Keep hearing marketers and sales reps talking about the “buyer’s journey” and not sure what it means. Don’t worry; I’ve got you covered! In this blog post, I’ll discuss the buyer’s journey and how you can use it to map out your marketing content strategy.
What is a buyer's journey?
A buyer's journey is the process a person goes through when purchasing a product or service. This journey typically involves three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision-making (otherwise called the top, middle or bottom of a sales funnel).
During awareness, the buyer becomes conscious of a problem or need they have and begins researching potential solutions. There are many tools a buyer has at their disposal these days, including; search engines and social media, so it’s essential to understand how your buyer connects with your brand.
Once buyers understand how to solve their problem, they enter the consideration stage, narrowing their options and evaluating specific products or services. This is where they compare different features and benefits, read reviews and testimonials, and seek expert opinions to help them decide.
Finally, the buyer chooses a specific product or service during the decision-making stage and purchases.
Understanding the buyer's journey is essential for businesses because it can help them create effective marketing strategies and provide the correct information and resources to potential customers at each journey step.
How to establish your buyer’s journey and map out your marketing content
To establish your buyer's journey, you must understand your potential customers' purchasing process. And here’s the thing - that journey may look different to another company’s customer, even in the same industry.
Here are the steps I use to help understand my client’s customers:
Identify your target audience - Understanding your potential customers is crucial to establishing your buyer's journey. You must create buyer personas; detailed descriptions of your ideal customers, including their demographics, goals, pain points, and behaviour patterns.
Map out the stage steps - Once you have identified your target audience, you will need to map out the stages of the buyer's journey that they go through. The three main stages are awareness, consideration, and decision-making, but you will also want to include additional steps specific to your business or industry. What do I mean by this? Let’s look at the consideration stage for a SaaS product. Of course, one of the consideration steps will always be cost vs ROI, but another step may include showcasing product benefits through a free trial. How you market to these free trial users within the app is part of your overall marketing strategy and, in this case, could convert highly for you.
Understand the customer's mindset - At each stage of the buyer's journey, your potential customers will have different goals, questions, and concerns. Understanding their mindset and the information they need at each stage can help you create content and messaging that resonates with them.
Consider your marketing content - Consider how you could use content across your marketing platforms to help you reach your audience and nurture potential leads.
Consider how to get the email if you can’t get the sale - At each stage of the buyer’s journey, a percentage of potential buyers will exit the path (or churn, as we call it). You must understand where this could happen and why, so you can get an email to retarget them later.
Monitor and adjust - Your buyer's journey is not set in stone and will evolve. Monitoring your results and adjusting your strategies is essential to ensure you effectively reach and engage your potential customers at each stage of their journey.
The types of content you could produce at each stage of the buyer’s journey
Let’s be clear the following information isn’t set in stone - it’s an example of what content might look like. Your business content map may look different and vary from product to product, service to service, particularly when you look at your buyer’s journey in more detail.
Here’s an overview of a basic content map.
Ultimately, understanding your buyer’s journey improves your content strategy, and converts leads quicker
Your content strategy is a vital part of your marketing, but only an effective one when you marry up targeted content to your buyer’s journey. Otherwise, it’s like whistling into the wind - a lot of effort for no one to hear you.
When you have a clear picture of your buyer and how they journey to buy your products or services, you can better understand how to facilitate that. Offer value just when your buyer needs it most.
I’ve been working with a client for a while, establishing better blog content for his business. Last week he told me that a new client (with a big project) converted quickly and easily - why? Because they already established trust in the way we work and our expertise because of the knowledge we share in our blog content!
His story isn’t unique. Primed content works at nurturing your leads through the journey more effectively, often with much quicker results.
If you need a copywriter to create compelling copy, someone who understands the customer journey, fill in the project brief form below!
