How to Map Content to Buyer's Journey to Increase Conversions

How to Map Content to Buyer’s Journey to Increase Conversions

A common misconception in marketing is that all marketing tactics should be focused on helping to close “hard to sell” deals. Content marketing challenges this stereotype by its very nature. A content marketing strategy seeks to bridge the gap between lead generation and brand awareness by creating content that is valuable to the consumer. This results in the audience seeing your brand as an intellectual leader in your field, while at the same time providing high-quality content to your audience. In order to increase conversions, it is essential that a brand or business maps their content to the theoretical “buyer’s journey” that each buyer goes through.

The Buyer’s Journey

Designed as a method of tracking a buyer’s thought process throughout the sale, this model defines different stages of a client’s thinking when deciding whether to buy or not to buy the service or product that a company offers. Understanding this process allows you to hone in on the weaknesses in your content and to strengthen those based on the buyer’s journey.

The buyer’s journey encompasses five stages:

• UNAWARE: In this initial stage, the buyer is not aware of your company and the solution you offer. Furthermore, it is very important to recognize the fact that the buyer may not even know that they have a problem that needs to be fixed at this stage.

• PROBLEM AWARE: The buyer has now become aware of a need or problem, and starts to try to learn more about the problem and possible solutions. Also, it’s important to note that just because they have become aware of the problem, that doesn’t mean they are ready to fix the problem today. The significance of the pain of the problem to the business will help determine how fast they move to the next stage.

• SOLUTION AWARE: The buyer knows the results he would like to achieve to meet his need; however, he doesn’t know that your company provides a product or service that solves his problem.

• PRODUCT AWARE: In this stage, the buyer has an understanding of what type of solution will best meet his needs. He is also aware of the product or service that your company offers; however, he’s not totally convinced yet that your product or service is the best fit for him. Therefore, the buyer will continue to do more research (comparing product features, on-line reviews, and much more) in this phase to determine what’s the best option for him/her.

• MOST AWARE: The buyer actively wants your product of service at this stage of the buyer’s journey. The buyer knows you, your company’s brand, and the features and benefits of your product or service. The only thing left that he’s interested in knowing is the best deal that you can offer for the solution he wants to buy.

How Content Mapping Benefits You and Your Company

By mapping your content to the buyer’s journey, you are able to determine how the buyer sees your service or product every step of the way and can nurture them down the sales funnel from unaware to one of the later stages. To map content to your own particular buyer’s journey, you need to be aware of the questions that buyers ask about your own product. You can then review your existing content and decide to which phase in the buyer’s journey does each piece of content fit best. The important part of this process is developing a content marketing strategy that is able to utilize the buyer’s journey in tandem with the content that you have already produced.

Auditing the content that you already have gives you insight into the content that you don’t yet have in order to complete the journey for the buyer; thus, allowing you to create content that fills the gap. The end result is a content mapping strategy where the customer is walked through each stage of the buyer’s journey — ending up with a purchase conversion at the end. Effectively implementing content mapping to the buyer’s journey helps to increase conversions on your website and landing pages, and it should not be overlooked as it should be a critical component of your company’s content marketing strategy.

Do you map your content to the buyer’s journey?

If you have any success (or failure) stories about how mapping content to the buyer’s journey has helped to increase the effectiveness of your content in moving leads through the sales funnel to conversion, we’d be really interested in hearing them. This is one area of content marketing that some marketers struggle with and are eager to learn what’s working for others.
Please leave a comment below and let us know if you have any stories or questions.

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