How and when to use content marketing in your business

Many businesses are now waking up to the power of content marketing. 69% of businesses are planning to increase their content marketing efforts, and budgets, in 2023.

While that’s an impressive statistic for a business looking to widen its content marketing efforts, it’s important to know that there isn’t a cookie-cutter approach to this, one size certainly does not fit all.

When it comes to content marketing, knowing which strategies and tactics will work best for you, when you should use them and which formats are the most appropriate for your audience. As well as understanding your audience itself, and the wider buying journey, is critical. 

Timing is everything 

To understand content marketing, you first need to understand the consumer buying process. Compelling content is great, but knowing what to use and when to use it is the key to success here.

It’s more than likely the majority of your target audience is not ready to buy from you. This incubation period, from the point where customers are introduced to a product or service to the point of purchase, is the consumer buying process. 

This can be broken down into three stages:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Decision

Deploying relevant content across these stages is where you’ll find success in content marketing. You can’t just start putting out content in the hope that it converts, the approach needs to be much more tactical and relevant to the particular stage in the buying journey.

The reason for this is that content marketing is now such a competitive and often over-saturated landscape. So many brands are vying for attention and eyeballs, that the consumer is often left feeling over-sold too. This means that it’s now all too easy to bombard a prospective customer with too many points of contact and switch them off for good.

So, what content should you be deploying across these three stages? 

The Awareness Stage 

In this first stage, your potential customers are likely at a point where they have an issue or a specific requirement. They aren’t looking to buy the first thing they see. They’re scoping out the market, looking for information and answers… not a hard sales line.

Here’s where you can help them in their awareness journey. There are a few ways you can do this

Blog content: though blogs you can create written content that targets a specific concern or problem a potential customer might be facing. This can be stand-alone, or a series of blogs designed to cover a breadth of issues. Using search engine optimisation to target specific keywords, relative to that issue or problem, will assist you greatly here. This will mean that your content shows up high in relevant customer searches online.

White papers: while similar to blogs, in the sense that they are long-form written content. White papers differ in that they allow the writer to be far more comprehensive and detailed on a certain issue. White papers are especially useful tools within B2B and corporate sectors, as they can be created to cover specific sector or industry-specific issues.

The Consideration Stage

When your potential customer arrives at the ‘consideration’ stage, they’re more serious and informed about making a purchase. With their research done, they have a better idea of the type of product or service they want. Now they need to decide who will provide that.

It should be noted that the consideration stage can often be the longest of the three. Particularly if you’re dealing with an audience focused on corporate or procurement teams, here decisions are rarely made lightly.

So, during this phase, it makes the most sense to deploy the kinds of quality content that gives your prospective customer as much information as possible to swing the balance of purchasing in your favour.

Social media:  this can have a huge impact on consumers and potential customers, during the awareness stage. Your social content can help reveal more about your product and brand to a target audience. It’s increasingly important to show that your corporate and brand values align with that of your consumers, this can really embolden your reputation and longer-term brand loyalty. 

Video content: can be folded into social media, but video content is one of the most popular and successful content formats you can utilise. Right now, every social media channel is prioritising video within its algorithms, so make sure you’re using video content where you can as this will bring higher levels of interest and engagement than other forms of content, 

Email Marketing: this can be highly effective during the consideration phase of the buyer journey.  Click-through-rates, web traffic, bounce data, email         opens and behaviours on your site all provide hugely valuable insights into your audience 

Analysis and learning are hugely important within this second stage. Whether it’s social content or email marketing, you need to be analysis your data and results to find out what’s working. But it’s just important to know what isn’t working.

You may have heard the term AB testing. This is a good practice to adopt and involves you running multiple variations of the same content thread, changing up copy and creative elements in a bid to learn which combinations of content your audience is most receptive to.

You have to be using your content marketing analytics at this stage. Monitoring social media engagement, sit click-through rates, mail opens and read-throughs to fully understand the effect your content marketing is having. 

Decision making

The final stage is your conversion from prospect to full-fledged customer. At this point prospective buyer has all the information they need to make a purchasing decision; they’ve seen your content they know your brand and they’re now fully intending to purchase from you. 

But just because you’ve gotten a single purchase out of them, doesn’t mean the content marketing journey has to end there. While this new customer may not be ‘browsing’ any more they may certainly have more queries and thoughts about your products and services. Perhaps even beyond what they’ve already purchased.

You may want to consider offering free service trials. Software companies benefit greatly from this, giving potential customers a taste of their products and services and widening their market appeal.

Coupons and vouchers can also be a useful tactic to employ at this stage. Here, a short-term deal or offer can swing the balance in your favour. A strong case study can also help to sway the decision-making process. If a potential customer can see how someone in similar circumstances has benefitted from using your business, that can embolden the decision-making process and strengthen your position in the market. 

Using Content to bolster growth 

Undoubtedly, the most effective strategy when it comes to content marketing is variety and versatility. Using different content formats and channels, throughout the entire customer journey can greatly play to your advantage and target customers at critical buyer journey moments.

Deploying as many content formats as is relevant to your audience, will greatly broaden the scope and power of your content marketing. But all of this is built on your audience’s knowledge. Without a firm grasp of who your audience is, their likes dislikes and content consumption patterns, there can be no growth from content marketing.