Lead Nurturing with Content Mapping
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February 17, 2011 12:30 PM
I’m sure that most internet marketers have heard of the lead nurturing process and can recognize its importance to pushing leads through the sales cycle. One of the most overlooked parts of this process, and, in my opinion, one of the most important is content mapping.
Content mapping is when marketers tie different types of content to different stages of the buying process based on their audience’s needs during those various stages. The inherent value of content mapping is that when it is done properly it helps you to organize your content so that it answers your users’ questions appropriately no matter what stage of the buying process they are in. Content mapping should be a key component of your organization’s content strategy and if it isn’t, you may be missing out on an opportunity to nurture your leads effectively.
How can you get started with content mapping?
Step 1: Developing buyer personas
Without a clear view of who your key audience is, and what they’re looking for, it will be very difficult for you to effectively nurture them with content. One of the biggest advantages associated with content mapping is that it allows you to target your lead nurturing process by customizing it for different groups of users. Different users will have a variety of needs and wants when they arrive at your website, and they’re looking to have those demands fulfilled. It’s important that you can meet each individual’s needs with content that matches what they’re looking for, regardless of what stage of the buying process they’re in. By defining your target user base into different groups (personas) based on their preferences and needs you can ensure that you’re getting them the content they want, when they want it.
Depending on your organization you could have anywhere from 2 to 200 personas but regardless of the number, these personas will help you to keep your lead nurturing campaigns targeted and relevant to your audience. Depending on your company, products and services personas can be developed based on role, title, demographic information, goals, pain points, etc. Regardless of what criteria you use to separate your user base into groups, you want to make sure that you end up with defined groups that share similar motivations and concerns and that for each of the people in these groups you have information like name, organization, role, location, role in the buying process etc. Having as much information as possible about your leads helps you develop the most targeted campaign possible.
Once you’ve created your personas and split your audience into the appropriate categories you can start to determine which type of content each persona is looking for based on their location within the buying cycle.
Step 2: Determining what your personas need at each stage of the buying process
Organizations can separate the stages of the buying process in different ways, but there are some commonly used stages which are recognized as a standard buying process:
When you were defining your prospects personas in the earlier step of this process you should have gained a pretty strong view of exactly what they’re looking for, how they research their information, their motivations, concerns and needs. Now that you have that information you can apply it to the different stages of the buying process as mentioned above so you can establish which types of content they are looking for at every step in the cycle. For each of the stages in the buying process you will have a different goal for what you want your users to do. These goals in conjunction with what you know about your users should help you to determine exactly what type, level, difficulty of content they’re looking for that will help them convert on your goals.
Need recognition and awareness – This is the first stage in the buying process and in it leads are just beginning to realize that they have a need for your products or services and are being to do some research into possible solutions. Content appropriate to this stage is fairly high-level and discusses their pain points in terms of reasons behind the problem (why there is a problem in the first place). This helps users associate themselves with your content by showing that you understand their problem. Good types of content for this stage may be thought leadership pieces, blog posts on industry news and trends, webinars etc.
Information search – Once the users recognize and become aware of their need they will start to do some further research into possible solutions for their problem. At this stage in the process they are looking for information that will educate them on the solutions available in the market. To best address your users at this stage, provide content that highlights their pain points and the solutions to them, but be careful about getting to feature-heavy. The users at this stage are still early in the buying process and throwing features at them too soon can be daunting and off-putting. Good content examples are this stage are case studies, success stories, best practices content and thought leadership materials.
Evaluation of alternatives – Don’t think that your users are going to make it easy for you. At this stage in the process they’ve discovered that they have a need, they’ve done some research to determine the solutions out there and now they’re getting to the nitty-gritty stage of evaluating different vendors and products. At this stage in the process users are looking for information that will help guide them towards the right decision. Good times of content at this stage are data and product sheets which focus on the features and benefits of your products and/or services.
Purchase – When it comes to time of purchase your users will most likely be looking for information that proves that your company is reliable, going beyond your product features to the trust associated with your brand itself. Good examples of content to have at this stage are customer testimonials or recommendations that speak highly of your company and brand.
Post-purchase evaluation – Remember, the sale isn’t the end of the buying process. Many organizations find that it’s easier to upsell to current customers than it is to generate sales from new leads. That being the case, it’s important to stay in touch with your customers using content which describes best practices, new features and trends.
Step 3: Creating a content strategy that complements your mapping
Now that you’ve determined what you need, it’s time make sure you have the content to meet those requirements. Using the personas you’ve created it’s important that you define how much of each ype of content you need, how regularly it will be produced, who’s going to create it and how you’re going to share it.
Image by Sherlock 77 on Flickr.
Originally posted on Marqui's Web Marketing Blog
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