Think about the last time you were looking to purchase a product or a service. Recall the research you did to find the best options to fit your needs. You may have visited websites, read reviews, pored through spec sheets, browsed through case studies and maybe even signed up for a newsletter. But you likely didn’t do that all at once. You started somewhere, and as your journey progressed over the course of days, weeks or even months, you eventually consumed all you needed to make an educated decision. At that point, the final step was to either reach out to someone to schedule a call or meeting or go ahead and make the purchase.
The point is, you didn’t get to that final stage of your journey until you were good and ready and had most of the facts and justifications you needed. If, at any point during your research, a company didn’t have content that answered a question you had, you probably crossed them off your list. Wouldn’t it be awful if that company was yours?
“But if they had called us, we could have given them the answer to their question,” you might say.
But that’s not how it works in today’s fast-paced, online world. Best-selling author, keynote speaker and CEO of Marketing Insider Group Michael Brenner says 90% of a buyer’s journey happens before the sales rep [or company] gets involved. So whatever channels your target audience actively uses to research services or products like yours, you need to be active on. And the content you create needs to speak to those who just Googled you, those who are visiting your platforms for the 10th time and everyone in between.
If you’ve never thought about the content you create within the buyer’s journey lens before, it can be a bit intimidating to figure out where to start. It’s ok to start small. We suggest picking one stage of the journey and optimizing that before moving on to the next.
The type of content you create within each stage can vary based on your type of organization and your audience, but here are some items to think about.
Awareness
- Google search ads
- Blog posts
- Native articles
- Social media posts
Consideration
- Webinars
- White papers
- Guides
Decision
- Case studies
- Email newsletters
- Events
Loyalty
- Events
- Webinars
- Social media posts
At ddm, we have teams dedicated to developing strategies for crafting compelling and engaging content that guides audiences through the buyer’s journey. But if you’re ready to get started on your own, download our Content for the Buyer’s Journey worksheet! It’ll walk you step-by-step through the process of determining which content to create for each stage of the buyer’s journey.