Welcome to the next exciting phase of your account-based marketing journey!
If you’ve already read Part 1 of our ABM series, hats off to you for committing yourself to doing thorough customer base research to get your user personas mapped out!
(If you haven’t read part 1, bookmark this page for later and go check it out here!)
Either way, you’ll need those personas, because this second step in your ABM journey revolves around content creation, specifically what kind of content you need to reach and resonate with your potential customers no matter what stage of the user journey they happen to be in.
Why is that so important? Because optimizing your content not only offers value to your users but ensures that your campaign is always delivering the right message at the right time.
So, what content should you be pushing out to meet your prospects in whatever sales funnel stage they may be in?
Let’s explore!
What is the User Journey?
The user journey represents the stages of consideration that your potential customer goes through that ultimately leads them to a conversion.
The stages of the user journey are usually defined as follows:
- Awareness — This is the initial stage where your prospect first becomes aware of your brand while researching a solution to a need or pain point they might have. This could be the product of a paid ad, having your website pop up in their search engine results, or seeing your brand on social media.
- Consideration — In this stage, that prospect begins to research and evaluate potential solutions to their need or their pain points. They might start comparing your brand with your competitors and checking out things like customer service, pricing, and online reviews.
- Conversion — This is where your prospect converts! Whether that desired action you wanted them to take was a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, etc., they have become convinced to give your brand a shot.
- Advocacy — The journey doesn’t end with conversion! After converting, your customer will still need you for customer service and repeat purchases. A positive post-purchase experience can turn your customer into a loyal brand advocate who shares your posts on social media, leaves you positive reviews, sends you user-generated content, and shares their positive experience with their friends, family, and followers. This is your end goal for all prospects!
It’s not always a linear journey, either. Sometimes your potential customer will loop back around or even skip a stage altogether, but this should give you an idea of their thought process as they come to a decision.
Be sure that your user journey is based on a well-researched understanding of your target audience’s pain points, needs, the situation they might be in, and the problems they’re trying to solve. This helps you to guide your prospects to find the solutions to those problems in the products or services you offer.
Do it right and you’ll improve the customer experience for each prospect and make it more likely that they’ll return to you as a solutions provider over and over again.
Content That Connects at Each Stage of The Customer Journey
To help you guide your prospects through their journey, you want to think of things in terms of a marketing funnel.
You've probably heard of it before. At the top is the widest part of the funnel (the awareness stage). As your prospect gets closer to a purchase, they’ll get to the middle of the funnel (consideration stage) and then the bottom of the funnel (conversion) and beyond (loyalty and advocacy).
Below, we’ll cover the types of content you can use at each stage to keep your customers moving smoothly through your funnel on their way to being future brand advocates.
ToF (Top of the Funnel) Strategies
The top of the funnel is for potential customers who aren’t yet convinced they should use your product or service.
The Goal: Introduce your brand to your prospect and build awareness of your existence and your products/services. You want your potential customer to know that you could be a potential solutions provider for whatever need they might have.
Types of Content to use:
- Blog Posts — Blog posts on social media or your website are great ways to introduce your brand to potential clients. They have the power to help a potential customer understand their challenges and provide potential solutions in an easily digestible and entertaining way.
- Digital Ads — Pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google or social media are also a powerful top-of-the-funnel tool. By targeting your audience with metrics like search history, online behavior, and demographics, you can introduce them to your brand while they actively look for solutions to their problem.
- Infographics — Infographics are engaging, easily sharable, and ideal for showcasing solutions to pain points in a visual and easy-to-understand way.
- Social Media Posts — With practically the whole world on social media, a good social media post shared by a follower or perhaps one sent to a prospect via a paid ad is a great way to get your brand in front of your potential customers’ eyes. It also gives them an easy way to engage by liking or following your page.
- Video / How-Tos — Videos are super engaging, entertaining, and capable of quickly capturing a potential customer’s attention. Hook them in the first few seconds and you’ll be able to spread your brand awareness and position yourself as a future solution provider.
MoF (Middle of the Funnel) Strategies
The middle of the funnel is the consideration phase of the journey. This is for your potential customers to get information about why you’re the guide they need and why your products or services are the solutions that best address their needs and pain points.
The Goal: Show your prospect how your offerings are different (and better!) than your competitor’s and why YOUR brand is the one they should take a chance on.
Types of Content to use:
- Case Studies — Nothing helps convince a potential customer more than hearing success stories from previous potential customers who took a chance on your brand and had it pay off in huge ways. Write up your case study in an engaging way that clearly lays out the customer you’re featuring, their problem, the ways that your offerings were able to satisfy them, and the happy post-purchase life they’re able to lead because of it!
- White Papers — For customers doing their due diligence, a white paper is a great asset to have. They are a fantastic way to better explain your product or service, especially if it’s on the more complicated side (finance, tech, healthcare) so that your prospect can walk away with a clear understanding of your offerings and the solutions they provide.
- Product Guides / Specs — It’s helpful to lay out all of the info about your product (especially if it’s a tech product) because your potential customer is probably checking out similar guides from your competitors to help them make their decision.
- Video / How-Tos — Yes, we mentioned them in the ToF content, but hey, they’re just that useful! At this point in the funnel, your videos can go more in-depth in explaining your products or services and perhaps comparing them to those of your competitors.
BoF (Bottom of the Funnel) Strategies
At last, we have arrived!
The bottom of the funnel is where you’ve been leading your prospects all along. This is the decision-making and conversion phase where your prospects become paying customers.
Of course, the journey doesn’t end there …
The Goal: To encourage repeat purchases, provide a positive post-purchase experience, and continue to engage and keep up the customer relationship.
Types of Content:
- Product Guides — Guarantee your customer’s success by ensuring that they know how to use their products or services correctly. This has the double benefit of letting your customers know that you’ve still got their back and are available for any questions or concerns they may have.
- Satisfaction Surveys — Let your customer know that their satisfaction is your priority. Not only will this help you keep in contact with your customer, but their answers can help you refine your services to ensure that they are continually solving your audiences’ needs.
- Exclusive Offers — Encourage a repeat purchase and make your customer feel special by sending offers or upselling / cross-selling opportunities.
Beyond the Funnel
Once your customer has made repeat purchases and is happily enjoying their product/service and following you on social media, they have gone beyond the funnel into something even better!
The Goal: Keep customer loyalty and encourage brand advocacy.
Types of Content:
- Coupons / Discounts — Nothing encourages a repeat purchase like a discount! Get your customers eager to come back for more by offering them first dibs at promotions for products related to the one they previously purchased.
- Newsletters — Keep your customers in the loop with weekly or monthly newsletters that let them know everything going on with your brand, whether it’s updates, new products, new services, and more.
- Personalized Recommendations — Now that you’ve got a loyal customer, let them know that they’re still on your mind by sending them personalized recommendations based on their purchase history.
Next-Level Tips to Help Your Content Shine
Now that you know what content will help you best resonate with your users during their journey, here are some more tips to take your content to the next level.
Personalization
Doing this enhances user engagement by resonating with your customers on a deeper, more memorable level, as well as guaranteeing that the content that reaches their eyes is relevant and engaging.
Take it a step further and tailor your content to individual prospects by using their first name, company name, or location, and increase the likelihood of that customer moving to the next stage of their journey with your brand in mind.
Automation Triggers
Automating emails and ads can make your whole process that much more efficient.
Automation triggers like website visits, email opens, abandoned carts, or downloading content allows you to send timely content to your prospects right when it's most effective and boosts their chances of conversion and additional engagement.
Interactive Content
Entice your users to engage with your content by making it interactive and fun!
Use quizzes, surveys, polls, calculators, and more to capture your user’s attention and gather some valuable insight into your target customer’s preferences and buying habits.
A/B Testing and Fine Tuning
This is more for you than your prospects, but continuously testing and fine-tuning your approach can only lead to better-refined messaging and a more positive user experience for them!
A/B testing allows you to experiment with different types of content to identify what aspects of your campaign are working best and fine-tune and revise those aspects that aren’t.
This will keep your content and your approach relevant, engaging, and effective as you work toward achieving your marketing goals.
Don't Forget to Call
Remember, that no matter what your user journey looks like, it will ultimately end with a call to action.
This is perhaps the most important part of the user journey and one that you should put some effort into being compelling, intuitive, and easy to action on! You don’t want to get your potential customer all the way at the 1-yard line and then leave them confused as to what their next step should be.
Get them into the end zone with actionable steps that make it very clear what they need to do and what their first step with you is going to be.
Example:
- Schedule a free consultation.
- Learn more about our service packages.
- Find the plan that works for you and start your two-week trial!
CTA: Click to schedule your consultation now
It’s simple, it’s easy to read, and it lets your potential lead know exactly what they should expect from you by taking a chance and clicking that button!
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Designity: Your Local ABM Experts
Creating content and compelling CTAs is a time-consuming effort that necessitates the skills of several people on your team, including:
- Copywriters
- Graphic Designers
- Video Editors
- Coders
- Marketing Experts
If that list is more than you’ve got on staff (or the staff you have has too much on their plate!) then why not consider a collaboration with Designity?
Designity is made up of the top 3% of US-based creative talent, including all of the folks listed above, made accessible through one innovative CaaS platform.
If it’s content you need, the Designity platform can get it done. And with a dedicated Creative Director taking the reins, you won’t have to worry about sourcing the right talent, creating deliverables, or anything else but the job you already have.
You focus on your marketing efforts and let Designity take care of the strategy and the valuable content you need to make it a success.
Check out our account-based marketing and user journey service pages to see what we have to offer!
What content do you use to move your prospects through the sales funnel?
