Content Marketing to Content Selling: Customer Journey
Over the century, content marketing has evolved from informative-ness to pure-business, which is now called content-selling. Why else would a brand spend a huge amount of money to provide information about itself? Mere spreading of awareness is not enough, it would not fetch business profitability or even basic survival. This era has put content marketing at the secondary position, wherein the brand talks about itself, its story, its people, vision, or its perspective. While content selling has taken the front-most seat, where the focus is to make the audience buy the offering.
Content marketing or content sellings include the content that a customer wants to come across, over & over again; and not what the brand wants to share. Content that is actually searched is important to be developed. A brand, besides being revenue-focused, needs to be helpful and trusted too.
Content Marketing or Sales Funnel
To get the target audience to buy, & to keep buying, businesses are creating a system of marketing content, which is called funnel in technical terms. This solid strategy includes step-by-step flow of content to convert the prospects or leads into loyal customers. It is very important to post the content at the right platforms. The purpose is to influence the viewers as such to make them happily-willing to pay for the offering. Take a look at the journey of customer or buyer:
- TOFU (Top of Funnel): Discovery or Awareness:
Firstly, the potential customers must know about the brand. So, the primary step is to educate the audience, for which, the business gives a try to some kind of the marketing content, such as blogs posts, social media updates, infographics, photographs, videos, podcasts, and so on. The choice of content-type depends on interaction by prospects or target audience, with the content. This can be identified with the help of analytics. Per the changes in analytics, the content can be changed along the journey for best effectiveness.
- MOFU (Mid of Funnel): Deeper Evaluation or Consideration:
Next, the customers identify how much the product or service is relevant to their needs. At this step, the brand gets an opportunity to build trust of customers, with the help of content marketing. Customers only shell their hard-earned money from their pockets when they are completely confident. At this level, smart content selling shall be able to develop relationships. To make this effective, brands should use suitable content such as emails, quiz/surveys, case studies, useful downloads, discounts/offers, and more. Factors to be assessed at this stage are: convertibility, or lead or sales generation. Make sure that the choice or combination or variation of content is showing scaling up of business in the analytics.
- BOFU (Bottom of Funnel): Decision or Conversion or Action:
This is the phase, where the customer actually takes the step of making a purchase, provided very clear reasons & an intellectual conviction. While taking a customer through this journey, the business must also be able to finely distinguish it from other brands with similar offering. An important aspect of content selling is to highlight the unique feature of the brand that makes it superior from its competitors, and how is their offering solving an issue or pain area or how is it meeting the need or interest of the audience. A clear call-to-action must be stated with an unambiguous & simple purchase process. The types of content used at this level may include direct sales pitch too, along with: demo, customer stories, comparison/ spec sheet, events/webinars, and more.
Lastly, it is utmost essential to keep the customers happy & satisfied. Engaged customers are glad to share their feedback and they may also refer & convince other people to make the purchase. Contented & loyal customers ensure the sustenance & enhancement of business profitability.
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Successful customer journey requires effective creative content recipe, and intellectual brevity of content with right incorporation of interactive content.
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