To succeed with Content Marketing (and Marketing in general), you need to understand your audience Seychelles Email List . Content initiates and sustains conversations with customers. However, to be able to develop an interesting dialogue, you need to know who you are talking to.
Developing buyer personas is what marketers call the process of discovering this, but I believe this is only part of the Content Marketing equation you also need to understand how your audience consumes content .
The point is that developing personas B2B or B2C , understanding your buying journey, and mapping content to the different stages of that path are all actions that contribute to Content Marketing success. You can’t work one without the other.
Develop buyer personas
For Content Marketing purposes , you need the personas to deliver really relevant and useful content to your audience.”
So, developing buyer personas is critical to determining: what kind of content to create; what tone, style and delivery strategy to develop; what topics and targets you should focus on for your business to grow.
Three to five is recommended. This number is large enough to encompass the majority of your customers, but still small enough to be specific. Also, worrying about more than five personas can lead to serious cost issues .
In Schneider Electric’s IT sector Content Marketing strategy, for example, five personas were delimited, covering the majority of consumers: data center professionals, IT professionals, IT resellers, plant and plant managers and executives from the called C-Level. They also considered the content already produced, campaigns and budget.
Understand the shopping journey
The buying journey is the process that people go through to discover, evaluate and buy a product or service. Since this path can be extremely complex, we tend to simplify it to just a few moments, which is often valid for B2B and B2C personas.
Content Marketing can influence each of these stages. To simplify our analysis, we will focus on the first three here, but it is important that you don’t forget the other two ,
Map content for the buying journey
Having identified your buyer personas and defined which moments in your buying journey are relevant to your Content Marketing strategy, the first questions you should ask are:
So, it’s time to map out what kind of content you can deliver along the journeys to bring people closer to your business goals . Your message will vary by stage.
You may also want to associate certain content distribution channels (social media, search, newsletter) to a certain stage. In this way, adding to the “what”, you will define where the content will be consumed. Check out some tips for every moment!
Discovery
The production, here, must be directed to the pains of the consumers, and not to their product or brand. Educational and inspiring content, such as blog posts, industry guides and reports, will be essential. Also, prioritize SEO : after all, once your potential customers realize they have a particular problem, they’ll go to Google to search.
When creating content for this stage , we recommend that B2B brands speak the language of executive level professionals. After all, this is the moment when directors will have to approve the budget, for example.
In relation to the B2C universe, the amount of time that this type of consumer will spend in the consideration phase varies, depending on the business. Some products, such as canned food and clothing, may require little consideration. Others, such as cars and vacations abroad, require more time for evaluation. In any case, B2C brands can benefit from nurturing consumers with quality content that engages them.
Decision
It’s time to narrow the focus of your content to your brand. What are the features of the product? Is it possible to do a demo? What are other consumers talking about. List Provider At this point, it may also be interesting to simplify payment methods for those prospects who are ready to make a purchase.
A few more tips to keep in mind: Your message and content must be consistent over time. Also, do not present more than one message to each audience. Lastly, reframe your personas from time to time .
After all, according to Anna Ritchie: “in your Content Marketing strategy, regardless of whether your personas are B2B or B2C, there is one thing that remains: your audience, just like your strategy, may be undergoing its own evolution and transformations. This will definitely affect buyer personas developed in the past.”
If you want to understand the topic more deeply, find out how your customers’ journey takes place in a quick guide that we have prepared for you!