A lot of companies start creating content and find their investment is like throwing money into a black hole. They create and create and create and nothing happens. So what’s the difference between these companies and the companies that are really successful? Two things:
So, if you’re just getting started with content marketing and want to do it really well, you should start by doing some in-depth buyer persona research. Figure out who your personas are and then pick one to focus on. By dialing in on one persona’s interests, challenges, and behaviors, you can create more targeted content faster and generate results far more quickly and inexpensively than if you try to reach all your personas.
Most articles and templates for creating buyer personas will tell you to research and understand each persona’s demographics, their job role, what a day in their life looks like, what skills they have, what knowledge and tools they use, what their team looks like, their biggest challenges, what success looks like to them, etc. All of this information is tremendously useful for creating content that truly speaks to each persona but there’s one more piece we add that helps us create content that matches their journey to purchase.
When researching our primary persona, we always figure out what questions they are asking in each step of their mental journey to purchase.
To do this, you first have to define each step in the process. Here’s how we define each:
*TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU refer to the classic sales and marketing funnel metaphor.
TOFU=Top of funnel or awareness-stage visitors
MOFU=Middle of funnel or consideration-stage visitors
BOFU=Bottom of funnel or decision-stage visitors
Then, we make a list of questions our persona is likely to ask in each stage. Ideally, we interview a number of individuals who fit our persona’s description to add to this list.
For example, if I’m a car dealership, the questions my persona is asking might look like this:
Once you understand the questions buyer personas are asking in each phase of their journey, you can develop content that meets their needs throughout. For example:
After we map the content and create it, we create conversion pathways to nurture awareness-stage visitors down our sales funnel to become customers. Typically, we do this by requesting their contact information in the awareness or consideration stage (usually via a web form) and sending them email sequences that give them tips/insight and ask them to take the next step.
Developing a content plan that meets your key persona’s needs throughout their journey establishes you as a thought leader and credible source of information, builds trust with your brand, and nudges them closer to purchase in a way that feels helpful and not just sales-y.
After you’ve created TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU content, and the email workflows needed for nurturing, you can use analytics to monitor visitors’ behavior has they move down the funnel. Watch for points of friction where people start to abandon your content and make changes or develop new content to fill the gaps. Before long, you’ll have an automated content marketing and sales engine driving plentiful leads and sales for your business like a 24/7/365 salesperson.