Mapping what you make to the buyer’s journey is vital to its ability to help convert a prospect into a customer. Once you’ve created a detailed buyer persona, segment your buyers based on the stage they are in their journey to being a purchasing customer. Traditionally, a content marketing campaign has a wide top funnel and this is where your customer experience begins. Right from awareness to purchase, the experience needs to be a pleasant one that leaves them wanting more.

The core stages that a typical buyer goes through are:

- Awareness
- Interest
- Consideration
- Intent
- Evaluation
- Conversion

The B2B buyer journey usually includes more than one person. Even if it begins with one person, as they progress through the journey the individual grows into a committee and the buying decision requires a consensus. The B2B journey also does not necessarily need to be linear depending on your buyer’s organizational structure.

Baby Steps - Awareness and Interest Content:-
Initially, the buyer has not heard of your business so your content should be designed to arouse their curiosity. They are not inclined to join your list of newsletter subscribers or email list—they only know about you because of the quality content you created. Creating great content is the first step before you start adding value to your customer. If your business is showing up in Google’s featured snippet or is among the first few search results in any search engine for your target keyword, you’ve already got an advantage on the competition. This is where your content marketing strategy can help immensely. From the moment the potential customer clicks on your website link, they should be continually impressed so that you build a reputation of providing helpful content.

Optimizing your SEO, branding, and thought leadership blog content is only a part of this process. Without a unified approach to your digital marketing strategies, there will be inevitable breaks in the buyer’s journey resulting in a fragmented view of your company’s services. Identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) and measuring return on investment is essential at this stage to focus your effort on the content that is getting you more clicks and reduced bounce rates. The goal is to measure your wins and losses so that you can alter your content marketing strategy accordingly.

Half-way There - Consideration, Intent, and Evaluation Content:-
Once you have piqued their interest, whenever someone sees your brand they will associate it with an idea of reliability and consider your content a source of helpful information and sometimes even a source of entertainment. Social media content has proven to be an effective tactic for B2B marketing. The idea is to be less salesy and more informative on social media platforms while strengthening your brand awareness. If the number of returning visitors to your website is increasing and some are even signing up for your newsletters, then you’re going in the right direction.

Newsletters are a great way to keep the conversation going with an interested customer. Use this to your benefit and change your content strategy to suit the needs of the buyer at this stage of the journey. Your SEO strategy will also need to be updated at this stage. This is when long-tail keywords will play a more crucial role. In the beginning, your customer was only curious about your product, now they have gathered some knowledge and they want a solution that is more specific to their needs.

Use analytics to pay attention to how many website visitors are filling up your lead generation forms and downloading your whitepapers, reports, and e-books. Use email marketing to sell the idea of your resources to potential customers. Deck 7 has used these methods effectively in the B2B travel industry even though it has been one of the hardest-hit industries in 2020. These resources will help you build a relationship with your buyer and earn their trust in your business. The intention of your buyer becomes clearer at this stage and they are evaluating the proficiency of your business and its ability to serve their needs.

The Final Leap - Conversion Content:-
This is the point where the marketing team passes the baton to the sales team. Every content marketer’s favorite part is when they were able to create a customer out of a passive observer of their content. You have crafted a smooth journey for your buyers and they trust you enough to begin an active conversation with your business at this stage. Your marketing qualified leads have been generated and it’s decision time for the buyer. Your buyer most likely has a list of your competitors, with you included, and is trying to decide which solution works best for them. Carefully worded CTAs and well-designed landing pages are imperative at this stage. Here’s a simple test to check the effectiveness of your landing page – ask someone to view your landing page for five seconds, and tell you what the business is offering. If they weren’t able to figure it out you might need to simplify your language and design. Offering a free demo of your product or service is also a great way to give the buyer a practical example of how your solution can fix their business challenge.

Don’t Stop Here - the Buyer Journey Ends and the Customer Journey Begins:-
If you’ve brought buyers so far, you might think you can breathe a sigh of relief but a content marketer’s job is not complete yet. There is a golden opportunity for your business to use your content marketing to build loyalty, reinforce the value of your business, and provide personalized content to the customer. Capitalize on the great service your business provided to the customer and garner testimonials that advocate the real-world advantages of your business to others.

Read more: https://deck7.com/blog/content-marketing-an-integral-part-of-modern-business-strategy?utm_source=Niranjan