Two little-known ways to use audience signals

I just finished my first week as a full-time entrepreneur (!)

My first priority is filling my consulting book of business. That’s my largest revenue stream at the moment and has the most immediate potential to scale.

So I announced on LinkedIn and my newsletter that I’m open for business. Within 72 hours I had nearly 30 intro calls booked. I’ve met dozens of Founders, marketing execs, and solo creators and I learned a ton. 

After just one week I can tell that one of the biggest — and most expensive — challenges I can help them solve is nailing Content-Market Fit. 

That’s the holy grail. 

Get that right and you experience brand recognition, audience growth, and pipeline creation like you’ve never seen before.

So this week I’m going to share one specific part of my process: how I use audience signals to validate your decisions and inspire new ideas.

Without these insights, you’re left hoping that what you’re about to publish will land.

With them, and you publish content with Bradly Cooper-level confidence because you know it will resonate. 

This is the exact approach I used to scale Gong, Clari, The Reeder, and every company I advise to become THE content authority within their domain. 

In the next ~3 minutes you’ll discover how to use these insights to inform your content strategy so you can produce highly relevant and valuable content, plus you’ll see two examples of how I used it recently to fuel my content strategy. 

Ready? Let’s ride 

Real quick, what is Content-Market Fit?

Googles it

Content-Market Fit is creating the right content in the right format on the right channel for the right audience (thank you, Kevin Indig).

I like that definition. Sits well. 

To me, Content-Market Fit is when a marketer or creator has figured out exactly what their audience cares about (topics), how their audience likes to engage with it (format and style), and where they like to consume it (channel).

I suppose it’s like knowing your go-to order at your favorite local diner. You know exactly what you want, how you like it, and why you like it. 

Except in the content game, you’re the diner serving up spicy content and the hungry patron is your audience. 

They show up, and you deliver. 

Benefit #1: Audience signals validate your past decisions

I remember when my marketing team at Gong was writing an email campaign to promote a new podcast episode. It was a bit of a test because we hadn’t promoted the podcast via email much. 

As we were finalizing the copy, I had a feeling the biggest objection our reader would have is the time commitment because podcast episodes were much longer than our usual CTA of tip sheets and blog posts. 

And because  ~50% of emails are opened on a smartphone, I knew there was a slim chance that they’d stop what they’re doing and commit to 30 minutes of content on the spot. 

So I decided to add a final line to the email before sending it:

 In a single line I cut the time commitment for The Reader by 90%, plus cranked up the curiosity by promising it’s a game-changer. 

After we sent the email, I monitored the click-through rate (CTR) and saw that it was in line with our benchmark.

This justified the question, “Will people click on an email that leads them to long form audio content?”. An important question for anyone who wants to scale their podcast using email as a promo channel.

But I still didn’t know if my PS line was helpful or if it was completely unnecessary (like a second piece of cake for breakfast that I’m definitely not eating right now). 

Until I saw this comment on a LinkedIn post where I was promoting the same podcast episode:

It’s hard to read, but that little screen grab is the PS line from above. 

Here’s our exact ICP saying that the extra line was noticed, it worked — and he liked it.

Now that timestamp tactic is confidently added to my playbook. Money. 

But keep in mind, audience feedback won’t always be this straight forward and obvious. 

So keep a sharp eye on your audience feedback, like what they agree with, when they’re confused, and what new topics they surface. 

Which brings us to…

Benefit #2: Audience signals inspire new ideas

The fastest way to reach Content-Market Fit is by letting your audience lead you.

Because if you make listening to your audience a habit, they’ll tell you what they want — which makes picking topics easy.

Sometimes I ask my audience directly:

Many of those 52 comments are people sharing why measuring success is so important to them and the challenges they face today.

These are incredibly valuable insights. 

I used it to create a post that mentioned how I measure success to help give folks advice on how they can measure their content:

This post did well and again had a healthy comment section where I got more insights.

You can see how this forms a loop:

Publish content → Listen to feedback → inspire new ideas → publish content → listen to feedback…

Let’s Wrap 

“Social listening” has been around for a while. This is hardly a new concept. But the truth is very few marketers are diligent about it. 

If you take the time to engage with your audience, analyze their comments, and listen to their replies, you’ll quickly understand your audience better than any of your attention competitors. 

That’s how you unlock Content-Market Fit and become THE go-to source of content for your niche. 

Holler at you next Saturday,
Devin

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