I read recently that Nexflix greenlighted "House of Cards" without first making a pilot. This constitutes a $100 million investment (what it cost to produce "House of Cards" Season 1) without any sort of test to see whether audiences actually liked the show.
Sounds crazy, right? Well, Netflix has something TV networks traditionally do not. Data. Lots and lots of data. Nexflix analyzed the viewing habits and preferences of 33,000,000 users before investing in "House of Cards."
The streaming video provider uses “a balance of intuition and analytics to analyze everything from promotion of its original content to which shows it picks up next,” according to LookBookHQ.
Content Marketing: putting data to work
We can’t all mine such a rich stream of customer information. But every business with a Web presence has data they can utilize to set marketing strategy. Everything from email open rates (which subject lines have the most traction?) to number of page views per session (what did we do last month that made our website more "sticky"?) can be put to use to improve your Web strategy.
Keep at content marketing long enough and maybe some day you’ll have enough cash on hand to hire Kevin Spacey!