Not many people wake up and decide they are going to buy something. Instead, they go through the customer buying journey. This includes research and evaluation before committing to a sales call. Since consumers are more informed and more empowered than ever before, it’s important to understand your buyer persona and the journey they make. This lets you create content that helps them along that path, while positioning you as an authority in your space. Below, we will go into how you can tailor content for the various stages of the customer buying journey.
Content ideas for each stage
Since your audience can vary so widely based on the industry and intent, persona research is important. By understanding their process for awareness and evaluation, you’ll be able to create an effective marketing strategy. This will be packed with custom content that best supports their journey toward making a purchase. Below, we will go into a few of these ideas.
Blogs
A blog post is an ideal piece of content targeting the attract stage. You can target a pain or topic your target audience wants to discover. Then, by posting it to your website you’re creating a brand asset that can easily be found by search engine users. You can also promote your blog content across other channels.
Social media post
Social media lets you promote your other content. However, you can also create content specifically for the channel. Unlike blog posts, social media posts are in a shorter form. Also, you can incorporate videos to use across your social media channels.
Kit or Tool
Informational content may not always be enough for your buyer persona to make a decision or take action. In some cases, they may require a little more personalization. This is why kits and tools are a great piece of content to create to help them along their path to purchase.
Educational Webinar
A webinar is where information is typically provided through video. A webinar can be prerecorded or streamed live. They can open up a ton of possibilities to disseminate information to an audience who wants more visual and auditory content.
Free Trial or Live Demo
What better way to know if you want to purchase a product than take it on a trial? This is a great way to try the product out before fully committing. If the product itself checks all the boxes the buyer has, all the sales team has to do is handle their objections and close the sale.
Consultation
A consultation is another example of providing just a little bit of service in exchange for the opportunity to close the sale. The best consultation offers reduce the anxiety of entering into a sales conversation by promising something concrete they can walk away with in exchange for their time.
Coupon
By reducing the price by a certain amount, a coupon is handing a price objection while convincing the prospect that they’re leaving money on the table if they don’t use the coupon. This inertia is enough to win the prospect’s business. However, this will help out many who have strict and tight budgets be able to use your product or service.
Whitepaper
A whitepaper is an organization’s report or guide on a particular topic. Whitepapers are especially useful as downloadable offers when a reader wants to go more in-depth on a particular subject. For whitepapers, it’s important to provide information that can’t be found elsewhere. This lets your audience understand the value of the report and is compelled to get it.