How IBM uses audience intent modelling

I spoke at, and attended, the Content Strategy Applied 2017 conference last week. One of the keynote speakers, James Mathewson, provided a fascinating description of how IBM uses audience intent modelling to map its content plans. By doing this IBM is able to align its content with the buying cycles for their target personas.

This planning involves the management of 300 million pages and 100,000 marketing assets, and they use a dizzying array of artificial intelligence and software to improve their search engine rankings. However, their strategy is actually very simple.

There are three forms of audience intent

These are informational (learn about a topic), navigational (find information about a topic), and transactional (find a place to buy the solution or get help).

There are two kinds of audience

These are business people and specialists.

There are two kinds of queries

These are branded and unbranded. Most searches are unbranded questions, and people only move to branded questions when they are ready.

There are five stages in the IBM customer journey

Here are the steps and the type of content IBM  provides:

1. Discover –  What is big data? web page
2. Learn –  Video on big data (“Four ways big data and analytics transform marketing”)
3. Solve – A product information page (“14 top big data analytics platforms”)
4. Try – The offer (Watson Analytics 30 day free trial)
5. Buy – A whitepaper (“Understanding Watson Analytics”)

IBM has invested heavily in technology

This is used to maintain consistency in the tagging of content, and in the tone and voice. It’s also used to learn what audience want, and are searching for on the web. A lot of searches are in the form of questions, so they mine those questions to discover what they are asking.

IBM avoids online marketing tricks

James said “clever messages to push people and trick them” rarely work online, and if they do the reader is unlikely to come back. Instead they focus on what the audience wants, and aim to meet that need.

It was the best presentation at the conference, and it provided lots of ideas for Cherryleaf’s website.