Content Research Guide: How To Do Content Research

When Sean Reyes scaled Shock Surplus from a small auto parts ecommerce shop into a $25 million company, it wasn’t because of influencer marketing or digital ads. It was thanks to educational video content.

Sean realized early on that content marketing fails when it sells a lifestyle without addressing the target audience’s needs. “TikTok and Instagram have been completely saturated with beautiful pictures and crafted imagery, but what isn’t out there [enough] is brands actually delivering value to their audiences in one form or another,” he says on the Shopify Masters podcast.

In response, Shock Surplus turned a solid foundation of customer interviews and industry expertise into a series of YouTube videos that quickly went viral, amassing millions of views and building the kind of brand authority money can’t buy.

The brand’s success story captures the power of content research in marketing—especially for small businesses and ecommerce startups competing against large corporations. Here’s why content research matters and how to start the research process, with lessons from Shock Surplus’s content creation journey.

What is content research?

Content research is the systematic process of gathering and analyzing data to produce high-quality content. Popular formats include blog posts, video content, social media posts, research reports, and white papers. The research process often involves evaluating existing content, conducting keyword research, doing a competitive analysis, understanding audience preferences, and tracking performance.

When small businesses create content that gets lost in the noise or fails to convert, the culprit is often a lack of in-depth research. Content research bridges the gap between your brand’s products or services and the valuable information your audience needs to make confident purchasing decisions. The objective is to understand what resonates with your audience. You want to identify gaps and opportunities, and develop a content strategy that supports your business goal—whether that’s garnering more clicks, boosting revenue, or increasing engagement.

How to do content research

1. Identify your content research goals
2. Select your research tools
3. Gather customer insights
4. Source industry experts
5. Conduct competitor analysis
6. Revisit research regularly

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to content research. However, a winning research process typically combines heavy data analysis with valuable insights from your target audience, competitors, and industry experts. Six basic steps can guide your approach: 

1. Identify your content research goals 

Before starting content research, define your objectives based on a clear business need, such as increasing clicks, boosting engagement, or driving revenue. Every effective research process kicks off with this business-driven question or hypothesis. For example, yours might be: “Can publishing how-to guides increase email sign-ups by 20% this quarter?” A well-defined goal keeps your research focused and ensures the resulting content strategy supports your core business priorities.

Research goals for content marketers might include:

• Determining the target audience’s needs, pain points, or knowledge gaps

• Discovering trending topics in the industry

• Differentiating content from a competitor’s existing content

• Deciding what content ideas are worth investing in

2. Select your research tools 

You likely need a mix of research tools—from search engines to artificial intelligence (AI) tools to academic studies—to help you collect data. A mix of tools can help you understand audience behavior, validate or challenge assumptions, and support your content with credible sources. 

Here are several popular free and paid third-party tools you can use for content research based on your goals:

• Google Trends. Based on real-time search engine results pages (SERPs), Google Trends shows you what consumers are looking up online. You can search specific terms, identify trending topics, and track the popularity of different topics over time by search volume.

• ChatGPT. This user-friendly generative AI tool can support your content research process in many ways. With a prompt, ChatGPT can analyze available data, run reports on a particular topic, or conduct heavy data analysis in minutes. Note that while AI tools are powerful, they work best when paired with human oversight to ensure accuracy and context.

• Semrush. This SEO keyword research tool can offer insight into the terms your target audience uses when looking up similar products or services. Use Semrush to find keywords, see how your competitors rank on those terms, and identify related searches.

• Google Scholar.Google Scholar is a digital database of academic studies and research papers, useful when you need authoritative data, technical articles, or statistics to support your content research.

• Sprout Social. Use platforms like Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok as research tools on their own, or use a platform like Sprout Social for social listening—revealing audience preferences and analyzing data across multiple social media platforms at once.

Your internal platforms can be a goldmine for valuable insights, too. For example, Shock Surplus uses its website, customer management system (CMS), and distributor software as research tools. 

“We’ve been tracking this data, and it allows us to see 30-day, 60-day, even 120-day demand across all distributors,” Sean says. The data not only informs which auto part products to stock, but also their video content creation—including what to test, review, and feature.

Use third-party tools to surface trending topics, and pay attention to your own data to evaluate what matters most to your target audience. 

3. Gather customer insights 

External and internal research tools provide a solid understanding of trends, but direct conversations with customers help dig deeper into what those trending topics mean in people’s day-to-day lives. Talking to customers adds qualitative depth to quantitative data, helping you understand the real problems, questions, and audience preferences that shape purchasing decisions.

Shock Surplus’s initial strategy grew from common customer questions about shock and suspension parts. “We were answering the same questions all the time, so I just made video content,” Sean says. The company’s YouTube channel now features hundreds of videos addressing frequently asked questions, like “What are the differences between shocks, struts, and coilovers?”

If you’re not already in regular contact with customers, these strategies can help you gather valuable insights directly:

• Run online surveys.Ask customers about their experiences, preferences, and pain points.

• Conduct interviews. Invite engaged customers to share deeper insight into their needs and motivations.

• Review customer service data. Pore over support tickets and emails or live chat transcripts to identify common questions, complaints, or recurring requests. 

4. Source industry experts 

Consulting industry experts validates your content research, challenges assumptions, and—most importantly—adds credible sources to your content. Audiences are more likely to trust information that industry experts have endorsed. 

Depending on your industry, you may already have access to relevant thought leaders within your organization—executives, sales reps, or in Shock Surplus’s case, a parking lot full of car enthusiasts.

“Our staff parking lot right now has popular vehicles in it. Those guys take part in community forums, Facebook groups, and So-Cal offroading trips,” Sean says. “We’re in those communities already.”

If you don’t have access to internal credible sources, look externally. There are many ways to identify credible voices, such as professional social media networks like LinkedIn, trade publications, industry forums, webinars, or networking events. 

5. Conduct competitor analysis 

Competitor analysis helps you understand how others in your market are meeting or missing your target audience’s needs. Whether it’s one part of your content research process or a standalone effort, competitor analysis can play a critical role in differentiating your output from existing content.

Keyword research is one of the most effective ways to audit competitors and identify content gaps. Tools like Semrush or MarketMuse can identify potential keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t, reveal trending topics among your target audience, and uncover underperforming content.

Shock Surplus was an early adopter of content marketing in the auto parts industry, and they’ve maintained their edge through accessible, informative content. When Sean first started posting on YouTube, he recorded 20 videos in 48 hours—completely unscripted—just talking about the questions and challenges customers brought to his team every day.

“It’s not about polished production. It’s about transparency,” says Sean. “People want to buy from people, not faceless brands, and I feel like that’s why we’re ahead of the curve. Our product is really knowledge and experience.” 

6. Revisit research regularly

A successful content strategy evolves with your target audience, market, and competitors—which means it’s an ongoing cycle of discovery. Even if your research process starts with a specific product, campaign, or business objective, it doesn’t end once you make a video, publish a blog post, or write a report. To keep your content relevant, revisit your research by:

• Monitoring content performance. Understand which formats, topics, and channels drive engagement and conversion to identify what’s resonating with your target audience.

• Tracking competitor activity. Spot trending topics or gaps in your industry.

• Updating keyword research. Identify changes in search volume, search intent, and related searches that could influence your content strategy.

• Reviewing customer feedback. Look at reviews, support tickets, and social media conversations to uncover evolving pain points or new opportunities to create relevant content.

• Refreshing outdated content. Add updated data, quotes, or new learnings to remain accurate and competitive on search engine results pages.

At Shock Surplus, Sean and his team know that there are always more trending topics to identify and cover: “We haven’t even taken advantage of the sheer volume of automotive vehicles in LA.” The data clearly shows Sean and his team the large portion of the LA automotive market they’ve not tapped into yet.

Tips to maximize content research

Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of your content research:

• Build a living insights bank. To prevent valuable insights from getting lost in scattered spreadsheets or email threads, create a centralized, searchable database of your findings. 

• Incentivize customers to participate. Ask your target audience to participate in surveys, interviews, or beta tests in exchange for perks. Offer incentives like discounts, exclusive content, or prizes to increase involvement and strengthen customer relationships. 

• Be wary of confirmation bias. It’s easy to look for answers that confirm what you already believe. Use your research skills—such as interviewing industry experts, reading reports, and looking at multiple sources of data—to challenge assumptions and stay open to surprising insights that might push your content in new directions.

• Automate the research process. You don’t need to do everything manually. Today, AI tools can automate many parts of the content creation process, allowing you to spend more time refining your content strategy.