A company’s website design holds the power to generate leads and foster those relationships to translate these opportunities into sales. You can cultivate repeat business and satisfy customers by identifying their journey on your website through strategically planned and executed design.
Content Mapping is the process of designing your company’s web page content to appeal to the different stages of your buyer’s lifecycle. You want to build an effective and proper protocol for engagement that will turn your leads into sales. Creating a sales funnel that uses Content Mapping is the key to growth and success.
Buyer Persona
By identifying your (potential and current) buyers, you can map out content to target their specific needs. It’s a psychological and societal breakdown of their personality that enables you to cater to their profile through your Content Mapping.
Begin by outlining your buyer(s) with these details:
- Demographics: Age, Gender, Location, etc.
- Societal Stats: Professional Role, Family size, Marital Status
- Lifestyle Choices: Interests, Activities
- Challenges (so you can present solutions): Fears, Issues, Blockages
- Influences: Media Content Consumption, Social Follows
- Buying Habits: Question here the analytics – what they buy, the time it takes to make said purchase, the repetition, and consistency
Lifecycle Stages
Here, we identify the different points in the lifecycle of a buyer’s interaction with your product or service. These aspects help you map your content accordingly to prompt and direct your buyer to the next stage.
The Three Stages are:
- Awareness: A person is visiting your site because they have a problem. They see an opportunity with your offerings for a solution.
- Consideration: They have weighed their options and are contemplating their purchase through a strategic thought process.
- Decision: They are approaching the sale confirmation after deliberation to ensure you can provide them with a solution to their initial problem.
The Customer’s Journey
When bringing together the Buyer’s Persona and Lifecycle Stages, you can understand the Customer’s Journey. Through a bit of legwork upfront by building these profiles, you will identify when and wherein the sales process to execute certain content and to whom. Using the Lifecycle Stages, you can outline the type of content that would work at each stage and create evergreen materials for your sales funnel.Awareness Content
It’s pre-existing and consistent, recurring, and predictable items such as Blog posts, Social Media storytelling, and content promoting more interactivity and engagement such as guides, infographics, and video. All unique ways to connect with your buyers in effective ways depending on their personalities.
Consideration Content
You can offer more insight through offering Email Newsletters (through Subscribe pop-ups,) Data, and Statistics through Product and Service Lists, Testimonials from Satisfied Customers, and offering free content such as Digital Products like eBooks and Webinars.
Decision Content
It’s like a gift with a purchase. It’s about keeping your now converted customer happy. You could offer exclusive Webinars, Demos, Free Customer Service, and Coupons or Promotions to either upsell or have the customer buying more from your brand. The ongoing engagement is crucial for their satisfaction and your reputation. Requesting customers to take quick surveys is another way to obtain more information and build upon your Buyer’s Personas.
Creating a Customer Sales Funnel
Now that you understand the Buyer’s Persona, Lifecycle Stages, and the types of content for creation for the Customer’s Journey, you can begin to design your Content Map accordingly. Depending on your company and your desired demographics, you can start to stockpile your inventory of content.
Building your social media, blogs, and other how-to content on your site will help educate the potential buyer on how you are their full-service solution. Provide the content that engages, captivates, and proves your product or service as a necessity.
Automation is helpful, and as noted, having evergreen content on hand is always a bonus. With email signups, the newsletters can be preset to send at the different stages of the lifecycle with specific points to capture and complete a sale. By putting this work to build an automated sales funnel upfront, you can preset many aspects of the lifecycle stages and begin to hone in on the efficacy of your content.
By going through this process and adding to your inventory, you will see any gaps in your flow that you are fine-tuning for an impressive marketing sales funnel. You can put yourself in your desired buyer’s shoes. Recall moments where you had excellent customer service, and find ways to emulate that. Know what you are selling and come up with further USPs based on each Persona. Find strategic ways to be their solution, and tailor your content toward that.
You will always have to create new content to fill in the gaps within your Content Mapping. The fun part for the marketers! It enables endless engagement opportunities with customers, old and new. Staying current and relevant is crucial for sales generation, but you also want to be a trailblazer as a company for that competitive edge. Through your Content Mapping processes, you will find the space for you to deepen customer relationships and be at the forefront of content creation.
Incorporate a mixed bag of content from blogs to infographics to videos and experiment with using them together in varying capacities. Buyers will have different learning and engagement styles too. One person may prefer the written word over another, opting for a quick visual reference. Content Mapping helps you pinpoint what works best per buyer, and it also helps you as a brand find authenticity in your approach. Your goal is to inspire people to become your customers then prioritize their satisfaction for long-term support. Remember the value of your content, and by maintaining an inventory, you will always have something on hand that could apply to a sales tactic. You are building a library of content, a wealth of resources.
The company that will be the most successful is the ones who are authentic in their approach. Content Mapping helps you pinpoint what works best, but it also allows room for creativity and progression to evolve your branding.
