How to Create a Content Strategy to Hit Every Part of the Sales Funnel
Sarah
Learning how to create a content strategy that caters to every part of the sales funnel is essential to your organization’s marketing success.
Before clients purchase your goods or services, they navigate three possible buyer stages: awareness, consideration, and decision-making. Understanding this buyer journey and incorporating it into your content strategy is fundamental to its success.
Awareness Stage
During the awareness stage, your company’s content strategy should aim to capture potential clients’ attention while aligning your content with their goals.
Since 82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content, it’s clear that the awareness stage sets the tone and serves as a stepping stone to future interactions.
To cultivate awareness and become a trusted authority, you need to directly address (and solve) the pain points of your target audience. How might this affect your content strategy? For example, you can center your approach around providing valuable insights in the form of informative content:
- Videos
- Blog posts
- White papers
- Case studies
- How-to guides
By generating engaging content that resonates with your audience and meets their needs, you position yourself as a trustworthy source throughout the buyer journey.
Consideration Stage
When you create a content strategy, the consideration stage must aim to address the needs of your target audience.
During this phase, the goal is to empower your prospects to make educated decisions while positioning your brand as a trusted source.
Your target audience is likely evaluating numerous options that could meet their needs, so your content must be specifically tailored to satisfy those needs. For more effective content, many companies that deal directly with other businesses use B2B content writing services.
What is B2B content writing? In all types of content writing, professional writers aim to create high-quality, informative, and compelling copy that addresses the unique needs, challenges, and interests of a target audience. In the case of B2B content writing, the target audience is decision-makers at other businesses.
Skilled B2B writers help you generate leads, nurture relationships, and ramp up conversions. Additional benefits of partnering with B2B content writers include fostering industry authority and facilitating business growth.
Decision-Making Stage
When prospects are poised to make a purchase, they are in the decision-making stage.
During this critical phase, you must align your content strategy to drive conversions and reach your business goals. By spotlighting the unique value proposition of your product or service, your brand can differentiate itself from competitors while showcasing benefits that resonate deeply with the target audience.
The most effective tactic to help a B2B writer remove any final barriers to conversions is ensuring all possible concerns are answered. Your content needs to provide the necessary push by showcasing compelling testimonials or incentivizing consumers with offers like free trials or discounts for immediate action.
When content is executed properly in the decision-making stage, it can lead to increased sales, stronger client loyalty, and long-term business success.
How to Create a Content Strategy for Every Stage
By understanding the unique needs and motivations of your audience at each stage, you can create a content strategy tailored to drive engagement and conversion. To effectively target each stage of the sales funnel, follow these key steps:
Step 1: Understand Your Target Audience
Before developing a content strategy, it’s essential to understand your target audience.
Start by exploring your potential customers’ demographics, online behaviors, and psychographics. Then, research the desires, pain points, and motivations of your audience. Finally, narrow down the preferred communication mediums used to deliver content, such as email, forums, or social media.
Through this understanding, you can ensure your content builds trust, encourages interactions, and achieves business goals.
Step 2: Clearly Define Business Objectives
Begin the second step by defining clear goals and objectives for each stage of the sales funnel. This helps you align your content strategy with your goals to create consistent and purposeful messaging.
Start by identifying desired outcomes for the awareness, consideration, and decision stages.
For example, in the awareness stage, your goal might be to increase brand visibility and generate leads. In the consideration stage, the objective could be to educate and engage potential customers. Lastly, in the decision stage, the goal might be to drive conversions and encourage purchase decisions.
With these goals in mind, you can tailor your content to deliver the right messages, provide relevant information, and guide your audience through each stage of the sales funnel. Routinely evaluate and fine-tune your goals to ensure ongoing improvement and success.
Step 3: Create Highly Relevant and Engaging Content
The key to every successful content strategy is to create relevant and engaging content that captures the attention of your target audience at every stage of the sales funnel.
Tailor your messaging to your customers’ specific needs by offering helpful information, providing educational resources, and creating compelling calls to action.
Start by conducting thorough research to understand your audience’s pain points, desires, and motivations. To target customers in the awareness stage, focus on creating content that grabs their attention and introduces your brand. Provide informative blog posts, social media content, or videos that address their challenges.
As customers move into the consideration stage, offer in-depth guides, case studies, or webinars that showcase your expertise and the benefits of your product or service. Finally, present persuasive content, such as testimonials, product demos, or limited-time offers, to motivate them to take action.
Step 4: Implement an Omnichannel Approach
The final step in creating a content strategy is implementing a multichannel approach to maximize reach and engagement. When a brand uses multiple mediums to reach customers, it can more effectively communicate its message to drive results.
Consider creating captivating blog posts that offer valuable insights. Next, complement your existing copy with visually appealing landing pages designed to capture leads and influence conversions. Then, to expand visibility, issue regular press releases to announce new products, updates, and achievements.
Key Metrics for Measuring Content Strategy Success
Measuring the success of your content strategy is vital. By tracking these key metrics, you can evaluate your efforts and make data-driven adjustments:
Web Traffic
Monitor the number of visitors to your website, both overall and on specific landing pages or blog posts. Analyze trends and identify sources of traffic, such as organic search, social media, or referral sites. This metric allows you to gauge the visibility and reach of your content.
Engagement Rate
Assess the level of engagement your content generates by measuring average time on page, bounce rate, and social media interactions (likes, shares, and comments). These metrics indicate how well your content captures and holds the attention of your audience.
Conversion Rate
Measure the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase, subscribing to a newsletter, or filling out a contact form. Tracking conversion rates provides insights into the effectiveness of your content in driving desired outcomes.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Calculate the cost associated with acquiring a new customer. This metric helps determine the efficiency and profitability of your content strategy by comparing the resources invested in creating and promoting content with the value generated.
By monitoring and analyzing these metrics, you can identify areas of improvement, optimize your strategy, and maintain alignment with your business goals. For most businesses, the highest ROIs of all marketing channels come from blogs, social media shopping tools, and influencer marketing.
Optimizing Content for Engagement and Conversion
By optimizing content for engagement and conversion, you maximize its impact. When you implement effective techniques and strategies, you can captivate your audience, inspire action, and drive desired outcomes. Try these tips for creating engaging, high-converting content:
- Craft Compelling Headlines: Use curation tools to craft curiosity-inducing and value-driven headlines
- Use Persuasive Copywriting: Create content that resonates, communicates benefits, and addresses pain points
- Implement Strong CTAs: Guide users with clear, action-oriented language that includes easy next steps
- Optimize Website Design: Ensure user-friendly, visually appealing, and intuitive design for better engagement and conversions
- Promote Sharing: Ensure all content is easily shareable across various social channels for maximum engagement
- Test and Iterate: Continuously experiment with elements like headlines, copy, CTAs, and design, using data like time on page and bounce rate to optimize for improved engagement and conversions
Additionally, leveraging specific content formats such as blog posts, landing pages, press releases, and email marketing can further enhance your content strategy and improve its effectiveness.
What is B2B writing going to do for your business, and how do you get started? Kick-start your content marketing journey with scalable content marketing packages from Write Collective.
Create a Content Strategy Today with Write Collective
By understanding your target audience, setting clear goals, creating engaging content, implementing a multichannel approach, measuring key metrics, and optimizing for engagement and conversion, you can maximize the impact of your content and effectively guide prospects toward making a purchase.
Write Collective will help you create a content strategy that aligns with each stage of the sales funnel. Our B2B content writing services aim to build trust, drive conversions, and support your business goals.
For more information on how we help businesses create content strategies, contact us today or take a look at our services for agencies.