Have you developed an efficient content strategy? Is this strategy based on a thorough understanding of your clients as individuals instead of merely viewing them as a collective group? If yes, then it’s time to execute that strategy. This post will help you with the finer aspects of your content management strategy. However, you need to be aware of a typical buyer’s journey and purchase funnel before you do so.
Typically, your buyer’s journey consists of the following basic steps:
- Awareness: The customer realizes the need for the product
- Consideration: When the customer is evaluating the different options available to them
- Decision: When the customer decides on the solution to their problem
A purchase funnel generally consists of the following steps:
- Awareness: The customer is aware of the product or service
- Interest: The customer actively expresses an interest in the product or service group
- Desire: At this stage, the customer aspires to get the product or service
- Action: In this stage, the customer takes the next step towards purchasing the product
There may be variations in this, depending on your industry.
Let us now delve into how you should implement your content management strategy.
1. Build a Solid Strategy
Even if you haven’t created an efficient content marketing strategy, it is advisable to build one. Make sure you spend adequate time and effort to build it so that when you generate content, it can get the results you want.
At present, some budget-conscious businesses are often concerned about whether they can afford to go for professional writing services and how to do so. However, contrary to what is commonly believed, you can minimize the production costs by utilizing various writing resources.
Remember that every piece of content does not always need to be developed by a senior content writer to implement your content marketing strategy successfully. Different writing tasks demand varying experience, mindset, and skills.
2. The Goal of the Content
Your target audience will come across your content throughout their journey to become your customer. In best-case scenarios, your customer base will remain loyal and connected to you even after the purchase. In the worst-case scenario, they might switch even before they make a purchase. Therefore, while deciding the type of content you need to spend your money and resources on, it would help follow one basic rule.
If the primary objective of your content is relationship-building, acting as a conversion tool, or if the content is an asset that’s closely linked to the sales process, then you need to spend more time and resources on it. Such content needs to be written and created thoughtfully. The content should be created while focusing on buyer psychology along with close attention to every detail.
For example, SEO content is typically created to drive traffic to the website and develop preliminary awareness primarily. Typically, it’s not always directly connected to the sales process. If you have a robust SEO strategy, you can create it successfully by utilizing your in-house content creation team or a junior copywriter.
However, a white paper you have on your website (i.e., your visitors need to provide their name and contact details to download it) would generally be more focused on conversion. The call to action or CTA here should be compelling enough to drive the reader to a qualifying or sales-related action.
Such content is best created if you utilize a skilled and experienced writer to create it to ensure optimum results. Additionally, you’ll require an appropriate landing page to be created for such an asset as well. Remember that a landing page is an asset that’s completely focused on conversion. The very purpose of a landing page is to compel the visitor to download the white paper. You would need a skilled and experienced content resource to create this too.
3. Know Your Target Audience
To zero in on your target audience, you need to think beyond your typical buyer persona. As they move through the buyer’s journey, the needs of your target audience change. If your target market develops a better awareness about their problems, you will need to tap into human psychology and utilize your team’s skilled and advanced conversion content writing skills much more than before.
Customer conversion is essential for your entire target audience, irrespective of their stage in the buyer’s journey. However, you will also need to choose and prioritize where you’re focusing a larger chunk of your budget and resources on. You might want to reserve the most skilled and expensive content creation resources in the middle and later stages of the buyer’s journey.
You might prefer to write more based on an established algorithm for the earlier stages of the buyer’s journey or the sales funnel. If you need to increase the traffic on your website and create awareness about your products, services, and brand, you will want to focus on organic search content and faster hits on social media feed. Opting for a lesser experienced or junior content creator might be a more feasible option for these tasks.
4. Determine Who Will Use the Content?
The next aspect you need to focus on while determining where to prioritize your content budget is knowing who will be using the content. In the present times, organizations often develop content for vendors and partners. This can include PPC service providers that point ads to the content and account-based marketing teams that direct the content towards prospects and resellers who utilize your content to sell your product or service.
Internal sales teams can extensively use your high-value content to present your products and services to prospects. Whenever your content is utilized by your internal sales team or your external partners, you’ll need to ascertain that the content is of the best possible quality.
5. Go Multilingual
Finally, remember that your target audience might not be limited to speakers of a certain language. If you plan to read out to a multilingual or multinational target audience, include that in your content strategy from the beginning. Once you plan to take your content to the global market, you will need to collaborate with the appropriate vendors as well.
This means you will need to incorporate hiring document translation services in your strategy. Additionally, if you plan to create audio and video content along with the text, you’ll also need to hire the appropriate audio and video translation services.
Once you have created a robust content strategy, you must allocate your content resources appropriately for each content task. Remember that you need to optimally prioritize your budget allocation during the content marketing implementation phase. The best way to implement this would be to categorize the tasks according to their priority and importance and allocate them to appropriate resources. Not all tasks need to be handled by a team of experienced and skilled content developers.
Consider your goal and target audience and determine who uses the content and other factors discussed above. You need to be well aware of the sales process to be able to optimize your content allocation.
Featured Image Credit: Pixabay
