Your content marketing and storytelling for growth (Part 3 )
In this part of my series, I cover the following questions:
- Where to Start with content strategy
- What are the stages of the buyer’s journey
- How to align your content to the buyer’s journey: a framework
- Why is content important
- What are content marketers doing currently
- What’s next for content marketers
- Earning attention
- Drafting your content to “perform”: a checklist
- Structuring your content for SEO: a checklist
The content strategy here is broadbased and can be applied to each content stream or across them.
More specific strategies for content related to SEO, Performance and channel related straegies will follow.
So is there a way to look at content and evaluate its fit-for-purpose in a way that is not entirely subjective?
Forbes defined content marketing as “a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
Where to start with content strategy
Content strategy is about aligning content with a search. So a great place to start is with the search intent of your readers. (This is assuming you know who your target audience is. See my earlier posts on thinking this through here and here.)
The first step in crafting your content strategy is to understand who you are writing for. Create content that meets the expectations of your target audience. Set aside your personal assumptions or biases. Research your user’s motivations and thinking as well as their awareness levels.
What should you highlight? What should you emphasize? Get these answers through user research.
What are the stages of the buyer’s journey?
Unaware: This is a prospect who is unaware of the problem you are trying to solve. It will take a lot of educating and convincing to bring them to use your solution.
Market backgrounders and content that makes them aware of the problem fit well here.
Problem Aware: This is a prospect who is aware of the problem that your solution targets. They may not have started looking for a solution.
Outlining approaches to the solutions and comparing these fit well here.
Solution Aware: This is a prospect who recognizes a solution to the problem.
Content that helps them compare and identify the best solution will fit well here.
Product Aware: This prospect is not fully aware of what your product/ solution does.
The content needed here has to convince them that your solution is better it is than other solutions.
Completely Aware: This is a prospect who is ready to buy your solution. They are aware of your product and know what it does as well as know that they want it.
Your content needs to build trust and reduce friction. Your content here should be persuasive enough to let him make his decision to buy your solution.
How to align your content to the buyer’s journey
You can use the framework below to align your content with your buyer’s journey. Understand where your target audience is on this journey. Use this to tailor content specific to their needs at each stage.
In an earlier post, I’ve provided a basic framework to structure/ map your content strategy.
Overlaying it with this view of the buyer’s journey is critical to ensuring the success of your outreach.
It is also critical to understand that Marketing and Sales need to work alongside each other along the buyer’s journey. Any incongruence in messaging between these teams can translate to a loss of credibility or erosion of trust.
Again, differnt channels will influence how the strategy plays out. Content will be critical to success across channels. The context of the buyer on each channel also plays a big part in crafting the messaging and content.
Why is content important
Almost 50% of your prospects engage with 3–5 pieces of content before they talk to a sales representative. (source: Finances Online).
A successful content stratgy will:
- Align your content to the stages of the sales funnel
- Use content to either draw in new leads or to convert your readers into paying customers
What are content marketers doing currently?
Content marketing helped 86 percent of marketers achieve brand awareness. 79% of respondents indicated they created content to educate their audiences. (source: mid-2019 Statista survey) .
Leading objectives for content programs include
- educating audiences
- building credibility/ trust
- generating leads/ demand
- nurturing subscribers/ leads
- building loyalty
- driving attendance to events
- generating sales
- building lists
- supporting a new product launch
The top 3 challenges in content marketing in 2019 included
- Creating content that generates quality leads (54 percent)
- Creating content that attracts more traffic (52 percent)
- Developing content that resonates with their target audience (45 percent)
More in the graph below from Statista.
What’s next for content marketers?
In a survey conducted mid-2019, 46 percent of US-based respondents stated that they were planning to increase their B2B content marketing spending in the following 12 months. 12 percent planned to increase it by more than nine percent.
Earning attention
The role of your content (and the goal of your content strategy) is to allow prospects at different stages of their buying journey to discover your brand and solutions.
Unlike advertising, content can create inbound routes to conversion. It shifts from a push-based to a pull-based model of engaging with prospects.
Drafting your content to “perform”: a checklist
A detailed heuristic analysis can help ensure your content performs the task of either educating or converting your prospect into a buyer. A detailed walkthrough of this is available on CXL as part of their Growth Marketing minidegree.
1. First view of your content
- Does your page/ content header explain what you offer? What is your product/service?
- Does your content header match the buyer’s journey? Does it align to the ad or serach query that brought them here?
- Does your content clearly call out WHO your product/service is for?
- Is there a clear, visually dominant page goal that leads further into the funnel?
2. Aligning content to the user journey and readers’ motivation and awareness level
- Does your content focus on the acquisition of a desired outcome or the elimination of a pain point?
- Are these desires / pain points described specifically and vividly?
- Does your content clearly bridge the product/service to the acquisition of these desires?
3. Conveying your USP
- Does your content clearly explain the advantages your product / service has over other existing solutions?
- Does your content support claims of these advantages with objective proof points?
- Have you supported your claims of advantages with clear demonstrations and/or previews?
4. Establishing your credibility
- Have you included testimonials from customers who are similar to your target audience?
- Have you included testimonials from high-profile media or analysts?
- Have you included any metrics that summarize your product’s popularity?
- Are these testimonials/endorsements easily verifiable?
5. Objection handling
- Does your content adequately address objections or fears that your prospect has?
- Can you minimize perceived risk? Can you offer any guarantees or reassurances?
- Have you addressed “conversion-critical” questions for your prospects?
6. Your offer and call to action (CTA)
- Does your CTA focus on acquiring value or a desired outcome?
- Is your CTA visually dominant?
- Does your CTA make it clear what the user will get?
- Have you consciously maximized value and minimized cost with your offer?
- Can you increase the urgency to act with any time-sensitive incentives?
7. Form design
- Are you asking for the least amount of information required to complete the transaction or qualify a lead?
- Is your for layout as simple as possible? Is it easy to navigate? Are input labels easy to read and visible?
- Is your form designed to minimize errors and effort?
- In case of errors, does the form clearly explain what the error is, and how to fix it?
Structuring your content for SEO
- Is your content well structured?
- Is your content “skimmable”?
- Is it easy for a reader to see the structure of your conetnt and prioritse sections based on interest?
1. Heading
- Do you have a heading that is both clear and easy to scan?
- Are paragraphs short enough for easy scanning?
- Have you used bullets, lists, quotes for easy scanning?
- Do the images used help support the content?
- Do the images used make your content more interesting?
2. Links Within Content
- Do you have internal links?
- Have you linked to other related resources externally?
- Have you linked to relevant products or services?
- Have you included data and facts with cited sources?
- Have you linked to other relevant sources?
That’s it for now. More in later posts! Keep reading!
