If you’re a content marketer, you probably already understand the challenges associated with consistently creating and delivering relevant yet engaging content to your audience. Because content marketing is extremely powerful for getting your message in front of the right audience, you must pay attention to what works best for your specific product or service so that you’re keeping your audience engaged.
Research conducted by Zazzle media revealed that many organisation’s across different sectors struggle to create content consistently and over 50% of them find it difficult to produce engaging content.
Having great content is equal to having solid digital assets. These can help you increase credibility, attract ideal prospects and engage your audience.
To understand why your content should be uniquely crafted to cater to prospects, you must first understand the buyer’s journey.
What’s the buyers journey you may ask?
“The buyers’ journey is simply the process buyers go through to become aware of, evaluate and purchase a new product or service.” - Hubspot
Even though each buyer is unique, they all go through a similar process on the path to making a purchase.
There are three steps in the buyers’ journey (awareness, consideration, conversion) and we’ll do a quick walk through with you to explain what these three stages are all about.
Awareness:
At this stage of the journey, buyers have realised that they have a problem, and they’ll start trying to understand it.
This is the absolute worst time for you to try to sell them your products or services because they’re just not ready. Instead, you should position yourself/brand in a way that provides helpful information/content that could help them understand their problem(s) and why it’s important/beneficial for them to fix it.
Your job is to create awareness of ways to solve the buyer’s pain points and not focus on your products or service. The goal at this stage is to introduce your brand in an engaging manner and leave your audience wanting to get to know you better.
Some content types that are suitable for the Awareness stage include blog posts, social media updates, videos, podcasts, infographics.
Consideration:
Here, the buyer finally has an understanding of what their problem is and are now actively searching for ways to address it. They start evaluating the different approaches they can take to find a suitable solution.
When creating content for buyers at this stage, you can start to mention the solutions your products and services offer but still not try to do a hard sell. There are many options for buyers out there, so maybe highlight some strong points of your solutions in comparison to some other solutions. Basically, display your unique value proposition.
The content you create at this stage should work to differentiate your business from your competitors and build stronger relationships with prospects. Some content types that are suitable for the Consideration stage include: lists of resources, case studies, e-books, reports, white papers, webinars, email courses and so on.
Conversion:
The buyer has done lots of research at this stage and has been able to identify a solution to their problem; they’re ready to make a decision.
Here, prepare to be helpful, answer as many queries as they may have, be in a relationship with them so to speak. Perhaps offer them a taste of what it’s like to use your products or services to encourage them to choose you.
The buyers’ journey has evolved over time and perhaps we should expect more changes at some point in future. What’s important is that you’re prepared to meet buyers where they are at on their journey to making a purchase with uniquely crafted content.
All the work you put into “being seen’ in the previous stages will either pay off at this stage or arm you with some data points to make better decisions next time. Some content types that are suitable for the Conversion stage include testimonials, customer stories, free trials, and demos.
Now, let’s explore some content marketing hacks that can help you attract better leads.
1. Take advantage of viral trends
One sure way of driving traffic to your website is to write about a new trend. The content you create out of the information around current trends will drive more web visitors looking for the information to your site. This creates an opportunity for them to discover more about your brands products and/or services.
When you discover a new trend, ensure that the content you create about it is high quality and put together well enough to attract your target audience.
As an example, back in 2020, “brands were agile and pivoted to these new viewing trends. Some tapped into honouring the medical workers on the front lines of the pandemic, from Dove showing the strength of hospital workers to Dettol’s mission to protect NHS staff.”
2. Ensure your content is mobile friendly
Mobile has revolutionised the way we do business globally. Research has shown that mobile searches trigger some kind of action in the first hour, so it’s a no brainer that the content you create and the platform you host it on should be optimised for mobile.
Ensure that your site is responsive so it can display properly regardless of the kind of device being used to view it.
3. Use a clear, convincing CTA (Call-To-Action)
Your efforts to attract leads will produce no result if you do not include a CTA, it tells your target audience what to do next. It also represents a decision point where your web visitor will either convert or bounce.
You should also pay attention to design (text, color, size, graphics etc) i.e. CTA's that have high probability of converting. It is advisable to carry out testing to see which CTA leads to the most conversions.
4. Create and engage customers in online groups
Facebook groups for example are very valuable as part of any brands marketing strategy. Businesses that pull a group of people around their brand are also able to create a community around it.
By participating in groups, you encourage your audience to share your content. Doing this can make your brand more valuable to your customers because they get to interact directly with your brand other people who love your brand too. That’s one way to make a loyal customer out of a first-time buyer, and loyal customers automatically become brand advocates.
5. Guest blogging
Guest blogging has tremendous power when it comes to amplifying reach. When done correctly, you can fill the top of your funnel with fresh leads. Like every other endeavour, you must approach it with a well thought out plan.
Getting another brand to trust you to post on their site (and vice versa), means they trust you to send out valuable information to their audience. This presents you as an expert in your field which is directly beneficial for your brand.
* Grow your own blog first so that visitors don’t get disappointed.
* Remember to build in data capturing into your email sign-up forms to help segment leads properly.
To summarise
Remember that at each stage of the buyer’s journey, you need to guide prospects with unique, purpose-built content through the funnel.
Implementing the content marketing hacks mentioned in this post can help you position your brand to be seen by prospects and convince them to choose you over the competition. Getting the results will take some time and consistent efforts but it will be worth it.
