A buyer’s journey is an active process that your persona moves through on their way to making a purchasing decision. It is comprised of three stages, the awareness stage, consideration, and the decision stage. Each stage is significant as to how you approach marketing and the content you develop. 70% of the purchasers decision is completed prior to engaging with a supplier. This does not give you much room for error, which is why the content you create for your buyer is so important to your inbound marketing strategy. First things first:
- The Buyer’s Journey:
For example, if you were an urgent care center, perhaps your buyer’s journey would look something like this below.
- Inbound Marketing = Content + Context
At each stage the content and context should evolve according to the buyer’s needs. Always make sure the offers you are presenting are relevant, this ensures you keep the buyer’s interest throughout the process. Attract them with creative content, at the right stage in the buying process. Also include a call to action, landing page, and thank you page to encourage the conversion process.
- Blogging and the Buyer’s Journey
Blogging is a perfect opportunity for you to provide your consumers with helpful, relevant information. Each page opens the door to engage with potential prospects. The more you blog the more chances you have to get found online. Most importantly, blogging allows you a chance to build a relationship with consumers, attracting them by using keywords so that the search engine directs them to your webpage.
- The Power of a Keyword
Keywords can be a powerful tool when implementing an inbound marketing strategy. Certain words can relate to each stage in the buying process.
Awareness Stage: The buyer has an issue or opportunity, words such as issue, resolve, risk, improve, upgrade, and prevent can optimize your searcher’s chances of finding you.
Consideration Stage: These words should be solution type terms, provider, service, supplier, tool, device, software, appliance are all keywords to use in this stage.
Decision Stage: Finally the buyer is ready to compare and review the various suppliers. Comparison, versus, compare, pros and cons, test, and review are all great keywords to attract in the decision stage.
- How Social Media influences the Buyer’s Journey
Social media marketing has become a relevant tool for inbound success. It can be used to engage prospects and measure business results. Distribution channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ can be used to build awareness. Each channel can offer a platform to reinforce the power of word of mouth. Consider each of the buyer journey stages and post accordingly. Twitter is the conversation, use pictures and hashtags to connect with your audience. Facebook is the personality, use images, ask questions and make it a personal atmosphere; this is a place to connect with your consumers. LinkedIn is the professional platform, have employees share content and connect with other businesses in your area. Lastly, Google+ is our search engine driver, this is a great environment to optimize local searches. Remember to stay aligned with the buyer journey stage and what social media platform works best with your content and objective.
Bellagurl is a full service agency that can bring your buyer’s though their journey of making a purchase with your organization. Creating content, determining the right distribution channels to reach your audience and building an online presence with social media and a website are all great avenues to nurture when you are building your business. Stop by our website to review our case studies and give us a call today!
