How to Reach your Audience Across the Buyer’s Journey with Content Marketing

If you want to increase your leads and/or increase the total number of people who buy on your site, your site needs to be in front of people at the right place and the right time. Walgreens, for example, builds stores at all the major intersections and streets where they know people will find it convenient to go and buy milk, toiletries, and prescriptions. Bring this thought process into digital form for your own website. Almost everyone begins an online experience with a search. You want to have relevant content that attracts searchers across their journey into purchasing a product. Your content should target keywords that are relevant to a searcher’s intent. Furthermore, your content should be engaging and should keep your brand top-of-mind. I will go over what you should be doing to attract your customers across the buyer’s journey.

Complete Keyword Research to Uncover Short-Tail and Long-Tail Keywords

Make sure you are in front of searchers at all times. Complete keyword research to uncover relevant long-tail and short-tail keywords that you can create content around so that you can be found in search engines. Let’s take an example. Are you a clothing retailer? Here are examples of what a short-tail, medium-tail, and long-tail keyword can entail:

Short-tail keyword: “Men’s Jeans”

Medium-tail keyword: “Men’s Boot Cut Jeans”

Long-tail keyword: “Men’s Gap Boot Cut Jeans Size 30”

These keywords fall under the Awareness, Consideration, and Decision stages of the buyer’s journey. Create content that touches on these keywords so you have the broadest reach to attract people to your site. If you have dedicated pages targeting each of the above keywords, you can potentially be found in search engines, which helps drive your organic traffic and bring new visitors to your site.Make sure you are in front of searchers at all times. #ContentMarketing Click To Tweet

Create Compelling Content that Searchers Will Remember

You may have heard the saying, “content is king.” In the online world, people consume content to be entertained, informed, and educated. There are various types of content that you can create. Some media formats work better for certain industries and target audiences than others. The most basic type of content format would be a page on your website. It could be a category page (ie: jeans), sub-category page (ie: boot cut jeans), and/or a product page (ie: Gap boot cut jeans). Another example is a blog post. This is the foundation of where most content falls into. To spruce up your blog post, be sure to create infographics, illustrations, whitepapers, ebooks, video, and the list goes on. These help engage users and builds trust in your brand. The bigger impact you make on them, the easier it is for them to remember you in the future and buy from you if they consider you a quality brand. To take it a step further, you can become a thought leader in your industry by doing research and crafting whitepapers and ebooks if you are in the B2B space. These are seen as extremely valuable content and people will keep you in mind in the future when they are ready to make a purchase.

Make it Easy for Searchers to Opt-in for Future Content

When you bring people to your site and they read through your content, you want to make sure they do not leave without giving you their email (some may call it “digital currency”). The reason behind this is so that you can engage with them further by communicating with them via email updates and newsletters. This will keep them up-to-date on all the future content you put out. As they go through their buyer’s journey, you want to make sure that your brand stays top-of-mind. Of course, in order for them to even consider giving you their email, you must make sure that your content is up-to-par. I would go even further by recommending that you have a visually pleasing website and overall excellent user experience. Just because you have a great blog article or infographic does not mean that the experience of navigating your site is great. You must have all of your “I’s dotted and Ts crossed” to show that you are a reputable brand that deserves your visitors’ business.

Below is a great infographic from Hubspot that lists out each of the three paths of the buyer’s journey and the types of content you should be presenting to them. In summary, unique and engaging content is key to building trust and brand awareness for your company and products. The more time and effort you put into providing your visitors with excellent content, the easier it will be to attract them and ultimately grow your bottom line.