Understanding the unique requirements of your customers is a fundamental aspect of content marketing. These insights pose the need for you to build content for every stage of the buyer journey.
Some companies focus on developing too much product content. And often that implies that filling crucial gaps in the early and middle stages. However, most companies display gaps in the earlier stages.
Content that strikes across the entire customer life cycle tends to influence buyer decisions. And influencing buyer decisions is the soul of marketing. Thus, developing audience-centric content is of prime importance.
Following are the steps to make your content strategy audience-centric:
Steps to make your content strategy audience-centric
Multiple factors influence your content strategy. However, your strategy should always have customers as its priority. Following are a few steps that guide you to strengthen your strategy:
1. Comprehend user intent in search
While searching, you must define and establish the buyer stage. Thereby, you will know the “intent” of a customer. The intent may vary from person to person. It could be commercial, transactional, task-oriented, or informational. Commercial searches have buying language. Transactional explains typing in a brand. Task-oriented revolves around the action. And informational searches are intended to find answers.
2. Evaluate customer behavior
Data on audience behavior is precious. Thus, employ this data to personalize your content. Also, track how customers interact with your content. Know what formats they prefer. Make use of these insights to come up with relevant topics.
3. Build focused buyer personas
Get deeper insights into buyer personas. Understand them and know things matter to them. Narrow it to the extent to make it niche. This is how individual buyer is going to feel that it’s a product made just for them when they arrive at your site.
4. Pay attention to signals
Be conscious of your customer’s current problems. For this, make use of different tools. For example, social listening is one such tool. Also, consider creating Google alerts for keywords.
Besides that, keep updates on industry happenings. You can get these updates from trade and industry group blogs.
5. Competition analysis is necessary
Competition analysis is crucial as it tells you what kind of content is doing well for your competitors. Work on the same topics (while doing it better)!
Aligning your content strategy with customer journey
Your content strategy is at the core of all your marketing efforts. And your marketing efforts must ensure that you share content across the buyer journey. Thus, it is crucial to establish alignment between a content strategy and customer journey.
Following are the stages of content generation:
Early-stage content-awareness
Early-stage content is important in several ways. It brings in awareness and establishes credibility. This is the stage where you create connections. Your content should reciprocate to their problems.
The content that you create in this stage must have value so that you can generate leads. It should also prompt action. If you offer high-value content, buyers won’t feel hesitant to share their information with you. And once you acquire their email address, you own a solid channel of communication.
The role of SEO is also prominent in the early stage. Gain high organic rankings to bring visibility.
Middle-stage content-consideration and intention
Now that buyers are aware of you and your competitors, middle-stage content keeps things moving. Thus, offer more personalized content. It should exhibit uniqueness.
You already have made the shortlist. Now in this stage, focus on developing a deeper connection. Think about how your product can change a buyer’s life.
Refer to case studies and explainer videos. Thereby address certain decision-makers. This stage is all about nurturing, start with offering great content.
Last-stage content- conversion
Last-stage content should incite buyers to buy. That’s why show the buyer the benefits of making the purchase.
Post-conversion stage content
This content concentrates on onboarding and adoption. It primarily includes guides of the process, demo videos, and training materials. Thus, content should help buyers to get started.
After this, maintain a healthy relationship with helpful content. You should drive loyalty, support, and retention. Inculcate topics like new features, new issues, and up-selling. Further, this is where your customers can become part of your content. Interact with them. Appreciate them for what they are doing. Let them share their story. Support and advocacy come when you involve your customers and make them part of the conversation.
Conclusion
It’s often very easy to get lost in the details of your content marketing strategy. Most companies tend to make this mistake. However, your audience should be the start of your content strategy and not you.
Thus, it is needless to say that the content should be such that it engages buyers and drives their interest.
The main reason why B2B marketers employ content is that it covers the entire customer life cycle. Nevertheless, the content should be relevant. This blog has covered the significance of prioritizing customers in your content strategy. Read through the blog and implement a robust and effective content marketing strategy.
