Here’s how to DIY your marketing cartography in 5 simple steps.
- Answer this question: Who are your best buyers now?
The answer, or answers, to this question is what you use to create a buyer persona – a fictional character representing your ideal client. This persona should have a gender, an age, a profession, and yes, even a personality.
- Understand their pain points, and how your product or service offers the solution.
Your buyer is looking to solve a problem or gain a benefit, and to effectively lead them to your solution, you have to understand this one principle: When you purchase a hammer, you don’t want the hammer. What you want is the hole in the wall. Tap into their need for the hole in the wall, and you’re well on your way to creating effective marketing messages throughout the buy cycle.
- Know the basic Buyer’s Journey: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Customer Success
The awareness stage simply means that the buyer knows they have a problem, or has expressed a desire. The consideration stage is when your buyer has named their problem or desire. And, the decision stage is when they’ve not only defined their problem/desire, but have also decided on a method to solve it. Customer Success is when they are your client, and you want to keep it that way. Got it? Good. Here’s what to do with it.
- Create a marketing strategy for each stage.
Different types of content are appropriate at each stage of the buyer’s cycle. Here are some guidelines.
Awareness Content
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Decision Content
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Consideration Content
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Customer Success Content
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Be sure to customize your content for the needs of your specific audience. Maybe your ideal buyer doesn’t have time to read a WhitePaper. If that’s the case, what will he or she have time to read? Also note that blog posts and social media are integral to most stages – it’s all in how you use them.
- Prepare Your Content to Deploy!
Organize your content according to stage of the buyer’s cycle, keywords, and CTA (ie. what action you want leads to take). Then, compile everything into a content calendar for your writers and social media staff to use. Don’t forget to alter your strategy around holidays and seasons throughout the year.
Now wait a minute!
I know this looks like a lot of work, and no one expects you to become an instant publishing house. We recommend starting out with a blog and social media presence (choose the social media sites that best suit your audience), and build from there.
Or, you know, hire some pros to do it all for you. ;)