Lead Nurturing Strategy: Mapping your Content to your Buyer’s Journey

06 Dec 2018

Developing the right lead nuturing strategy can help you map you content to your buyer’s journey.  Lead Nurturing is the process of developing and reinforcing relationships with your buyers. 

Potential buyers require additional information about products and services to help them make the decision to purchase. If you understand your buyer’s journey and the type of information they are looking for. You can implement a lead nurturing strategy to develop your leads and tailor your content to them.

There are three stages to the buyer’s journey:

1. The awareness stage
2. The consideration stage
3. The decision stage

In order to nurture a lead along this journey, it is imperative that you provide them with the content they are looking for. Lead Nurturing at each stage of the Buyer’s journey requires different types of content that are tailored to their needs.

“According to Adweek, 81% of consumers conduct online research before making a purchase.”

Let’s take a look at how you can create a lead nurturing strategy to map your content to each stage of your buyer’s journey.

Lead Nurturing Strategy: The awareness stage

This is an important stage in the lead nurturing process. It’s the stage when potential buyers are conducting research, they want to be educated. They may be looking for solutions to their problems or to fulfil a need. Tailoring your content to leads in this stage can help you nurture those leads and progress them to the next.

For example, buyers in the awareness stage will be looking for information about your business, your products, and your services. They will be looking for answers to their problems and researching ways they can overcome them.

They will want to gain a better understanding of what you offer and who you are. Explainer videos work well in the awareness stage. Because they help give the buyer the information they are looking for in an easy-to-digest and memorable way.

Other contents that work well in the awareness stage are blogs and social media posts. To enable you to tailor your blog and social media content it is important to first understand the pain points your target audience may be experiencing.

It is important during this phase you use content to position yourself as a knowledgeable authority in your industry. You can begin to build the trust of your potential buyers so you can start building a relationship with them.

Lead Nurturing Strategy: The consideration stage

This is the stage where buyers are looking for answers to their problems. They have conducted research and understand what they are looking for. But now they need more information to help them make a decision and choose a solution.

Buyers in the consideration stage will be looking for the best solution to their problem. So the content they receive should be more detailed and should invite them to engage with you. These solutions could be to take a tour of your facilities, attend a webinar or receive a product demonstration.

Content that focuses on the details of your products or services, will resonate with buyers in the consideration stage. Detailing their features and benefits can help find the answers to their questions and bring them closer to a decision.

This is the stage where you can begin to nurture your audience, to do this effectively you will need to obtain their contact information. To help you obtain this you must offer them something in return, something that is of value to them.

It is during this stage that you may choose to use premium content that is gated. Gated content is high-value content that can only be read once the user has given you their contact information such as their email address. Types of content that work well are eBooks, infographics, white papers, and case studies.

Lead Nurturing Strategy: The decision stage

In the final stage of the buyer’s journey, the buyer is ready to make a decision. If the lead has been successfully nurtured throughout the journey they should have all the information to make the decision to purchase your products or services.

But content is still vital in this stage. The best types of content you can use for the decision stage are case studies, free trials, and product literature. And with these types of content, you can encourage buyers to finalise the purchase and give them confidence in their decision.

Consider creating content in a variety of mediums from podcasts to articles, webinars and videos to help keep the buyer engaged and the content feeling fresh. Also, it is important to mention that different people will react differently to different types of content.

You may find that some of your audience prefer to receive information via videos whereas others prefer to read a guide or an eBook. Keeping your content fresh and varied will help your potential buyer’s stay engaged with your brand and nurture them along the buyer journey.

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