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THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK - Do you want to increase your target audience’s engagement with your content? Do this simple audit!
Audits have a negative reputation! Whether they come from the IRS, FDA or some other three-lettered government agency, we don’t typically welcome them. But let me introduce you to an audit that you will want to do regularly because of the positive outcomes it delivers.
How’s your target audience’s level of engagement with your marketing content? Don’t we always want it to be better?
The purpose of content audits is to check your content inventory against a set of standards. It can be assessed on SEO performance, analyzed for number of reader or viewer engagements, and even evaluated for quality.
Have you ever assessed your content on its ability to reach prospects through all stages of their buyer’s journey?
First, let’s remind ourselves that the buyer’s journey begins long before a prospect contacts a solution provider. According to Gartner research, 83% of the buyer’s journey is completed before a prospect reveals themselves to a seller. However, most B2B solution providers focus most of their content on the end of the buyer’s journey, the last 17%, with descriptions of features and benefits.
Doing this is like creating a football game-plan that only includes plays for when the offense is inside the 17-yard line. Or if a golfer would play 18 holes of golf with only a putter. How would that work out?
To effectively engage prospects so that your solutions are being considered when buyers are ready to reveal themselves, you must have content that interests them during the first 83% of their journey.
Here is a simple guide!
Early Buyer’s Journey - This content helps your prospects to better understand the common issues they face, takes a position on industry-wide issues with thought leadership, or offers best practices for overcoming challenging circumstances. It builds awareness of issues that exist that the prospect may not be aware of. This content should comprise 40% or more of your content mix and is not self-promotional!
Middle Buyer’s Journey – This content begins to help your prospects conceptually visualize solutions to the common issues that you highlighted in your early buyer’s journey content. It offers hope that a solution exists and includes case studies and best practices for how others overcame the issues. Still, it is not promotional and should comprise about 40% of your total content mix.
Late Buyer’s Journey Content – This is content that includes product and service descriptions filled with features, benefits, specifications, and application notes. But the most engaging content contains a healthy dose of your prospect’s point of view and what being your customer would mean to them. This should be about 20% of your content.
How much of each type of content do you have?
When your content is right-sized and aligned to the buyer’s journey, hold-on tight and watch your audience engagement take-off.
I hope you have a great week!
--Perry
Visit us at follow your buyer for more.
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Perry Rearick
Chief Editor | Follow Your Buyer
prearick@followyourbuyer.com
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