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Lauren Van Mullem9/12/18 9:25 AM2 min read

5 Steps to Map Marketing Content to The Buyer’s Journey

Marketing_Cartography

Here’s how to DIY your marketing cartography in 5 simple steps. 

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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

  • eGuides & eBooks
  • WhitePapers
  • Blog posts & Social media outreach
  • Analyst reports

Decision Content

  • Product/Service Comparisons
  • Case Studies
  • Product/Service Handouts
  • Blogs on how your product/service works

Consideration Content

  • Webcasts
  • WhitePapers on Solution Comparisons
  • Podcasts
  • Blogs & Vlogs (video blogs)

Customer Success Content

  • Knowlegebase
  • Training Courses
  • In-App Messages
  • Email Campaigns
  • NPS Surveys
  • eGuides & eBooks 
  • How-To Blog Posts
  • Social Media Outreach
  • Email Campaigns

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.

  1. 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. ;)

 

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Lauren Van Mullem

Lauren Van Mullem, who captures your authentic voice in a way that meets the needs of your specific audience, and her solid knowledge of on-page SEO will get your web content noticed. In fact, she literally wrote the book on marketing using Pinterest for the twenty women’s travel bloggers she managed on Wanderlust and Lipstick. Her theory is that to be a successful writer – and a valuable asset to any business – you have to have a gift with words and a mind for marketing. She works daily to develop both.

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