Organizations create content with different aspirations in mind. Usually content falls into two distinct buckets—create brand awareness or educate the customer on a specific industry issue, trend or challenge.
While both are needed to support a company’s marketing objectives and ultimately generate sales leads, which area to focus on depends upon where you want to reach the targeted customer during the buying journey process. A buyer’s journey is the path that potential customers take on their way to doing business with an organization.
There are typically four stages of the buyer’s journey and the right form of content asset is needed at each stage.
1. Awareness Phase: Here is where the customer has identified a need and is looking for solutions. Here are where an organization needs to get their messaging out. Brand awareness collateral is critical at the point to get on the potential customer’s radar screen
2. Engagement Phase: During this phase, the customer already has some familiarity with a brand but for one reason or another has not pulled the trigger on purchasing yet. To reach potential customers at this phase, thought leadership and educational whitepapers or ebooks play a vital role. They further educate the audience on a specific need or trend while aligning with a company’s business objectives.
3. Evaluation Phase: At this point, the potential customer is researching and reviewing services from various brands and trying to decide which is the best fit. This potential lead is further down the funnel and although educational whitepapers or ebooks can still play a swing role, sometimes a more engaging content asset is needed such as richly designed infographic or video or even a more interactive webcast.
4. Purchase and Post Purchase Phase: The buyer has completed the purchase, but the journey is not entirely complete. The challenge now is to keep the customer coming back for more. Continuing the education process will continue the relationship. An organization needs to constantly reach out to current clients with fresh assets to help them identify market trends and challenges.
Knowing where potential customers are in their buying journey is critical for every organization. Creating the right content to meet them at every phase will result in more qualified leads, more sales and more retuning customers. Consider EMedia Strategies for all your content marketing needs.