Our Playbook for Content Research

Ever wonder how I write these newsletters?

It comes down to two things:

1. Seeing the world through the eyes of a marketer.
2. Top-notch research.

The first takes years to develop, but the second - well you can apply those tactics today.

Let’s dive into how.

Use Research to Know What to Say

Before I write a word, my mission is to know as much as possible about the topic.

I read, listen, and watch everything that already exists from articles to newsletters, social media, ad libraries, podcast episodes, YouTube interviews, media coverages…

The primary goal is to know everything I can—to develop an informed opinion.

While I research, I note down interesting paragraphs, ideas, images, and resources in a doc, with links if I need to refer back.

For example, as I combed through True Classics ad creatives in their Ad Library, I noted down their target audience for each ad.

It ultimately led me to realize how effectively they let their creative do the targeting.

Know What's Been Said

My goal is to offer a new perspective.

Regurgitation is a no-go.

There are a couple of tools I use to make this process faster.

If I want to know someone’s view on a topic, I use Tweet Hunter to go to that user’s profile and search for what they have said about the topic.

I also use it to research the top tweets about a topic.

Podcasts are a gold mine of insights that can’t be found elsewhere.

We heard James Clear’s “word-of-mouth” book launch strategy on Tim Ferriss’ podcast that’s not mentioned elsewhere.

The problem - podcasts aren’t usually searchable.

So here’s what I do to read through the podcasts:

1. Go to the podcast episode on Google Podcast.
2. Right-click inspect and use Cmd+F to search for “mp3”.
3. You will find a string like the one below. Remove the rest until you have a URL.
4. Click the link, right-click inside the playbox, and save the audio
5. Use an audio-text transcribing tool like Descript to turn it into text. So you can easily read, search, and quote the podcast.

Use Research to Say it Better

After we have a general idea of the key points from preliminary research.

The next step is to look for actionable insights that you can use.

Visualize specific examples

A picture tells a thousand words.

Instead of just telling you that True Classic uses creatives to do their targeting, we visually show you examples of their creatives.

Find proof

From their Ad Library, we think that Bundles are a key part of True Classics merchandising strategy.

To validate our theory, we found a quote from True Classic’s President Ben Yahalom actually saying that “they are really focused on bundles” in a podcast interview.

Research the tool stack

When we talked about how True Classic uses in-cart upsell to increase AOV, we found the tool they used to implement this function.

Tools are a key part of bringing theory to action.

Go through the funnel ourselves

When possible, we go through the purchase funnel ourselves.

When we wrote about Hostage Tape’s funnel, I went through the entire funnel and purchased the product myself to see what their post-purchase flow is like and what our readers can learn from it.

Over time, you begin to see the world through the eyes of a marketer.

But when I have theories about why a brands marketing works, it’s super important that I do the research to validate my assumptions.

Then, and only then, do I bring these ideas to you.