Understanding your audience at each stage of the marketing and buying journey is fundamental for creating content to guarantee engagement and boost traffic and conversions.
The ability to engage, convert and nurture any leads and ultimately, create loyal customers is accomplished through the creation of high-quality, original content that finds the consumer at the right time.
When you envisage the marketing journey as a cycle, constantly moving with the customer, it becomes easier to understand the need for different content that targets users at each stage of their journey.
Discovery
This stage describes when a user first discovers your brand and your product or service offering. It is here that you want to engage visitors and show your authority in the industry. To properly tailor content towards the users in this stage of the marketing journey, it is useful to carry out keyword research around commonly asked questions to do with your service or product. Producing content to show authority, inform and engage new visitors is key to success at this stage.
Examples of content to create:
- Blog posts, how-to’s and industry-related evergreen content
- Social media posts
- Informative or descriptive videos
Consideration
The ‘Consideration’ or exploration stage focuses on lead generation and nurturing. It is here that visitors are converted to viable sales leads and the content you create should assist that. Now that you’ve got the attention of prospective sales leads, it’s time to offer useful content to show users the practical value of your service or product. After generating initial interest in your product or service offering, you should be able to provide resources and data-driven content to show the benefits that your business can offer.
Examples of content to create at this stage:
- Email Marketing campaigns
- Webinars
- Case Studies
Purchase
This is the time to push users to convert to an actual sale. Content at this stage should focus on bridging a gap between the benefits and value that you’ve already provided and how specific businesses can utilise your service offering. This content is best received when the experience is personalised. For example, through gradual email campaigns and testimonials and reviews that other buyers have left you. Ultimately, you want to encourage the user to buy your product here and incentives are always well received.
- Testimonials
- Offers and promotions
- Product Demos
Loyalty
After customers have completed the cycle and have made a purchase, your aim should be to create repeat customers. Content from the ‘Consideration’ stage can be used here to offer the same value and benefits of different products and services in your offering – pushing the customer back around the cycle, through discovery, consideration and so on. Loyalty is gained by showing how much a customer is valued, so introducing a referral or discount scheme for customers can lead to repeat purchases and long-term loyalty.
- UGC
- Blog posts, product reviews
- Discount & Referral codes
If you need any help or advice with creating an effective content marketing strategy, get in touch with the team at Colewood.
