When you first started your content marketing business, chances are you had no trouble coming up with content ideas. But as you continually put out content, you’ll at some point hit a wall where you’ll start to have trouble coming up with new content ideas. When you get to this point, instead of trying to figure out all your content ideas on your own, why not try asking your user? After all, at the end of the day it’s their opinion that really matters. Here is how to let your customers guide you.

Use Your Email List to Ask for Feedback

One great way to ask for feedback is to just ask by email. If you have a list of buyers or customers, just send out an email asking if they have any feedback. If they get the sense that you’re really trying to help them by offering better content, they’ll be very willing to help you out. This works especially well in environments that have a strong sense of community or a “we’re in it together” sense.

Use Surveys to Get Opinions and Ideas

Surveys can be another great way to ask for people’s opinions. Surveys can be a lot more involved, where you ask customers several questions and get a lot of useful feedback. You can ask questions about how they like the content so far, what they’d like to see more of in the future, any unanswered questions they have, demographic questions and so on. Because surveys take more time to answer, usually you’ll need to create some sort of prize or incentive to get people interested. For example, you can give away a free eBook to anyone who answers the survey. Or you can give away a higher ticket item in a sweepstakes style.

Pick up the Phone

While many marketers are hesitant to do this, if you want to go one step beyond what most people do, there’s the phone option. If someone orders from you, chances are on their order form they needed to fill out their phone number. One way to get powerful feedback as well as to send a message that you really care is to pick up the phone and give them a call. Let them know you’re calling because you want to make sure you’re providing the best service possible. Ask them if they have any feedback, or ask them 3-5 questions you prepared beforehand.

Once you have your feedback, use it to structure your future content so it really answers your customer’s unmet needs. If you do the feedback process well, you should have a very good idea of exactly what your customers want to know. If you provide that information for them now and consistently in the future, you’ll have loyal readers for life.