Unique content, created specifically for each buyer journey stage, helps drive conversions and profits. This is why it is imperative to understand the sales funnel when planning your marketing content.
In other words, we want our marketing and the customer journey to flow together, so we can turn more visitors and shoppers into buyers and show up in their search as precisely what they’re looking for.
The buyer journey is a process that starts with awareness and ends with a purchase. It’s a linear path with a handful of different stages, each one requiring another type of content to be effective.
The internet and social media have caused consumers to be more informed, you must become an authority in your field and establish brand authority. Figure out who is coming to you for what they need, and create content that will help them on their journey by associating with your brand at each step. This is how they will know that you are the industry expert.
What is the Buyer Journey?
To determine the content you need for every stage of the buyer journey, we need to first understand the buyer journey.
The buyer journey is a process that starts before the customer even knows they want to buy something. It ends once you have fulfilled their needs and they are happy with your product or service.
We can also view the buyer journey as the interaction between a customer and a company. You should tailor the content created for each part of the buyer’s journey to the needs of that stage of the customer’s decision-making process.
First stage: Awareness
The first stage is awareness, where you want to create awareness of your brand and teach potential customers about your product or brand.
You want people to notice your brand at this stage. One way to do this is by reaching out and networking or creating partnerships for opportunities to promote your product or service.
Leveraging customer reviews can also help build your brand awareness.
Second stage: Consideration
The second stage of the journey is consideration. This is where the potential customer is thinking about making a purchase or choosing a particular solution to their problem. Your content needs to convince the customer that what you offer is better than what your competitors offer.
Third stage: Decision
The third stage of the buying process is the decision, where the customer has finally decided on what they want and are ready to make a purchase.
At this point, the customer has already researched what they want.
Your key to converting a sale is offering something of value that’s different from your competitors—for example, free shipping or discounts. This can set you apart from brands that provide products and services that are nearly identical to yours.
Fourth stage: Post-purchase
Finally, post-purchase includes everything from delivery confirmation emails to customer reviews on social media sites like Facebook or Yelp.
The post-purchase stage in the customer journey ensures that the customer has a great experience with your company. The goal is to turn an online purchase into a loyal, recurring customer.
Why Do You Need Content for Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey?
Buyers’ journeys can be very short or extremely long, depending on what service or product is being marketed.
They are also are unpredictable. If your lead were already planning on buying a product or service similar to yours, the journey would likely be short. However, the journey is prolonged if the lead is unsure of what they want. This unpredictability means that marketers must have a variety of strategies in place to make sure they are reaching buyers at each stage.
A buyer journey differs for every purchase, which is why getting qualified leads is not only about the customer’s website experience; it’s the whole picture. You need captivating social media posts, informative blog posts, enticing email campaigns, and well-laid-out landing pages along with an optimized and mobile-friendly website.
This is because consumers are no longer just browsing websites for hours. They seek out content through social media, blog posts, and YouTube videos. They read reviews from others to learn and make informed decisions. If you want to provide the best customer experience possible, it’s crucial to think about all aspects of your marketing strategy.
Although it might be difficult to convince potential clients at the earlier buying cycle stages, you can still do it by following a strategic approach. On the other hand, your competitors could work around this by taking a different approach. That means you can’t just try to target one stage.
If you focus on the awareness stage, you might educate many folks about why a particular solution is important. But, if your competitors are taking care of the pre-consideration stage content and you aren’t, you’re just giving consumers more reasons to fall into the marketing funnel for other companies.
Your content must meet their needs through every stage to keep consumers interested and feeling heard throughout the decision-making process.
Content Distribution Through Multiple Channels
Content marketing often has people focusing only on their website or their blog, but engaging the buyer does not end there. Buying guides offer information, blog posts are good for awareness and consideration, and product descriptions and landing pages can be the push potential customers need to make a purchase.
Nowadays, there’s a wide variety of ways to shop, which means you’ll have to think creatively about how best to cater to your marketing content. Setting up your site to bring visitors into proximity with relevant products or information is very important. Without the possibility of that happening, you simply cannot rely on visitors just stumbling across your page. Considering the number of products and services your business offers, you’ll see how important it is to be ahead in the game. Start using a variety of channels to increase your conversion rates!
Online Ads
When the right ads appear to the right people, your business can get fantastic results. You can advertise and connect with people at various stages, providing them with what they’re looking for and helping them move forward in their journey.
Marketing strategies can include targeting potential customers with ads during the awareness stage, then retargeting those same potential customers as they go through consideration and early decision stages.
Emails
A drip campaign is helpful to push someone to leave the consideration phase and move on to the decision stage. It will help your buyer remember why they’re considering your product in the first place. Newsletters are a great way to remind your customers that you are still around and to introduce and give access to new content. They also help build a relationship by making personal connections before any sale is made.
Emails are primarily helpful at consideration and decision stages.
Social Media
Social media is increasingly one of the most prominent tools people use for gathering information. Often, buyers will check for social media profiles to determine if a business is legitimate and to find out more about a product or look for reviews from others.
It’s important to keep your social channels fresh by posting original content, sharing posts from other users, and engaging with comments, likes, and shares. Engagement is significant for staying at the top of your audience’s short-term memory and getting them to remember you. Social media can also be a way for your buyer to contact you and it will keep your brand front and center.
Since social media is excellent for communicating with potential customers and connecting with potential partners. Social media posts target the buyer in the stage before and during consideration. Social posts and ads are also an effective way to boost impulse buys or help consumers decide what type of product they want before making a purchase.
Understanding the Marketing Funnel
Almost every business has a marketing or sales funnel. It’s a marketing technique used by companies to understand their customers better and strategically sell more things.
It explains the customer journey of events over time, from the awareness of the product to the completion of acquisition through sales or other desired actions. It is also commonly referred to as a sales funnel because its goal is to help turn visitors into paying customers. If you have consumers visit your website for the first time, subscribe to an email list, or talk to someone in sales, they enter the marketing funnel.
How does the marketing funnel work?
The top of the funnel is further away from making a purchasing decision, while those who make it to the bottom are closer to a purchasing decision.
Marketers are often tasked with attracting your buyer personas in the early stages of their journey, then handing over qualified leads to sales for engagement. Building customer satisfaction requires time and effort and has lucrative rewards in returning customers and referrals.
A funnel can be immensely helpful if a buyer goes through a typical customer journey. You can categorize the series of actions before someone makes a purchase: The buyer will probably start by researching where they’ll find the product they want to buy. They’ll then move on to researching prices and comparing different vendors or looking for discounts or coupon codes. Eventually, the buyer will make their purchase decision and complete their order.
What Topics Should Be Covered for Each Stage of the Journey?
But what topics should you cover? Start by identifying your target audience. From there, figure out the channels where your targets are spending time, and then develop a content strategy that best aligns with those channels.
Awareness
Keep in mind that a large chunk of your prospects will be at the awareness stage of their buying journey when you start to attract them. Your goal is to find solutions to their problems by creating easy-to-find, consumable content.
A potential customer is looking for an answer to a problem or reaching their desired goal. They want to find great content in your field. Content such as blogs, social media posts, and ebooks is the perfect way to guide consumers to decisions.
In the awareness stage, the buyer is not a great lead, because there’s no guarantee they’ll buy from you. But, with engaging and informative content (and a good service or product), you will lead your consumer to the next stage in the buyer journey.
Consideration
When a person enters the consideration stage of the funnel, it demonstrates that they see a need that has to be solved, and quite possibly by your brand. You must solve the problem and guide them to the next step.
You need to show why your company is the best choice for this buyer during consideration.
We consider this stage the middle of the funnel, and here you will find people who are seriously interested in your products or services. You want to take the time to build a long-term relationship with this customer, which will develop your trustworthiness.
To engage your prospective customers at this buyer journey stage, use social media, email marketing, and retargeting or remarketing.
Decision
The bottom of the sales funnel is seen as the final stage of the buyer journey.
The consumer is now making a purchase decision or converting. They’re ready to buy, but that doesn’t guarantee they’ll buy from you. At this point, their choice is to purchase from you or go on to your competitor.
These leads at the bottom of your funnel are interested in your products but are still hesitant to make an actual purchase. Give them the final push they need by giving them engaging content to finalize their choice.
The offer and content you put out now can dramatically change conversion rates. Knowing your customer as intimately as possible will inform what you offer and where you offer it.
Understanding the Buyer’s Journey in Marketing
In most cases, an individual starts completely unaware. They likely fit your buyer persona and would be interested in your product–but they’re not aware of it yet.
Without understanding your audience, your company risks losing potential customers in this stage. It’s important to know who you’re marketing to – their attitudes and beliefs. It’s perfect for mapping content to the various stages of the buyer’s journey and helps you with conversion optimization.
It would help if you started by developing the buyer’s journey for your business, which means identifying all the stages of the purchase process. Once this is complete, you can begin creating an engaging marketing strategy that considers the buyers’ needs at every step of the journey.
Engaging at Every Stage
As we mentioned, you need to use various channels to engage throughout the entire buyer journey.
Starting from the top of the buyer journey or marketing funnel, your audience probably does not know much about you, if anything. This is where you will need to establish your credibility as a brand. To gain awareness, provide content that informs and entertains—solidifying a position as memorable in your industry.
Partway down the funnel, your content should prove that your brand offers value or solves a pain point. At this point, the consumer knows of your brand and wants to know if and how you can help them.
Once the consumer is on the third stage of the funnel, it is time to provide content that focuses on sales. It seems like they’re on the brink of making a purchase but need some encouragement to get them to take the plunge.
It would help if you worked to gain their trust as a customer from the start through instant responses, consistent valuable content, and more incentives. Now that they have made a purchase, you need to make them loyal customers so they will keep shopping with you. Word of mouth is essential. Happy and loyal customers will not only spend money on your products, but they will also promote you for free.
Want More From Your Content Marketing?
okwrite is a content marketing agency that offers full-service content marketing services. We closely work with your team to develop a marketing strategy and provide relevant, best-fitting content for your business goals and audience. Reach out to our marketing experts for more information about how we can help you enhance your online marketing campaigns.
