{"id":125254,"date":"2021-08-20T15:00:52","date_gmt":"2021-08-20T14:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/?p=125254"},"modified":"2021-08-20T14:19:58","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T13:19:58","slug":"how-to-use-keyword-research-to-define-a-promotional-campaigns-messaging-and-themes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/traffic-building-strategy\/campaign-planning\/how-to-use-keyword-research-to-define-a-promotional-campaigns-messaging-and-themes\/","title":{"rendered":"Using keywords for research: Keyword intelligence and insights for campaign planning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Find out how to use different keyword research steps and techniques to inform your marketing themes and messages. Using keywords for research means giving your customers what they want<\/h2>\n

As one of the fundamental, foundational elements of effective search engine optimization (SEO), using keywords for research enables digital marketers to understand what consumers are looking for online and the potential opportunities to capture this interest and attention through the creation of relevant content and optimized user experiences.<\/p>\n

Using keywords for research: campaign or always on?<\/h4>\n

SEO is often seen as an always-on, hygiene activity that is necessary before, during, and after campaigns but rarely seen as an integral part of a campaign itself. However although keyword research can be very useful for unearthing larger, more permanent content opportunities for an owned media presence<\/a>, the process itself can also be used to help inform ideas, themes, and concepts for a campaign, whilst adding a level of objectivity and rigor to campaign discussions.<\/p>\n

Marketing strategy<\/h4>\n

Smart Insights is all about supporting marketers to use data to inform their marketing strategies and campaign planning. That's why we recommend utilizing the RACE Framework to structure your marketing activities across plan, reach, act, convert, and engage.<\/p>\n

Book your free 1-2-1 consultation call today to discuss your marketing funnel. In your dedicated meeting, a member of our team can help you identify opportunities and challenges for your strategy, through the RACE Framework

Need a winning marketing strategy?<\/h3>

Book your free 1-2-1 consultation to develop your new strategy with the RACE Framework<\/p>Book consultation<\/a><\/div>\"Grow<\/div><\/span><\/p>\n

Define the communication task<\/h3>\n

Every campaign planning process should start with a clear view of the communication task and a summary of the marketing challenge to ensure that everyone is aligned and working to the same brief.<\/p>\n

The GET - WHO - TO - BY framework<\/strong> is a very effective way of articulating the overall campaign objective. For the purpose of this post let\u2019s imagine we\u2019re a medium\/ large B2B technology provider venturing into the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) space and planning a promotional campaign (using paid, owned and earned media) to raise awareness of our AI proposition:<\/p>\n

GET<\/strong> - senior IT and analytics executives in the UK<\/p>\n

WHO<\/strong> - are currently unaware of our company\u2019s increasingly innovative artificial intelligence (AI) offering<\/p>\n

TO<\/strong> - 1) become interested and aware of our AI proposition, 2) contact us to find out more information and start a conversation<\/p>\n

BY<\/strong> - providing clear use cases and highlight our company\u2019s authority, innovation and expertise on the topic of AI<\/p>\n

This summary gives us the background information we need to begin investigating what people are actually searching for online and the potential content and topics we can use to underpin a broader promotional campaign.<\/p>\n

Build your initial keyword list<\/h3>\n

With a clear understanding of the marketing challenge, we can move on to the first steps of using keywords for research. This stage involves a broad exploration of different keywords based on one or two \u2018seed\u2019 phrases. SEO tools such as Searchmetrics, Moz or SEMRush can be very helpful to deep dive into the detail.<\/p>\n

We can see from the SEMRush example below that the selection of one \u2018seed\u2019 phrase (in this case \u2018artificial intelligence\u2019) reveals a number of semantically relevant possibilities<\/a> grouped by theme, e.g. learning, healthcare, application, etc.).<\/p>\n

\"Using<\/p>\n

From this point onwards, the main task is to review keywords that are closely related to your initial search and start producing groups that contain the main search query supplemented by keyword modifiers<\/a>, i.e. keywords that produce variations without changing the meaning of the query. In our example, this will include terms such as \u2018what is artificial intelligence\u2019, \u2018future of artificial intelligence\u2019 and \u2018artificial intelligence solutions\u2019.<\/p>\n

Our B2B business company is likely to already have AI-related content on their site so it may also be worth looking at what is currently ranking and compare this versus a selection of key competitors:<\/p>\n

\"Using<\/p>\n

We can immediately see that our company is performing very well for certain high volume, informational terms such as \u2018artificial intelligence\u2019 and \u2018machine learning\u2019 but not so well for transactional terms, including \u2018artificial intelligence services\u2019 and \u2018ai business solutions\u2019. Based on the communication task for this particular campaign, these transactional terms will be very important. Whilst they may have comparatively lower volumes it suggests very strong user intent for specific solutions that our company can meet.<\/p>\n

Refine your keyword list<\/h3>\n

Now that we have a clear view of the overall keyword landscape for our main keywords, the next stage involves taking all these possible keywords and sorting them into more meaningful categories. This will enable us to start using keywords for research into defining potential themes for our promotional campaign:<\/p>\n

\"Using<\/p>\n

During this stage, it\u2019s also useful to reference the landing pages associated with each of the relevant keywords in addition to search volume and current rank. This will give you a view of what content already exists and how this could potentially be leveraged as part of the campaign.<\/p>\n

In our example the keyword grouping exercise indicates that there are three broad themes with related sub-themes:<\/p>\n