You have a website for your business with great offers, a landing page that is attractive, and an active blog. You’re not getting the traffic you want. Prospects leave your site without purchasing or filling out the lead form.
Are your SEO efforts causing the problem? Perhaps you should spend more money on paid ads. A content mapping strategy is a better option.
Content mapping is the process of strategically aligning different parts of your content with various stages of your customer journey. There are many reasons why content mapping is important.
- You can anticipate the needs of your target audience.
- How to create an editorial calendar that is effective.
- Ensure that all touch points with customers are covered
You can also map your content to find the best ideas and content that will fit your brand’s goals. Let’s look at the six stages of a content mapping strategy. How can your brand navigate them?
1. Define your buyer persona
Buyer personas are fictionalized representations your ideal customers. These personas are essential for marketing SaaS or eCommerce businesses.
A buyer persona allows you to understand the emotions, thoughts, and pain points your target customers have through each stage of the funnel. This will allow you to target the right content at just the right time to the right people.
Below is an example of a SEMrush buyer persona template.
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Several data are included in the buyer persona template. These data include:
- Demographic data: Age, gender, residence, income, etc.
- Data for professionals – title, industry, title and short-term/long-term goals. Product use case.
- Psychographic data: Motivations, goals and hobbies, habits, values, pain points, influences and preferred communication channels.
The Audience Reports feature on Google Analytics can provide insights into potential customers. An example is below.
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The audience reports can provide demographic information, such as age, gender, and location. You can find out about device usage and interests using the Affinity and Market Segment reports as well as Acquisition reports.
Google Analytics can also provide important data, such as where visitors are coming from and how long they spend on your pages. You can also see what time they leave your site.
Social media analytics tools like Hootsuite or Facebook Audience Insights can provide insight into audience behavior.
2. Create a Customer Journey Map
Your target customer should go through a complete “journey”, from awareness to purchase to advocacy.
They might be able to find your brand or product through search engines or by clicking on a paid advertisement. A click on an ad might lead the customer to a landing page with more information about the product.
If they are satisfied with the offer, they may sign up for a free trial to move further down the sales funnel. They might even convert to paying customers, and become brand advocates.
It is crucial to have a customer journey map for your digital marketing strategy. This is especially true if you are an e-commerce or SaaS company heavily dependent on online marketing channels.
Below is an example of a customer journey diagram.
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This customer journey map provides a great example of how to create engaging content for each stage of the customer journey. You need to consider the emotions and actions of customers when they interact with your brand. These are some questions that will help you to think about the customer journey.
- What are the pain points that lead customers to your brand
- What would you like your customer to do with you?
- Which emotions would you prefer them to experience?
- What content could be used to speed up the customer journey?
Finally, consider how you can make your buyer journey easier. The next step is to consider the content types you should produce for each stage in the buyer’s journey.
3. Choose the best content for each stage of the buyer’s journey
It is unlikely that someone will purchase or subscribe to your content immediately after they come across it. Prospective customers rarely realize their problem until they find a solution.
An example: A company that sells e-commerce products might be used to using spreadsheets for planning their marketing activities, but they may eventually switch to an automated marketing software that is more effective.
The software may not be available immediately to the e-commerce business. The software provider will need to nurture them until they are convinced about the product.
This is where the content funnel comes into play. An example of one can be found below.
Infographic created and maintained by
Let’s look at the content funnel. You can provide general content on the problem to target “unaware” or “problem-aware” people. These can be blog posts, social media posts or comprehensive guides. These content are known as Top-of-Funnel, or ToFu.
Content such as whitepapers, case studies, product overviews and webinars can be targeted at “solution-aware” and “product-aware” targets. This content is known as Middle of Funnel (MoFu).
People who are close to purchasing can be targeted with detailed product reviews, testimonials and case studies. You can get free trials, discounts, eBooks, and other incentives.
4. Create topic clusters
Next, you will need to create topic groups. Topic clusters are a way to organize your website’s content in a way that users can navigate easily and optimize for certain keywords.
A pillar page that links to other content on your website is a common content cluster. A pillar page is usually a long-form, detailed content page that provides information on a particular topic. Example: “How to rank in SEO in 2022.”
The topic clusters will cover sub-topics and subject areas that are not covered in the pillar content. These topics might include keyword research for SEO, internal link building for SEO, or on-page site optimization.
Topic clusters are a way to create strong internal links on your website that link to your content. This will boost your SEO efforts as well as increase your Expertise Authority and Trustworthiness (EAT), in the eyes Google.
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These are some ideas to help you build content clusters:
- Identify keywords related to each stage in the customer journey. Keyword research can be done using Ahrefs and Google Keyword Planner.
- You can find the most relevant content gaps and topics at each stage of the funnel by looking through the keyword results.
To ensure your topic clusters work, conduct a content audit of your website. You should pay attention to details such as traffic, link clicks and time spent on content. Ahrefs and Semrush are good tools for this.
5. Create a Content Catalog
A content catalogue is simply a list of all published content. This is similar to having a well-organized library of all your published content. You can categorize this content database based on its content type, topic or format, as well as your goals.
Here’s how an average content collection looks on Scoop.it.
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These information fields might be helpful for your content catalog:
- Content types like blog posts, pillar posts, webinars, case studies, newsletters, social media posts, etc.
- Keywords for each type and all internal links.
- The topic of the content and its relevance to customer journey.
Your team can easily create a content catalog to map new content to certain buyers and prospects. It makes it easier to find the right content for your specific purpose.
6. Use the map to connect existing content with relevant phases
The next step after creating the content catalogue is to link your existing content with the relevant customer journey phase. This is how it should look.
- Content for the Awareness phase – The customer requires relevant information in order to understand their specific pain points or problems. These content pieces include checklists, landing pages and infographics.
- Middle of Funnel The consideration phase is where the buyer identifies their problem and attempts to find a solution. You’ll find case studies, product overviews and how-to guides among the types of content that you will map here.
- Bottom of Funnel for the decision phase. Here the buyer is interested in a particular solution and wants to choose it. Include testimonials, case studies, and success stories in your content.
Once you have your content mapped out, it is time to move on to content promotion. You can promote your content on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and niche forums like Quora or Reddit.
Bonus tip – Include call-to-actions and hints in your content to direct customers to the next stage of their buyer journey.
Closing
You can enhance your content strategy through the mapping of content. This will allow you to create highly targeted lead-nurturing programs with high ROI.
These six steps will help you create content maps that are compelling. Create customer journey maps using the sales funnel approach. Create topic clusters, and assign the best topics to each buyer stage. Create a content catalogue that allows you to map different content to each customer journey phase.
These steps will help you create content that is engaging with your audience, and ultimately, sales-winning. Good luck!
Scoop.it Blog published the article 6 Steps to Help you Create a Content Map that is Effective for Your Audience.
Did you miss our previous article…
https://onlinemarketingagencies.net/how-to-harness-rankbrain-to-promote-ecommerce-websites/
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