Do you want to help move users down the funnel? It’s time to put yourself in your target persona’s shoes. Think about; what they want, and what they’re searching for. You should do this by defining your content marketing strategy from start to finish.
Let’s delve into more detail.
Why Take a Customer Journey-Centric Approach?
When it comes to a marketing funnel, content is fuel.
Mapping content strategy in line with customer journey means targeting the right users at the right time. You need to tap into their unmet needs, motivations and wants.
Planning content with customer journey in mind has a number of benefits:
- Generates higher quality leads (i.e. an audience that’s actually engaged)
- Helps to build a loyal customer base
- Allows you to grow your brand organically
- Helps you better understand customer expectations and wants
- Ensures you’re offering value
- Builds authority and trust
Step By Step Guide
Wondering how to get started? Here’s a step by step that might help point you in the right direction.
#1 – Understand Customer Needs
It sounds obvious, but the first step is always getting an in-depth understanding of your customers. All businesses have target personas and an ideal audience. The key is ensuring that they can find you.
So, what are your users searching for? What are their pain points? How does your service provide a solution?
Customer personas are a key part of building a marketing strategy – so ensure you use them to your advantage.
A good customer journey map is made up of a number of different elements, including touchpoint identification and data collection. From here, you can build out your content strategy.
#2 – Identify Main Challenges
Blog posts are beneficial not only for SEO, but also an extremely good way to answer client/customer challenges.
Keyword research can help you target highly searched-for terms and questions. However, this should come second. Identify what your audience want/need to know first.
Essentially, you need to write what your users want to read. After all, where’s the value in a content strategy that doesn’t connect with your audience?
#3 – Plan With Customer Journey In Mind
Your audience’s needs should provide the foundation for your entire content plan.
Utilise customer journey to map out content schedules and roadmaps. These can be for different stages of the funnel, for example awareness and consideration.
#4 – Distribute Content Strategically
It’s not just what your audience want to know, but when they need it that’s important. Try and tap into this.
For example, different times of the year present their own challenges and come with changes. So, map out your content in line with this to maximise its impact.
You should also pinpoint the best ways to target your audience to ensure they see your content.
#5 – Keep Testing
You may not get it right the first time – and that’s okay. Never stop testing and monitoring when it comes to finding the best ways to engage your audience.
If one particular piece performs poorly, move on, but try and learn from it.
#6 – Think Long-Term
Taking this customer-focused approach doesn’t just help target new users, but also retain loyal ones. These can help get your brand name out there and maintain consistent volumes of traffic.
Some users won’t be searching for your brand as they don’t know about it – yet. This can change as time goes on.
Top Tips
Here’s some advice for effectively building customer journey into your content strategy:
- Keep it relevant
- Don’t make it about your brand alone/be overly promotional the whole way through
- Try to eliminate content gaps (this is the best way to make sure users don’t look elsewhere)
- Target ‘awareness’ and ‘consideration’ stages of the funnel first and foremost
- Try not to be too salesy
- Make sure to link to other relevant content within each piece to keep users on your site for as long as possible
- Adopt a ‘customer’ mindset rather than a ‘brand’ one
