Your brand must publish excellent content to attract customers, convert sales and inspire loyalty. With this in mind, you should create a comprehensive plan that supplies your customers with the information and support they need during their journey with your brand.

As part of your strategy, you must produce relevant, engaging content at the right time when your customers need it. A deliberate marketing effort that supplies the correct value at the right time can result in high customer satisfaction and retention levels.

In this cheat sheet for matching content to the different stages of the customer journey, you will learn about the journey and discover ways to support customers’ unique needs at every point.

First, You’ll Need a Customer Journey Map

Sketch a diagram to get a visual picture of how customers interact with your brand. The information you obtain while creating customers’ journey maps can help you customise your content strategy to support them. At every step, pay attention to how customers feel about their needs. Understanding how people think at each stage can create a customer experience that supports profitability.

To get started, create buyer personas that generally represent your ideal customers. Put yourself in their shoes and listen to their thoughts and feelings as they recognise their needs and desires. While assuming your buyers’ persona, write down the questions you would ask and use them to guide your content strategy.

All things considered, you can expect your customers to have a journey with five stages. Although the particular characteristics of each phase depend on your business and target customers, you can accomplish much by delivering appropriate content at the right time.

Stage One: Awareness

Before anyone can become a customer, they must know your brand exists. For this reason, you must create content that promotes awareness. Your content should attract traffic from relevant Internet users in the online world.

Content published for this customer journey stage should introduce your brand and explain why customers need your products and services. Spend time understanding what questions your potential customers might ask when searching for solutions to their problems. Use the answers to create valuable content that will attract buyers from the onset of their customer journey.

Part of this effort requires you to find keywords and search queries that people will use during this stage and optimise your content so that prospective customers can find your brand when they perform Internet searches.

When people become aware of their problems and desires, they naturally seek solutions. Present your brand as the logical choice by publishing interesting, entertaining, and informative content.

Stage Two: Consideration

Customers who know about your brand must also have the information to make an educated buying decision. Now is the time to prove the capabilities of your products and services and establish the authority and trustworthiness of your brand. You must create and publish content in accessible and engaging formats that make transferring information effortless.

At this customer journey stage, buyers become open to learning about your story. For this reason, you should seize this opportunity to show why your brand and products differ from your competitors. As you capitalise on your story, give them a chance to sign up for your newsletters and promotions. When you do, you get information that you can use to build mutually beneficial relationships that can influence their decisions.

As they consider their needs and contemplate their upcoming purchase, your potential customers will eagerly absorb all the information they can find. After all, they want to ensure they get the best possible value and the most effective solution in exchange for their money.

Stage Three: Decision

Sooner or later, customers will need to make their decision. They will rely on their experience to choose a product or service. Right now is the time to publish content that incentivises your prospects to choose you.

At this stage, social proof can push your customers across the finish line, giving them access to product reviews and testimonials that inspire confidence. Your goal is to allow your customers to see and expect outcomes similar to those of other satisfied customers.

During this crucial period, you must ensure your company is accessible. For example, provide your team prompt answers to phone calls, emails, and social media inquiries. Other options, such as live chat, FAQs, and searchable knowledge bases, can ensure that customers have no reason to reconsider their choice.

Stage Four: Purchase

Rather than considering a purchase at the end of the customer journey, consider it another step in a long-lasting process. For this reason, you should go the extra mile to ensure your customers have an exceptional experience.

When customers have a pleasant experience doing business with you, they can become brand advocates who will encourage their friends, relatives, and associates to do the same. One way to enjoy such a benefit from the purchase stage is to provide supportive information throughout the checkout process.

At this stage, you can use different software tools to collect vital customer information and exploit it to develop more personalised campaigns. Aside from boosting the efficiency of your marketing efforts, you will also support your customers’ purchase decisions and make them feel valued. Additionally, consider creating a new customer kit that gives buyers exclusive insider access to your company, along with video content, articles, and manuals that will help them.

Stage Five: Loyalty

After you make a sale, you must do everything possible to encourage repeat business. After all, servicing existing customers costs less than acquiring new customers. Furthermore, customer loyalty helps you expand your customer base and achieve long-term growth.

Some marketers tend to neglect the post-sale stages of the customer journey, accepting a closed sale as a success indicator. Instead of doing that, look for ways to encourage repeat business. The loyalty phase of the customer journey might be the most important one.

Capitalise on this stage by publishing content informing customers about additions to your product line. When you make this part of a loyalty program, you incentivise them to buy from you again.

Conclusion

When you understand the customer journey, you can optimise your content to provide support at every stage. As a result, you can create an exceptional customer experience by ensuring customers can get relevant information when needed. Ultimately, you can accelerate the sales cycle and build a loyal and profitable customer base.