How to Use Buyer’s Journey To Create Content and Grow Your Business
"We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.” – Craig Davis
Ok, it’s story time:
Imagine getting into an elevator with another person. During the ride, you find out the person riding the elevator with you does website design for businesses. You’ve been considering making a change to your website so you ask for a card, then depart from the elevator.
The next day, you get an email from the website guy and he is asking do schedule a 2 hour lunch the next day. The website guys goes on in the email about his product and how it’s much better than competitors. You get a sudden feeling of anxiety, pressure and are ultimately turned off.
"Meet for lunch? I just met you yesterday.” you think to yourself. You disregard the email never to view it again.
Now, did you see what happened here? The website guy had a lead (that’s you on the elevator), but his approach to introducing his business was all wrong. Turns out, I was still searching the best website options and wasn’t ready to be sold.
Why Did That Person Think it Was Ok?
This is a common phenomenon that all small business owners should know about. There is a process customers go through to purchase goods and services; we call it the buyer’s journey.
By understanding the buyer’s journey, you can strategically know when it’s time to educate your customer, when it’s time to introduce the benefits of your product, and when it’s time to ask for the sale.
"Uninformed people rarely if ever become your customers because they can’t see the value in what you do” - Chris Haywood
The website guy asked for too much without establishing a relationship with you. In your mind, meeting for 2 hours could be a total waste of time.
To prevent approaching your customer the wrong way, we use the Buyer's Journey guide them passively but strategically to the sale. It's important that you use content to make your audience feel educated and understood.
The Buyer Journey shows how your audience goes from uninformed to conscious buyers
- Awareness Stage: Customer looking to define their problem. They have a pain point that is driving them to research. Not looking to buy at this point but likely just gathering information
- Consideration Stage: Customer understands their problem and is shopping around who or what can solve that problem. Still uneasy about buying at this point because they feel unformed.
- Decision Stage: Customer knows problem and solution options but now must decide which option will work best for them.
My advice is to create different types of content throughout your online space. Create awareness pieces to educate your potential customer. Create consideration content to showcase how you can solve the customer's problem. And finally, create decision content to ultimately get new business.
The Come Up is Real,
CH