Savvy content marketers know that their audience goes through a process called the buying cycle when they’re thinking about buying anything. And the buying cycle is part of the content marketing funnel.
The best way to create an effective content marketing funnel is to create targeted, effective content for each stage of the buying cycle.
How do you do that? Read on!
Imagine that the below stages are shaped like a funnel with the widest part of the funnel at the top and the smallest part at the bottom.
1. Awareness
This is the widest part of the content marketing funnel. At this point, your audience are only just learning that you exist, and finding out why they should care.
Here, you’ll need to create content that will attract your audience to you, and you’ll need to go to where they hang out and put your content right in front of them.
For example, if your audience loves a certain YouTube or Instagram star, you might pay that star to mention your product by offering their audience a discount code or extra gifts for buying through their link.
Also, all the content you create and publish will help you get found via the search engines. This should grow your audience and bring them into the top stage of your content markeing funnel.
You can get results by optimising your SEO, but you can also use Facebook Ads to help get results faster.
2. Consideration
By now, your potential customer has moved down the funnel a little. They know you exist and now they’re researching what they can about you and your products or services. They’re also comparing you to others who offer the same thing at this point.
Ensure that you have amazing landing pages that are created just for the people you expect to visit the page. Include plenty of charts, stats, and data to help your audience make a decision to buy from you.
3. Preference
While researching, your audience is going to start to trust one offer over another. It could be yours if you’ve done your research and provided the right content at the right time to educate your audience.
One way to ensure that your audience chooses you is to be authentic in your presentation of content and ensure that you’ve branded yourself consistently across all platforms. If your audience is on one of your lists, make sure that they receive information here that is designed to help them make a choice.
4. Purchase
This is the bottom of the funnel but it’s not the end. This is where your audience becomes one of your customers by following through and making a purchase. They buy the item from you and don’t return it. They are essentially satisfied.
But content should still be created for the after purchase phase. Welcome emails, bonuses, and an invitation to your social media platforms are great next steps.
To help your audience make a purchase, you could offer a first-time buyer discount to help people make a decision. but this isn’t always necessary.
The best thing to do is make sure that your purchase process is really simple and easy to use so that you don’t have abandoned carts.
5. Repeat
When someone has bought from you, they’re much more likely to buy from you again, assuming the product or service was amazing. It’s also cheaper to persuade a current customer to buy again than it is to recruit a new buyer.
At this point, you want to lead your new buyer towards buying another product by educating them and informing them about what you offer. You can do this via email and with your blog content.
This is a really basic version of a content marketing funnel, and you can create one that’s far more advanced than this. You can also create one for each platform that you’re publishing content on. But, with this outline of a content marketing funnel, you should be able to get started with creating your own.
Action Point!
It’s time to put content out there that will attract your ideal audience, and start building your content marketing funnel, and all the content you need to have for each stage.
Does it help with how this whole content marketing thing works to follow the buying cycle and see how purchases are made? Drop me a comment below.
Need more help with finishing off your content marketing plan? I’ve put together a packed 30-page Content Marketing and Promotion Planner to walk you through the whole process.
You’ll find more info on how to find your target market, surveying your audience, how to create your plan, different types of content, promotion, and everything you’ll need to put your plan together.
And the planner comes with a target market worksheet, content inventory checklist, your content marketing planner, tracking report, and more!
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That’s it for Day 26, and tomorrow, we’re talking about using content upgrades to build your email list.
Don’t want to wait? Prefer to get all of the 30-Day Content Marketing Challenge posts in one place, so you can work through at your own pace? Here’s a link to all of the challenge lessons: https://creativeblueberry.com/30-day-content-marketing-challenge-catch-up/
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