How To Create Content For Every Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey

Nobody decides to buy something today when they get up; instead, they go through a process of research and assessment before making a sales call in SEO Marketing.

This journey is referred to as the buyer’s journey. Because customers are more informed and powerful than ever before in SEO Marketing, it’s vital to thoroughly understand your buyer persona and the journey they take so you can create content that helps them along the way while also establishing you as an expert in your area.

In this essay, we’ll cover the following topics:

Understanding the buyer’s path is critical in marketing.
What Is a Marketing Funnel, Exactly?
The Marketing Channels for Each Stage of the Funnel
Attractive Channels
Engaging Channels
Delightful Channels
At Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey, Create Content
Content Formats for the Awareness Stage
Content Formats for the Consideration Stage
Content Formats During the Decision-Making Process and Beyond

Understanding the buyer’s path is critical in marketing.

With the exception of impulse purchases, in SEO Marketing, the majority of consumers start their journey in the “uninformed stage,” when they meet the demographics of your ideal client (also known as your buyer persona) but are ignorant of or in need of your goods.

However, they may be confronted with a triggering event that changes their status or a discomfort that must be addressed. This is the start of their purchasing process.

A distance between your firm and its potential clients emerges when you don’t have a solid grasp of your target market. This typically means you’re producing material with which your readers don’t fully connect, which might lead to you losing them.

Understanding your audience, as in other marketing disciplines, is critical: how they think, the solutions they want, and the path they take to discover a solution. Based on your findings, you may begin writing a written content plan that maps your content to the various stages of the buyer’s journey.

Related: What is sales training?

How Does a Marketing Funnel Work?

A marketing funnel, SEO Marketing sometimes known as a sales funnel since it generates income, illustrates the different steps a client goes through before completing a purchase, from initially browsing your website and signing up for your email list to reading your emails and interacting with a sales person.

The functioning of the funnel is simple. Those at the top of the funnel are further away from making a purchasing decision, while those at the bottom are closer to doing so.

A marketer’s role is typically to attract your client persona early in their journey and pass quality leads to the sales team to engage. After they become customers, your customer care staff delights them, causing them to buy from you again and again and tell all their friends about you.

The funnel is a valuable tool in SEO Marketing when used in the context of the buyer’s journey. However, keep in mind that the funnel has one flaw: it assigns customers to the output. At INBOUND 18, HubSpot formally retrenched.

The Marketing Funnel’s Stages

However, before going on to your flywheel strategy, the funnel is a great place to start.

“How do we attract and engage this person so that they become a customer?” consider the buyer’s journey.

Whether you use the funnel or the flywheel technique, earning business from your prospects boils down to three simple steps:

Getting strangers to like you is a difficult task.
Attracting potential buyers’ attention
Customers are ecstatic.

As you create content that serves these tasks, you’ll assess where they are in their journey and the best methods to get the information in front of them.

Marketers (and salespeople) can now use content marketing to engage customers at various stages of their journey thanks to the internet. This is one of the main reasons why 60% of marketers consider content to be “very important” or “very vital” to their overall strategy.

The Marketing Channels for Each Stage of the Funnel

The first step in developing a content strategy is to figure out how you’ll reach your target audience.

Marketing Channels for the Attract Stage

Keep in mind that when you first start attracting leads in SEO Marketing, the vast majority of them may still be in the awareness stage of their buying process. That is, your goal is to make their problems/discomforts go away by creating material that is easy to find and consume.

At this period, a buyer is striving to solve problems, gather information, or satisfy a requirement. They’re seeking high-quality instructional information to help them find a solution, such as blog posts, social media content, and ebooks. Their lead value is low because there’s no guarantee they’ll buy from you. On the other side, those who find your knowledge valuable and interesting may advance to the center of the funnel.

I might be able to suggest the most appropriate outlets for your appealing stage.

Blogging
SEO stands for “search engine optimization” (SEO)
Social media marketing

Marketing Channels For The Engage Stage

When someone gets to the middle of your funnel, you know you’ve got their attention in SEO Marketing. They’re conscious that they have an issue to fix, and they’re working on the best solution right now. As they weigh their possibilities, they realize they’ll need to commit to a future purchase.

While the goal at the top of the funnel is to educate a prospect, here is the stage when they become a customer.

Related: What is a sales funnel?

in which you want to show why your solutions are the greatest match for a specific situation.

The channels listed below can be suited for your engage stage:

Email marketing is a popular method of promotion.
Retargeting/Remarketing
Social Media and the Internet

Your bottom-of-the-funnel prospects must likewise be engaged.

The real purchasing decision is made at the bottom of the funnel. They’re anxious to purchase, but that doesn’t imply they’ll purchase from you. That is the final decision they must make: where will they look for the answer?

Most of the time, prospects at the bottom of your funnel only require a final nudge and a compelling call-to-action to persuade them to purchase. The proper offer and content at this point may have a significant influence on your conversions.

Marketing Channels For The Delight Stage

Marketing should not stop once a consumer has been acquired. Beyond the transaction, building a relationship with your client may lead to higher customer lifetime value, as well as word-of-mouth referrals and other advantages SEO Marketing.

The goal is to exceed their expectations by providing a straightforward and smooth customer experience.

Some of the top channels for your enjoyment stage are as follows:

Email marketing is a popular method of promotion.
Retargeting/Remarketing
Other Self-Service Channels and Knowledge Bases
Customer service using chatbots and live chat
Loyalty Reward Programs

On the surface, this process looks to be extremely linear, but you may target different stages of the buyer’s journey using multiple channels.

You might be able to tempt someone who is still considering your product or satisfy someone who isn’t yet a customer. Someone in the contemplation stage could be convinced to buy because of your exceptional service in SEO Marketing, while someone in the awareness stage might utilize your chatbot to find out what they need to know.

One of the most pleasant components of content marketing is thinking outside the box.

At Every Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey, Create Content

You may begin generating content for your client personas in SEO Marketing and personalizing it to each channel once you’ve decided who they are and which channels would be most beneficial for your business.

This will help you develop your funnel by mapping your content to the relevant phases of the buyer’s journey.

At the top of the funnel, in the “awareness” stage, people are looking for answers, resources, education, research data, opinions, and insight.

Consumers are conducting extensive research to determine whether or not your product or service is a good fit for them at the “assessment” stage of the funnel.

Bottom of the Funnel: The “buy” stage, when customers are deciding whether or not they want to become customers.

Your funnel may look extremely different in SEO Marketing depending on your industry, company strategy, product, price, and target audience. Some B2C customers spend comparatively less time in the middle of the funnel as compared to B2B buyers, who require much more nurturing, engagement, and relationship development before completing a purchase. A $50 pair of sneakers, for example, requires significantly less advice than a $10,000 investment in corporate software when it comes to purchasing decisions.

Content Ideas for Each Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey

Personal research is essential since audiences vary widely based on the type of business and the goal. If you understand their specific process for awareness and assessment, you can develop a really successful content marketing campaign, jam-packed with specialized information that best supports their path toward completing a purchase.

Content Formats for the Awareness Stage

Make A Blog Post

A blog post is a fantastic resource for spreading awareness. By focusing on a pain, problem, or other topic that your target audience wants to learn about and then uploading it to your website, you can develop a brand asset that is crawlable by Google and discoverable by search engine users. You may also utilize other strategies to promote the material on your site.

Make A Facebook And Twitter Post.

You may use social media to both promote other material and create stuff just for it. According to Pew Research, 72 percent of the population uses social media in some manner, therefore your target audience is probably already using it. Unlike blog pieces, social media posts are often shorter, and video usage is on the rise.

Whitepaper

A whitepaper is a report or guide on a certain topic published by an organization. Whitepapers are particularly useful as downloadable products when a reader wants to learn more about a topic they’re reading about. In whitepapers, it’s vital to offer content that can’t be found anywhere else so that your audience recognizes the report’s value and is driven to get it.

Checklist

For projects with a lot of moving parts, people may merely want a plan that lays out what they need to do to get to their final goal.

Buying a house is a good example, and Opendoor responds to their audience’s demands by offering a handy checklist (in infographic design!) that sets out all of the essential steps. The image is pleasing to the eye, and there are even a few tips thrown in for good measure.

Instructions In Video

Sometimes the most efficient way to relieve pain or solve a problem is to learn a new skill. Sure, a purchase may be required at some point, but the audience may also want further information about the problem and possible solutions. This is when instructional video material enters the picture.

Whiteboard Fridays is a popular Moz video series in which SEO concepts are explained down for the audience into simple language and images. Moz understands that SEO is a complicated issue and works hard to make it accessible to their audience.

Is It Better To Have Tools Or A Kit?

Informational content geared at a broader audience may not always be enough to persuade your buyer persona to make a choice or act. In other cases, they may require a bit more functionality or customization. As a result, developing kits and tools is an excellent strategy to aid readers in making a purchase.

Budgeting is one of the topics covered by Nerdwallet’s articles on a number of financial topics. They designed a calculator that allows users to add their own data and receive customized advice because budgeting may be difficult.

Educational Webinar

A webinar is an online seminar in which video is used to provide the majority of the material. A webinar can be planned or broadcast live, offering you a variety of alternatives for distributing information to a visual and audio-oriented audience.

SEMrush relies heavily on webinars as part of their content marketing strategy, often repeating a helpful topic to get more mileage out of it.

Content Formats For The Consideration Stage

Product Guides For Comparison

During the consideration stage, the customer persona is still considering solutions to their pain or problem. As a result, product comparisons are a useful tool for assisting buyers in making decisions.

Verywell Fit provides a comparable comparison to assist consumers choose between high-intensity activities and steady-state cardio, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of both.

An Investigation Of A Case

A case study may be used to persuade the reader that the solution works by demonstrating that the provider achieves outcomes for their clients by applying it. An effective case study will appeal to the person’s emotions and intellect by providing substantial information and quantitative facts regarding the ultimate result.

Request A Free Sample

A free sample is another example of content or an offer that spans the buyer’s journey stages. Consider the following scenario: a homeowner wants to repaint the interior of their home but is unsure on what color to choose.

They chose from a variety of paint chip cards at their local hardware shop to determine which color to use (the solution). These cards are created by a supplier based on their specialized solution. When a person falls in love with a color, they are already familiar with the manufacturer.

Content Mapping for The Buying Cycle And All Funnel Stages

Every business has its own sales funnel and SEO Marketing, which is built on the buyer’s journey. It’s a recipe that might or might not be transferable from one business to the next. When creating your own buyer’s journey, there are a few elements to keep in mind that are exclusive to your company.

The general concept remains the same: understand your audience, develop your funnel around your industry and audience intent, and establish a documented content marketing strategy that links personalized content to each point of their funnel journey.

This procedure will produce the greatest outcomes if done correctly.