The Buyer’s Journey for Better B2B Content Marketing Strategy

Every prospective buyer goes through a process before making the final buying decision. This process is even more important in the B2B industry, where clients will usually take a long time to convert. As such, it is critical to be aware of what the separate phases of the buying process are.

The Awareness Phase

The first phase of the buyer’s journey involves getting people to see and read your content. Utilize content marketing to attract attention and receive web traffic.

The prospective buyers you want to target are in search of solutions to their needs; therefore the content you provide at this stage must focus on answering their questions. Your goal should be to inform potential clients how they can solve the problem they face. This way you position yourself as an expert in your domain.

All of the content you provide here should be free of charge. With so many resources online, people will be reluctant to pay for something they can find for free somewhere else. At this stage, the financial goals should be put on hold and focus on offering valuable information to potential customers.

The Consideration Phase

In the second phase, develop a content marketing strategy for getting leads. There is probably no sales manager or business owner whose top priority didn’t include obtaining leads and converting to sales.

At the consideration phase these are the most important things to do:

· In this part of a B2B buying process, engagement is the main metric to pay attention to.

· You should augment your content with call-to-actions and make it easy for your audience to engage with your brand.

· Potential clients at this stage already know your offering and understand how it can help them solve their problem — your goal now transcends into building your credibility.

The Decision Phase

Here focus your content strategy on getting sales. This stage contains the selling point — the part where all your efforts from the previous phases start paying off. If the content from previous stages has been correctly devised and distributed, your business should now start reaping the benefits.

One thing to keep in mind is that the B2B industry is very slow in concluding deals. Most potential B2B clients will take a long time, from weeks to months, passing through the three phases before they’re ready to buy.

The Retention Phase

Always include referrals into your content marketing strategy. Once you have made a sale, this should not represent the end of the journey for the customer. Repeat customers are a great source of revenues and happy clients will always have a good word to say about your business. This is the phase when you need to make the customer feel valued and part of your community.

Concluding, it is important to remember that the journey a B2B buyer goes through is a step-by-step process. This requires more than just a general content marketing strategy. When it comes to planning and creating content, devoting time and effort to customize your content for every phase will make a huge difference for your bottom line.