When it comes to analyzing what your customers want during the COVID-19 crisis, your brand has most likely had to do quite a bit of scrambling on an ongoing basis. But a new marketing approach can eliminate that time-consuming process easily and give you the perfect bird’s-eye view of what your existing (and potential) audiences need.

Intent-driven content marketing is a strategy where you determine what granular information a customer is intending to gain when using a search engine and then tailoring your brand content to meet those detailed needs. The results? Customer satisfaction and sales.

According to Digital Marketing Institute, intent driven-content is primarily sourced from Google's BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representation for Transformers) update, which was introduced in 2019 and has been in wider usage since late last year. BERT is an algorithm that determines the intent of search queries by studying entire phrases searched for, instead of focusing on a search by single words.

Phrase analysis, BERT has shown, provides more accurate results than a typical keyword breakdown. Here's an overview from Google to explain more about the technology.

From a technical standpoint, what adjustments should you start making in order to take advantage of the benefits of BERT? The good news is you don't need to learn a ton of new skills or jargon or take any time-consuming tutorials — the technology takes care of all of that for you. What you do need to do is start refocusing your content so it's high quality and relevant to the results BERT is coming up with, according to The Next Scoop.

Also, it's important to keep doing the right kind of keyword research so you glean the best results from BERT's focused results. Here are five key steps to help you accomplish these goals:

Shape your content to the crucial concept of answering a customer's question instantaneously. According to Neil Patel, the secret to success with this approach is specificity. You don't need to pour your energy into long posts, but you do need to use copy, video, images and audio to provide the facts your customer seeks on the spot.

The best way to do this is by focusing separate individual posts on searched topics and writing these posts up in the most intricate detail possible, including all product information, instructions, FAQs, and everything you can pack in there. You want these posts to be a one-stop shop when it comes to answering your customers' questions.

Boost that page speed. It's an absolute must when it comes to getting great intent-driven content out there. Do a full review of your current page speed metrics by putting yourself in the shoes of your consumer.

How fast does it take you from a Google search to hit your landing page? How speedy are your links? How quickly do your graphics load? If your pages are lagging even a little bit, or you find yourself feeling impatient or annoyed at the wait in even the slightest way, bring in your IT team. You run the risk of losing eyeballs more quickly than ever now.

Review all relevant links. You want the links you choose to be split-second convenient, yes. But you also want to make sure that every individual post or product write-up has corresponding visuals. This is the time to shoot new video, rewrite that product description copy, and make sure any links you offer outside your site are timely. Let your audience feast their eyes on as much detail as possible.

Properly tailor your content. Personalization of the intent-driven content you offer is also doable and will be highly appreciated by many of your customers. Customized messaging directing your base audience to products they have searched for is the ideal way to make this happen.

Continually crunch your feedback data. Surveying your demographic to determine how well the intent-driven content you offer is functioning for them should be among your top priorities. Listen to praise and complaints as never before!

Don't be afraid to find out how well your audience thinks you're doing when it comes to answering their search questions. Then, change what isn't working ASAP. The great news: intent-driven content can be managed with great flexibility, which makes it even more user-friendly for both your audience and your brand.