Decoding Keywords To Forecast Marketing Opportunities

How can marketers build effective content without properly identifying opportunities? By utilizing keyword forecasts to identify how target audiences leverage search and behave online, marketers can amplify the value and online reach of personalized content.

Keyword forecasting, blending keyword research and historical evidence, plays a significant role in the development of effective online exposure and ROI.

Projecting the outcomes of your marketing campaigns with certified insights improves the business case for digital campaigns and grants a clear perspective for revenue generated from search and content marketing. Quantifiable keyword revenue forecasting can lead to more persuasive content and develop additional revenue across marketing channels from untapped opportunities.

In this article, we’ll go a step beyond keyword research to explore some of the benefits of keyword forecasting and how to leverage opportunities in content. I’ll also identify some best-in-class forecasting tools your marketing team should be using.

Evolve Cross-Channel Content Development

To be effective, content marketing strategies must be unified across all channels with a singular goal and established focus. Your search, social, paid advertising, digital PR and website content need to align with specific opportunities within your industry to increase engagement and drive revenue.

Keyword research tools help define opportunities with initial insights to shape your content marketing strategy through projections of search volume and predicted competition performance.

Use forecasts to isolate the keywords with the highest potential for return and underline the biggest content gaps within your cross-channel campaigns.

Keep optimization simple, and leverage quality content that fills a need for consumers, relative to the delivery channel. A combination of varied content mediums paired with a targeted approach, adjusted to varied user intent, can improve the exposure of content in a cluttered search query.

While a large variety of keyword forecasting tools provide rudimentary traffic insights, many lack the key metrics that marketers use to effectively project content marketing ROI. To develop a truly comprehensive cross-channel strategy, utilize certified keyword revenue forecasting tools that can project both traffic and revenue earned from targeted campaigns.

Identify Competitive Gaps And Targeting Opportunities

Keyword forecasting can help you stay one step ahead of the competition by projecting performance opportunities and identifying valuable industry shortcomings.

For example, with a comprehensive keyword research list (especially including keywords your competitors are using), forecasting can isolate where content is needed around the Web to assist users during a particular phase of their research.

Survey the search landscape of your forecasted keywords to see what paid advertisements and organic content rank on the first pages.

Understanding what content ranks today allows marketers to develop superior content on new media as search evolves with user behaviors. Tapping into content gaps allows brands to outrank competition and capture additional revenue from new trends in search.

While competitor projections are derived only from publicly available information and recent marketing campaigns, they offer a valuable look into industry-specific opportunities to steal market share and increase exposure to target audiences.

Keyword forecasting can provide the edge needed to claim digital authority in search and offer value to consumers by optimizing for user intent.

Inform Marketing Investments

Many marketers struggle to effectively allocate marketing budgets for the highest returns on investment. While campaign success is indeed relative, often the reach and return from marketing budgets can be improved with a better understanding of industry trends and consumer behavior.

Keyword forecasting shows untapped opportunities to boost inbound traffic from paid search advertising campaigns and organic exposure from well-crafted content. Tools that forecast traffic and revenue from targeted keywords up to 12 months in advance allow marketers to construct effective campaigns and highlight clear revenue expectations.

With revenue projections, marketers can improve how they focus resources according to gaps in content. Isolate channels that show the biggest potential for ROI growth and apply keyword optimization throughout all A/B testing campaigns. Constantly monitor performance and the competitive search landscape to quickly identify new content obstacles and opportunities.

Develop Your Business Case

By now, most brands have experienced first-hand the value of digital marketing investments but still face the challenge of justifying the growth of digital budgets.

As early as next year, digital budgets are expected to surpass spend on broadcast and commercial TV marketing, according to Forrester Research. Additionally, digital spend will account for 36 percent of all US ad spend by 2019.

Tools and services tailor-made to project content marketing ROI validate the need for inflated digital marketing budgets when paired with the proven success of search engine, social media and content marketing campaigns.

Leverage industry forecasts and strategic insights to enhance your business case for digital marketing with quantifiable results and expectations for the expanded investment.

Best-In-Class Forecasting Tools

A variety of industry-leading tools can identify keyword opportunities in future-minded content marketing strategies. Most tools focus on one specialty to provide the most accurate insights tailored to unique marketing metrics.

To generate accurate and meaningful forecasts, these tools should be used in conjunction with historical data and should be specialized to fit industry-specific trends.

Take a look at some of the industry-leading tools marketers can use to develop a keyword forecast.

• Google AdWords Keyword Planner. Provides the average monthly search volume, estimated cost per click and the competition for keywords submitted.

• Authority Labs. Provides Google organic keyword ranking data for keywords submitted.

• Advanced Web Ranking. Provides instant access to accurate rankings online, powerful competitor monitoring and localized search results.

• SpyFu. Identifies competitor activity and opportunities for paid and organic keywords.

Marketing agencies know the challenges brands face when making the case for digital marketing, and they have developed comprehensive tools that combine insights from paid, organic and competitor projections alongside historical data sources.

These first-party tools establish a complete keyword revenue forecast and provide certified expectations of traffic and revenue that can be achieved from their campaigns. This grants brands the ability to anticipate their ROI from content marketing and SEO before investing in an agency.