Content is a fire that can boost your conversion funnel.
How?
This is the website of Sendinblue- a SaaS company who offers a cloud-based marketing communication software suite that includes several tools to help companies learn digital marketing and enhance their sales growth.
So what is the special thing to note about the website?
When a visitor as soon as enters the Sendinblue website they instantly meet certain options to sign up for a free trial. If the visitor is not ready to sign up right away, he or she can scroll down and immediately read valuable information about Sendinblue’s offers.
Their homepage is based on customer-centric content aligned with the Buyer’s Journey- Attract, Convert, and Close Deals.
And you might be surprised to know that through this method Sendinblue has been successful to make over 80,000 users, and sends a whopping 100 million emails every day, that’s amazing, isn’t it?
This is the power of content when it is properly aligned with the buyer’s journey on your funnel website.
If you have an eCommerce website or a sales funnel, and want to increase website conversion rate, then the first thing you need to do is to stop selling and start educating through valuable content.
Selling is the art & science of gaining the trust of customers. If you know how to educate your audience that inspires them to believe in your product or service, they won’t take so much time to buy from you.
No one wakes up in the morning and thinks, “today, I am going to buy something”. Instead, they go through a path that contains research and evaluation before deciding to purchase.
This journey is called the buyer’s journey. It makes consumers more informed and empowered with relevant product information they need to make a better buying decision.
Today’s consumers are digital piranhas. They research multiple brands and find the best content or information- all before making a final purchase. That is why your content plays an influential role in the buyer’s journey to attract, educate, and sales conversion.
When your funnel website has the right content it nurtures sales prospects throughout your buyer’s journey and converts them into customers. Many companies and brands understand the importance of content in a funnel website, however, majority of them struggle to generate a good number of leads through their buyer’s journey due to the lack of right content creation.
If you are also one of them who is looking to improve conversion rate, you have to reinvent your content creation strategy. In this article, you will learn how to create content for buyer’s journey that boosts your conversion funnel.
What is a Conversion Funnel?
A conversion funnel (also known as “sales funnel”) is a path with different stages in a buyer’s journey leading up to a purchase. The funnel word here illustrates the gradual decline of the number of potential customers as they are guided through the conversion path.
You should know the difference between websites and funnels. A website is primarily meant to showcase the company on the Internet whereas the conversion funnel is often categorized into “top of the funnel”, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel”. These stages relate to the level of education that a potential customer has about a product and the closer they are to make a purchase.
The goal of building a conversion funnel is to have more visitors passing through each stage of buyer’s journey and ultimately reaching the final stage of buying decision.
So the success of your funnel depends on how effective content is there at every stage of buyer’s journey.
Understanding the Buyer’s Journey
Most buyers generally begin their journey in an “unaware stage”. This person likely meets the demographics of your potential customer (also known as buyer personas), but they are not aware of your product or in need of it.
However, they may encounter a triggering event that changes their situation or pain that needs to be resolved. And this event kicks off their buyer’s journey.
When you don’t have a full understanding of your audience, a gap is created between your business and your potential customers. For digital marketing agency, it usually means they are putting out content that readers don’t really relate with, which may lead to losing them.
That is why it is highly important to understand your audience: what they think, how they think, the answers they need, and the path they tend to follow to find a solution.
From that research, you can start crafting a documented content creation strategy which maps your content to several stages of the buyer’s journey. Once you know how to implement the principles of buyer’s journey in your content strategy, you will find your website’s conversion rate increasing.
So what is buyer’s journey?
The buyer’s journey is a framework that explains the steps a buyer goes through in discovering a problem he or she has, researching that problem, and eventually buying a product to solve that problem.
There are mainly three stages in buyer’s journey- Awareness stage, consideration stage, and decision stage.
1. Awareness
In the awareness stage, the potential buyer experiences some problem. They are aware of their frustration but don’t know exactly what caused it or whether it is unique. It typically when the buyer search on Google for the symptoms of their problem, seeking helpful information they can find.
People in this awareness stage are not ready to be sold to, but they are highly receptive to any source which can help them in their problem.
And this is the time to make people aware of your brand. If you can provide information which helps them understand the problem they are facing and optimize that content around the search queries or keywords they are using, you will rank high and consequently visitors will take note of you.
In this stage, your funnel should be able to attract those leads by highlighting the pain point and providing a solution. After completing competitive analysis and discovering how your brand solves customer’s problems at a higher level and showcases the benefits from different angles which drive website traffic.
2. Consideration
In the consideration stage, potential buyers better understand the reason for their problem and are now researching several types of solutions.
In this stage, the potential buyer or visitor is still not ready to make a purchase, but they are open to trying. Content in this stage inspires users to start free trails, request product demos, or download solution-oriented offerings such as white papers and eBooks.
These conversions are important because they enable you to showcase the benefits of your product while collecting potential customer’s information. Here, the goal of your content should be to enable potential buyers to give right consideration to your product or service with content that demonstrates clearly how you can solve their problem.
3. Decision
This is the final stage of buyer’s journey. The potential buyer has a handful of products or services they are researching in-depth. They know more or less what they need in a situation, and they are looking for the one which best meets their interests. At the end of this stage, the buyer will likely make a purchase.
The goal of your content in this stage should be to convince prospects to buy your product or service rather than your competitor’s. Content for the decision stage should demonstrate the merits of your solutions and give clear evidence of how it helped others who face similar problems and succeed.
How to Create Customer-Centric Content Aligned with the Buyer’s Journey
Attract→Convert→Close Deal
This is the principle of HubSpot CRM- a popular customer relationship management software that offers a centralized and easy-to-use interface to empower businesses with modern features to nurture leads and increase sales growth.
Being a leading HubSpot Partner Agency, eSearch Logix has been using HubSpot CRM to help our international clients enhance their sales growth through better leads nurturing process.
We use it daily in our marketing operations so we know how this CRM software turns visitors into leads and leads into customers. This is because it helps companies to understand what exactly information a potential customer is looking for.
It simply indicates that once you have an idea of who your buyer persona is and what channels will work best for your business, you can start creating content for buyers at different stages and tailor that content per channel.
Doing so will help you map your content to the relevant stages of the buyer’s journey to turn your simple website into a profit-generating funnel.
So the first step is to create customer-centric content that is aligned with the different stages of buyer’s journey.
To do this, find out answers to the following questions:
- Do your potential buyers know about your brand or products and what you do?
- What are the key interest and concerns of your target audience?
- Why do people buy from you?
- What are potential buyers thinking about or doing at every stage?
- Does your content provide a clear message and valuable information in relation to the entire buyer’s journey?
- What kind of content and offers are going to appeal to them at every stage?
- Is your content aligned with your business goals?
1. Creating Content for the Awareness Stage
Buyers in this awareness stage have various challenges that you can address. After gathering answers to the above questions, you have a clear idea of what your potential customers want and how you should provide the content.
Your content needs to show them you are a reliable source of information and a great problem solver. Through this process, you will be able to create highly effective content that best supports their journey toward making a purchase.
You should incorporate these content formats for the awareness stage:
- Blog Post
- Informative Social Media Posts
- Whitepaper
- Checklist
- Informative Video
- Kit or Tool
- ebook or Tip Sheet
- Educational Webinar
- Press releases
- Infographics
- Dedicated landing pages
- Search ads
In addition to this, include these important elements in your content marketing plans that best represents your content
- Tell customers the compelling story of how your product or service has helped others
- Introduce your team members bios along with their real pictures featured on your website
- Mention your company’s mission and vision statement
2. Creating Content for Consideration Stage
Buyers in the consideration stage don’t just have pain. They know what pain is and they are thinking to find out the ways to address that pain. Your content should here need to define clearly about their pain.
The goal of your content in this stage is to show the brand as a key player in the marketplace who can help them solve their problems. You should try to include these types of informative content:
- Product Comparison Guide
- Case Study
- Free Sample
- Product videos
- Comparison videos
- Thought-leadership content
- Reviews
- FAQ sheets
- Brochures
- Spec sheets and technology guides
- Hands-on demonstration
The consideration stage is the most influential phase when a buyer is serious to make a purchase but still has doubt so they find the best company who can solve their problem.
Don’t assume they are only searching your website, they might be discovering your competitor’s websites as well at the same time to choose the best option for them.
Therefore, you have to work in-depth to show how you stand out from the crowd. While creating content for the consideration stage, you should ensure your content provide information about the essential comparative factors that people think during comparing their options:
- Cost considerations- product price, lifetime value, and ROI
- Quality of product or solution- what kinds of skills does your team have? How focused are you on customer service? What do your current customers say about your customer service?
- Solution or service features- Do your products or services have features that set them apart from your competitors?
- Online brand reputation- What do other people say about your brand on the Internet?
- Location- Where is your company located? People have more trust in a native company.
3. Creating Content for the Decision Stage
At this stage, the buyer finally makes his final decision to make a purchase. You are now confident about the potential customer he or she is going to click on your most exciting CTA button “Buy Now”.
While visitor who is now going to be your customer just after a click, they may still need additional resources for more assurance that they are making the right decision. Therefore, the decision or buying stage should have educational content that gives trust and reliability in the form of:
- Free Trial or Live Demo
- Consultation Offer
- Coupon
- Onboarding documents
- Help articles Fix documentation
- Upgrade announcements
- Customer loyalty events
- Webinars
- Exclusive customer newsletters
It sounds amazing to convert a visitor into a customer after a long conversion process. But the task is not finished yet. Your visitor can even stop just before making a purchase if they don’t feel confident about brand or product; despite you have provided educational and well-researched informative content.
It is because your content is solely focused on giving product information and its features. As we told you already, modern consumers are digital piranhas so they seek more reasons why ultimately they become your customer.
You can learn from the practices of top website development company India and win customer’s hearts even at the last moment of their mood change. Here are those key factors to include in your content that gives a strong message about your brand reliability:
- Does your content provide reasons why people should become your customer?
- Does your content tell about the salient features about your company that define how you are unique in the competition?
- Have you published helpful content on review sites where customer can express their experience of purchasing from you?
- Does your content humanizes your brand or it just sounds robotic?
If your content focuses on these key points, there is no chance that buyer will change his decision at the last moment and successfully make a purchase from you.
Conclusion: Content is the Fuel of Your Conversion Funnel
Modern consumers are intelligent. They do research, compare the options, analyze in-depth, and purchase when they are fully convinced.
So if your conversion funnel helps them progress effectively through each stage of the buyer’s journey with valuable, high-quality information they need, you will them as your customer the next day.
Every business has a unique conversion funnel designed around their defined buyer’s journey. While filling a conversion funnel seems easy on paper, it is essential to keep in mind that this is a dynamic cycle that needs to be carefully monitored and updated with good content.
By understanding your customer behavior and their interests, you can successfully create content for your website that makes you stand out from your competitors and convince your target audience.
Make customer the hero in your story and they will become a big believer of your brand –Alekh Verma, Founder & CEO, eSearch Logix.
If you want to give new energy to your conversion or sales funnel, eSearch Logix provides modern content writing services that can empower your funnel and generate more leads and sales.
We have a team of highly experienced content writers, strategists, and digital marketers who have improved the sales growth of various B2B and B2C funnels of global businesses.
Schedule a Free Consultation and discuss your idea with our experts now
