You need to figure out who your target audience is, but most importantly what would they be interested in talking to you about. Identifying what and who influences them is something you should also look at. This information gives you an idea of the kind of content you need to create in order to drive engagement and resonate. In today’s digital world, learning about your audience is easier that we think, it’s just that not everyone sees it that way. Browser history is no longer a secret anymore, businesses can figure out where you’ve been in your internet journey before you even get to their website.

When you have figured out what content is most likely to resonate, then you can start creating it and mapping it accordingly. One of the easiest and most effective ways to determine what content is important and useful, you look at the usage of what you already have out there. Most of the time only a small portion of your content really delivers. Also, it’s not about looking at data, but using data to understand consumption and tweak it in real time – this is how you figure out what content is relevant.

Now that you know your audience and have an idea of the content you will create. You will need to determine which digital platforms you are going to use to communicate with your audience. Can your audiences interact with you anywhere on any device whenever they want? – how is your digital ecosystem? To determine which platform to prioritize, you need to look at the purpose for which the platform was designed and how people consume content on each of these platforms. This is not about minimizing content on different screens, but re-purposing and repackaging it to make it responsive. This you achieve by looking at the data.

When you have all the above in place, you need to know the impact of you marketing effort. This has to do with your ability as an organization to measure and react in real time. Everyone talks about big data, but do you have the necessary tools, do you know what data counts and for what? You always get what you measure, if you measure the wrong thing you are most likely to get the wrong result.