Buyer's Journey Overview
As a cornerstone of inbound marketing, great content undoubtedly attracts and engages leads. But unless you’re creating that content for the right audience, at the right time, on the right topics, and distributing it on the right platforms, content creation can become a drain on time and resources. With a strategic and goal-driven content strategy, you’ll attract a greater volume of more qualified leads with a more focused approach.
After identifying persona types, those personas can be used to begin the process of mapping out content based on where they are in each phase of the buyer's journey. An important aspect of the process, however, is also to identify what search terms those persona types are using during each part of their journey.
This part of the inbound process helps to create the content that meets the needs of your viewers with the information they care most about at that specific phase. The following is a detailed listing of the keywords that should be used within your content mapping for your specific personas as well as the level of difficulty for ranking in search results for those searches.
Journey Stages
AWARENESS STAGE
This is the stage where buyers know they have the symptoms that may be caused by a potential problem but are not sure how to solve their problem yet. They may be enticed by analyst reports, eGuides, White Papers, educational content, and eBooks.
CONSIDERATION STAGE
This is the stage where the buyer clearly knows what their precise problem is and are looking for the opportunity to solve this problem. Throughout this stage, the buyer is committed to researching and understanding how to solve their problem through a variety of solutions. Webcasts, videos, expert guides, live interactions, and comparison white papers will help them move on to the Decision Stage.
DECISION STAGE
Throughout this stage, the buyers have not only realized their problem, but they have also drilled down on a specific strategy for the solution. They have researched supporting documentation and are on their way to a decision. Throughout this stage, they are interested in the pros and cons of the solution, vendor comparisons, trial downloads, product literature, or live demonstrations.
