I’m a marketer. More specifically, I’m a content marketer.

Historically speaking, content has always played a supporting role in virtually every marketing effort. It has always been a necessary component, but ultimately a minor one. Then along came the Internet, and suddenly people were looking for content—something impartial to read, to light the way, to broaden their understanding. At first, we marketers didn’t know what to do about it. We were happy to light the way, but to do so impartially? That’s like un-marketing.

It forced us into making content the centerpiece of certain marketing efforts. To make it effective, we had to have data. That’s when content marketing was born. Here are 3 areas where your content marketing can’t survive without data:

1. Audience Targeting

Content marketing is about solving problems and becoming a trusted resource. Content marketers can’t solve problems if they can’t get a read on exactly who they’re addressing.

A common misconception is that the marketing team simply “knows” its audience. “It’s the electronics industry!” a retailer might say. “It’s people interested in BI!” a B2B organization might declare. But you know better than that. You know that specific demographics tend to generate the most revenue per purchase. We take that information from our sales team or POS and start generating the kind of content that pulls those customers back to us time and again.

2. Measuring Impact

From the number of “Likes” you pick up to the amount of revenue contribution you make, content marketing needs to be able to tie stats to content.

But content marketers won’t always have direct ROI—if you consider “return” to be equivalent to “revenue”—tied to their work. Content marketing has intermediary metrics like number of downloads, opens, form fills, interactions and SEO-related metrics that demonstrate its contribution to marketing as a whole.

3. Day-to-Day Productivity

As content marketers measure impact, we also make sure our day-to-day activities are producing results. If one type of content performs really well in an email nurture campaign, we should drop our whitepaper albatross project and go for the shorter, more agile content pieces that get quick wins.

On the other hand, if the whitepapers are pushing more leads through the funnel, then we need to know why and how to repeat the same success across various types of leads.

Content Marketers Need Data

Your writers need data. And if your writers need data, then you can be certain that virtually everyone in your organization needs it, too. If you’re interested in operating your entire organization with data, let us know what your needs are and we’ll see if Domo is something that can help.