Content Marketing Research

This guide is designed to help you research and develop a communication strategy for your inventions, innovations, start-ups, and business ideas. You'll find resources here to help you identify your audience, craft your message, and find the right channels to tell your story through earned media (think the ‘free’ ways to talk with your audience as a compliment to paid advertising).

This guide focuses on the research that underpins successful content marketing and public relations tactics. Use the navigation menu to find resources for:

• Analyzing your audience and competitors.
• Understanding content marketing and earned media.
• Finding articles and data to support your market research.

A strong strategic plan requires you to research and define four key areas. Use the C.A.M.P. framework to guide your initial research, creative process, and communication strategy.

• Context: What are the goals of your story now? Are you trying to win grant funding or speaking directly to a funder? Are you focused on increasing lead-to-conversation rates or broad visibility across your market? When you identify the goals and situation, you can start to break down the audience for that goal.
• Audience: Who are you trying to reach? What are their needs, values, and perspectives? How does your language need to change for each one? For example, the funding audience needs to hear more about your market validation research whereas your consumer audience needs to know how your product supports their work.
• Message: What is the core story you are trying to tell? What is your promise of transformation? Your message must be clear, consistent, and adapted to your specific audiences. You should research and identify the context and the audience before getting caught up in the talking points.
• Product: What is the deliverable? Is it a press release, a social media campaign, a technical brief, a video on the website? The product is the tangible genre you use to tell your story.

Use these library resources and references to understand more about storytelling and the importance of matching the situation to the strategy.