How do you tailor your content for different stages of the buyer's journey?

Map out the buyer journey and the challenges and motivations of your buyer at each stage of their journey.

1. In awareness, they are not even looking to learn about you. So you need to be thought provoking and this is where thought leadership content comes in. Often thought leadership content is product focused and that might work in some contexts. However, the I have found value in thought leadership content that talks about the big change in your customers lives/industry, and why it is imperative they act now.

2. For the consideration/interest stages your customers are trying to learn more about your solution and evaluate others. Product trials or product demos are great here. So content like case studies, webinars, eBooks that guide customers on how to evaluate tools in your category etc. could work well. ROI calculators or Total economic impact type studies work well here.

3. When customers are ready to convert, they typically need assets that can help convince their peers/executives/CFOs. So again case studies, ROI calculators or Total economic impact type studies work well here too.

It also depends on what type of go-to-market motion you are using. If it is primarily sales-led instead of product-led, I've found a lot of value in also mapping out the seller journey and organizing all assets by that journey . In that case also work with sales-ops/sales-training etc. to pull all the assets together in one place. This greatly simplifies the life of your sales team and they will thank you :)

Tailoring your content for different stages of the buyer's journey requires a few steps:

1. Conduct a Content Audit: Start reviewing all the content you currently have available and identify what needs to be retired, what needs to be updated, what needs to be reimagined, and what can stay. During this audit, you'll also want to document the asset type, primary persona, and stage in the buying process.

2. Create a Content Map: Now that you have built a repository of all of your content start mapping it to its stage in the buying funnel for each persona or use case.

   1. Awareness: (Press releases, blog posts, podcasts, web copy, newsletters, social media, SEO/ads, videos, etc.)

   2. Consideration: (Product guide, webinar, product data sheets, solution briefs, etc.)

   3. Decision: (Demo, comparison matrix, interactive demo, technical white paper, RIO calc, pricing, etc.)

3. Identify Gaps: After the content has been mapped out, look for gaps in it. In my experience, it's usually middle-of-the-funnel content that is lacking.

4. Reimagine Existing Content: Look at your existing content and see if there's a way you can rework it. For example, one ebook could be turned into two infographics, five blog posts, and snippets for social media. Alternatively, a bunch of blog posts can be grouped together to form the starting block for a new ebook.

Ask yourself (and research):

• What is the question they are trying to answer now and why now and not later/before.

• What needs to happen to move to the next stage - what information/knowledge does the prospect need

Along the journey, the prospect will know more about you, trust you more, and be able to give you more time and attention. Consider that when thinking about the deepness of the content.

Also, consider the frame of mind - how did they landed in the content

• Are they already looking for a solution?

• Are they problem-aware? Do they understand a problem that needs to be solved?

• How much context do they have or need?

The channels on how they arrive to the content can also impact - if they come via search for a particular SEO topic - how close it is to the problem and/or solution?

overall could look like this

1. Problem Aware, build trust and empathy - "you understand me", "you're one of us", "now I can trust you, because I can see you understand and care about me"

2. Solution - how deep do you want to go? I can tell details about both the product (features/capabilities) and about its use in real settings (solutions, case studies)

3. Decision - how can I help you make a decision - if he's not the only one to make a decision and needs to sell internally, how can you help them do that?

4. Onboarding/success - this is a critical and overlooked part that is critical for the customer to achieve value and be successful over time. Don't rely too much on email or onboarding flows, start by having a good library of content on product usage - "how to's" - both written and video.