Blog courtesy of Jacob Seal from Bridge Global Strategies

This blog post is the second in a four-part series, describing the steps to execute a successful content marketing strategy.

In our first post in this series, we described the steps for developing buyer personas to help you understand the unique characteristics of your target customers, where they look for information on products and services and how they evaluate that information in the buying process. When you have completed your buyer personas, it’s time to start strategizing about your marketing content.

Before you produce your first piece of content, you should closely examine the buying cycle of each of your buyer personas and create an informal guide or chart that aligns your marketing content with each stage of the cycle. This is also referred to as a content map, and it is critical, because it helps you to see the big picture of how your content marketing strategy will work before you immerse yourself in developing that content.

The buying cycle of your customers will likely consist of four stages:

Awareness: Prospects become aware they have a need and/or aware that your company is in the business of solving their particular needs.

Research/Education: Prospects better understand their needs and begin to educate themselves about the various solutions available to them, perhaps including your company’s products or services.

Comparison/Validation: Prospects start reviewing their options to see which may best meet their needs and eliminating those that seem to only marginally satisfy them.

Purchase: After narrowing the field, the buyer makes a decision, hopefully to buy from you!

As you conceptualize the buying cycle for your customers, you should identify specific types of content that will be most effective at moving your prospects from one stage of the cycle to the next. While it is true that not all prospects will respond to your content in the same way, studies show that some types of content influence a buyer’s decision more at specific stages of the cycle than at other times.

For example, if your prospects consume a lot of information on the Internet—which they probably do if you are considering a content marketing strategy—you may find that your content maps to the buying cycle as follows:

Awareness: Blog posts and social media updates

Research: Ebooks, webinars, industry reports

Comparison: Case studies, demos, customer testimonials

Purchase: Analyst reports, detailed product information

As you create your content map, remember that this is really a reductionist process, and in reality, there may be a lot of nuances in the buying cycle that are difficult to map. Nevertheless, by taking the time upfront to identify the types of marketing content that you will use and aligning it with the buying cycle, you will be better prepared to execute your strategy and to continue to tailor it to ensure that you meeting your marketing objectives.

If you’re in healthcare, insurance, technology or other professional services industries, and need help with public relations, marketing or crisis communications, contact Scott Public Relations.

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