The Customer Journey Gives your company an easily identifiable map that will help you better understand each of the Touchpoints of your customers. Especially because online marketing is no longer a linear customer journey, but a modern customer journey offers many branches, this overview is essential.
But reading the customer journey exclusively from your company's perspective is not enough. From your customers' perspective, the individual touchpoints are different - aligning content with your customers requires a comprehensive understanding for what constitutes the customer journey on the various channels.
For the Customer Content Journey use the concept of the customer journey to provide all potential customers with an Tailored experience with individualized content to offer. This adds value to your marketing mix and turns a one-size-fits-all principle into a successful marketing strategy for your company. This guide shows you how to skillfully combine customer journey and content marketing.
Creation of the customer journey as a basis for the identification of suitable content
First of all, the work begins with the Customer Journey Map, which has a comprehensible visualization and detailed preparation of the entire sales funnel. Although the journey is different for each company, the broad phases are always as follows:
Awareness
The top end of the sales funnel is particularly broad. At this point, customers are still looking for solutions to problems and do not browse in a completely targeted manner. Here it comes to a first contact with your brandwhether on social media or on your website. The goal here is, first and foremost To be remembered and to the repeated call from different channels (e.g. Instagram page or newsletter).
At this point in the customer journey, content is the primary interface between the company and the customer.
Consideration
At this point, the visitor's problem becomes more concrete and your company is considered as a closer candidate for a purchase. Products and prices are compared and your company's goods and services are examined more closely.
At this point the content must offer concrete answers to concrete questionsto be truly convincing.
Decision
The sales funnel is now almost over and the conversion is as good as complete. Now it's time to offer your sales pitch.
Content marketing must dispel the last doubts so close to conversion and once again clearly demonstrate that your company offers the right solutions. Retargeting can also entice with discounts and bonus offers, and you need to reinforce in potential customers the feeling that the purchase decision is the right one.
Retention
Bought once is good. Loyal Brand Ambassador is better. Retention works according to this motto. Here, your content provides tips on how to use your products, your service provides advice and support, and you offer follow-up offers and encourage active participation on social media.
This not only creates organic content for your brand, but also brings customers back to you again and again.
How do you adapt your content to the customer journey?
A customer journey map like the one described above is an important prerequisite for better content, but it is only the first step. If you want to plan a detailed customer content journey, you need to identify the right content offer
Depending on the product or service in your offering, a customer journey takes a certain amount of time. Purchase decisions need to be carefully considered, and the Internet offers a wealth of information. And precisely because the web is such a diverse source of information, you should focus on the customer content journey first and foremost. Awareness focus. How do you increase your reach and deliver content that provides information but also creates demand for your business?
Blogposts are therefore best offered at this point in the funnel. In this way, you not only profile your company as an expert, but also attract customers through the Search engine optimization visitors looking for information to your website in the first place. Another option is Influencer Marketing, you benefit from the Range and natural credibility of personalities on social media.
In the Consideration-Phase the content should then specialized be. Here you work with newsletters, whitepapers, detailed blogposts or even webinars (especially in the B2B sector). For the Decision Phase the content must then once again concretized be. Here you need special bundles, product-centric content or even demos for digital goods.
Proactive customer service in the Retention stage Binds customers for the long term to your company. Provide your clientele here with relevant information about the products they've purchased and use organic content on social media. Subscribers to your page will love to see you share the tagged content in their feed.
Customer personas for the right content
To make sure your customer content journey hits the mark, you first need to understand who you want to communicate with. Data-driven customer personas create images that your marketing department can work with in a meaningful way. Demographic data, problems, challenges, wishes and media affinity create the structural basis for your content marketing. Because whether you want to address a professional clientele from the IT sector looking for new professional challenges or a young target group with a penchant for social media makes a crucial difference. Not only for the content of your content marketing, but also for the Chosen channels and media formsthat you use.
Find your voice - create the right customer content journey
The customer journey must work for your company, but the content must work for all potential customers.
Only by finding the right balance between blogs, social media, newsletters, and personalized offers, and examining which content works best at which stage of the sales funnel, can you truly unleash the potential of your content marketing.
