We often talk about buyers journeys or website journeys, but we never discuss content marketing journeys. Which is crazy, because content marketing journeys affect all journeys – website, email and buyer. That is why we’re going to give you an inside look at our own content marketing strategy, so you can get an idea of what works effectively.
If you want a clear buyer journey, whether on the website or email, you need a clear content path to get there. Let us explain what we mean by that.
1: Stagger your content levels
Not all content you create will be of equal value.
Blogs are likely to only interest cold leads or “content chasers”.
Product and service pages could attract anyone from interested leads to competitors or just those looking to do more research.
Case studies, whitepapers, and guides are a better indicator that website visitors are interested in. Again, it isn’t enough interest for sales to get in direct contact with them.
2: Create a clear content marketing journey
You need a clear content path and a way to keep track of this in order to know when a lead is genuinely ready to buy. For example, they come from an email list and engage with some of your top performing blogs. After that, they go on to read a couple of case studies before checking out your key product page and finally requesting a pricing package.
Of course, not every lead is going to go through that exact content journey. Perhaps they read your blog for a month, then looked at product pages and never requested pricing or a demo but came back to read your blog again before responding to a sales email.
The easiest way for your content to replicate a smooth buyer journey is by linking your content together. Blogs of 400 words should link to heavier resources such as whitepapers or case studies. Resources should link to your feature pages. Your products and services should have call-to-actions towards your action pages. Other pages on your website, such as events, solutions, competitor pages…etc., should all feed into this content journey too.
3: Track your content engagement
None of this matters if you don’t have a way to keep track of your journey and see if it is working.
With visitor tracking, you’ll be able to see how website visitors are digesting your copy. You’ll be able to see the content chasers from the interested opportunities.
With visitor identification, you’ll be able to see which of these leads are competitors, suppliers, partners…etc.
With page scoring attached to each web page, you can assign a score to each lead, allowing you to know which leads are ready to buy.
Producing content for the sake of it no longer works. Your content needs to be smarter. Your website needs to be smarter. The only way to achieve that is to start understanding how your website visitors view and use your content. Without an effective content marketing journey, you risk losing your website visitors in the crowd. No marketer – content or otherwise – wants that.