t have considered but that would still be valuable to your audience. And as a bonus, this tactic is free!

4. Mine your frequently asked questions

If you’re looking for a way to focus your questions on things that are actually relevant to your audience, the best thing to do is to take stock in what questions you and your team are always being asked.

Start out by scanning through your main client and prospect communication channels: email, DMs, or Slack messages are common sources) and make note of all the common questions you get asked.

Next up, ask your client success and sales teams what questions they commonly get as well as what questions they wish that your prospects and clients asked.

Then, start creating content that addresses those questions. As a bonus, your sales and CS teams can then use those content pieces in their interactions with clients.

5. Talk with your clients

When in doubt, go directly to the source. There’s no end to the wealth of information you can get from speaking to your clients directly, both for your content and your company as a whole. Set up client interviews where you can ask your audience directly what they need help with, how you could support them more, and what they need from you.

Many clients will take the time to give feedback, but if you’re having trouble setting up calls, try incentivizing them with a gift card to a favorite restaurant or a raffle for a discount on your service.

Tips to take action

Okay, so you’ve gathered commonly asked questions, client interviews, and notes from your client success team. What do you actually do with all this data now that you have it?

Pay attention to the specific language that your audience is using. What words are they choosing, how are they phrasing their questions, and how are they describing your service type? Paying attention to commonalities across your clients will help you create content that will help the most people and give you the most return as a result.
Keep in mind that you can create multiple assets based on each topic idea. One frequently asked question doesn’t necessarily equate to only one content piece; think of different angles or viewpoints that you can expand on from each question and how you can repurpose different content pieces.
While gathering client questions is super valuable to your content program, don’t let it carry you away. If one or two people ask a single question, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to depart from your content strategy to answer it.

Take all the feedback and data you gather holistically, and choose topics that align with your content strategy and further your business goals. This is how you create content that serves your audience first, but also supports your larger goals and business objectives at the same time.