Creating content that actually wants to be read is a great conundrum for all writers of all ages – and in the age of digital sales, it has also become the problem of individual business owners too.
If you’re going to invest time, money, and effort into creating digital content assets for your business, you want to be sure that they are optimised to attract the attention of your ideal customers, and prompt them to take the appropriate actions.
So, How Do You Get Started With The Process?
- You need to ensure your content aligns with the interests, purchase motivations, and challenges faced by your ideal customers - previously named Buyer Personas. An ideal customer is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal buyer, (someone who works at a company if you’re B2B, and not the corporate entity itself) based on research and genuine data about existing customers. Creating ideal customer documents goes hand-in-hand with your keyword research. Getting a deeper understanding of your ideal buyers will lead you to the types of keywords they use to find out information on Google – crucial insight you can use to fine-hone your content to address their needs.
- Your content should be accurately targeted to address the stage of the buyer journey reflected by the keyword search that prompts the visit. In other words, if your keyword is an Awareness level keyword, such as ‘What Is Content Marketing?’, readers that find your content are likely to just be doing general research, they won’t be ready to buy a marketing automation platform or sign up for an agency yet. Keep that in mind when creating content, the tone you use, and the call to action you use throughout.
Optimising Content For Your Ideal Customers
Ideal customers are subject to all of their own. For now, once you’ve identified your ideal customers in general terms, your next step is to understand what their needs and interests are, and how they might change based on their position in the buyer journey.
By understanding the context of each stage of the buying process, you can create relevant content that resonates with your customers and is recognised by Google as important information to answer that user’s questions, resulting in a higher ranking and even SERP positions.
Some of these pain points and challenges will be unique to your ideal customers and their industry. However, some universal pain points you may wish to address are:
- How to make a business case for your type of product or service, explaining financial ROI, cost-benefit analysis etc.
- How your products and services deliver practical value in real-world applications and situations faced by your personas, with a special emphasis on how they save time and money or boost productivity and efficiency.
- How to overcome general problems with service delivery, e.g. timescales, budgeting issues, and so on.
- The criteria to use when they are selecting different suppliers for their business.
- How to avoid quality issues or making the wrong choice of product/service.
Awareness Stage Content
A customer who is in the Awareness stage of the buyer journey is essentially a stranger to your business. They have very little brand engagement or awareness, and might simply be researching a problem they need to solve.
Creating content that addresses common questions and problems related to their topic will show them that you understand their needs. Content written for this stage of the buyer journey should focus on education and building trust.
Consideration Stage Content
When an ideal customer is in the Consideration stage, they are deciding on the method they will use to solve their problem. After researching the challenge in general, you should be comparing two or more potential solutions to let them decide which is the best fit for them. Here you should focus on providing key information about different solutions in the form of non-bias versus content or multiple solution list content. Consideration readers don’t need to know the nuts and bolts of your products and service yet, but they should be informed about the practical benefits and the value they deliver.
Content written for consideration readers should be as impartial as possible, helping prospects weigh their options and providing resources that enable them to make an informed decision – e.g. e-books, detailed blogs etc.
Decision Stage Content
Finally, the Decision stage is where customers are ready to commit and buy. Your job here is to convince the reader that your business is the supplier of choice, rather than your competitor.
Now is the time to go into prices, technical details, implementation, training, support, and side-by-side comparisons of different services.
Decision stage content should be written to inspire action, with incentives to make a purchase. Use your content to provide a consultative and assuring service, creating credibility and social proof by promoting customer success stories, testimonials, and case studies, and providing other free resources that demonstrate the value of your product or service (e.g. cost calculators, investment guides etc).
Tailored Content Marketing Services From Jdr
By closely aligning your content marketing strategy with your ideal customers, your keyword research, and the progressive stages of the buyer journey, you can create and publish content that resonates with your ideal customers and encourages them to take action.
To find out more about our content marketing services and how you can optimise your content to win more business from your ideal customers, please get in touch with one of the Content Marketing Team today at 01332 343281.
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