MARCH 22, 2024

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Welcome to The Tilt, a twice-weekly newsletter for content entrepreneurs.

Data-Drive Your Audience

We often talk about the value of owning your audience data. But what data should you own? What data do you already own? And how will it bring value to your content business? Here are five ways to do it.

1. Collect relevant data: Asking for as little information as possible when someone subscribes to your content yields the biggest audience. However, asking for more information will help the business better meet the needs and interests of the target audience.

Strike a balance between minimum effort and maximum interrogation by asking a few questions and making them optional to answer. For example, include a dropdown menu on your subscription form to identify the topics they most want to read about. Or if geography is important, ask for their ZIP code, not the mailing address.

Asking but not requiring answers also communicates to the subscriber that you want to serve them well. And, if someone is bothered by the optional questions, they probably weren’t a good fit for your business anyway.

2. Discover how they arrive: When you understand how visitors land on your content, you can double down on the marketing around the biggest prompters.

To learn about your website visitors, turn to Google Analytics 4. Go to the Acquisition report and look under the Traffic Acquisition category. You can see where visitors come from (search, referral, social media, direct) and what pages they visited first.

3. Know what prompts conversions: Data can also tell you what content, pages, CTAs, etc., move the audience through their journey. Investigate what motivates an audience member to become a subscriber and turns a subscriber into a buyer.

Look for your web visitors’ paths in GA4 in the Path Exploration report. You can find it under Explore, select Blank, and then Path Exploration. In your newsletter and blog content, look at the most clicked links.

Caveat: People usually don’t take a direct path to purchase. They can wander, take a break, leave, come back, etc. As you grow your data skills (and the data), you can better understand the multiple touchpoints along the journey that are most likely to get them where you want to go.

4. Review your sales reports: The best way to know what your audience wants to buy is to look at your sales. What did they put into their shopping cart? What did they buy when they gave you their credit card info?

You can also use the data from free content products. What did they download from your site? What webinars did they sign up to attend, and which ones did they actually attend or watch?

5. Segment your audience: Examining all the data will show that your audience is not a singular entity. So, use that knowledge to segment them based on interests (and related desired actions in your business). Develop marketing strategies for each segment (you’ll likely see some overlap), tailoring your content, calls to action, and more to deliver a more personalized experience.

To effectively grow any content business, you need to gather and use your audience data. To do that, you need to have a website with analytics tracking and lots of ways for people to share their information with you. People want to have personal connections to the creators they follow. You can only establish that kind of connection if you understand your audience.

Helpful Resources:

• ​Unlock Your Content Business Potential With User Data​
• ​What Creators Should Know about GA4 and the End of Universal Analytics​

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• Spring pricing for CEX ends March 31. Be sure to get your pass and save $100 before prices go up in April.
• Join the conversation in Tilt Your Business: A Weekly Mastermind for Content Entrepreneurs at 12 p.m. US EDT Tuesday.
• AI is slowly taking over as the search engine of choice for more and more professionals. Are you ready for this? (Content Inc.)
• Joe and Robert ask whether Apple is high to do an AI deal with Google? (This Old Marketing)
• Matt and Lauren recap their time at London Book Fair 2024, one of the biggest publishing conferences in the world. (Publish & Prosper)

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