5 Ways to Create Great Content the Customer Journey

Investing in content is one of the best ways to promote your business.

Firstly, high-quality content is the key to brand and product awareness. It can also play a significant role in establishing your organization’s credibility. It’s the gateway to earning your target audience’s trust, thus inspiring them to convert.

However, not all content yields results. If you want your marketing strategy to genuinely help you reach your business goals, you’ll need to optimize it to appeal to and benefit your target audience. And to do that, you must fully understand your prospects’ pain points, aspirations, and priorities.

The thing about crafting customer-centric content is that consumers populating various stages of the customer journey will want and need different resources to help them solve their pain points. You have to optimize each piece you publish to meet their specific needs and nudge them toward the lower stages of the sales funnel.

So, if you’re interested in elevating your content marketing efforts, here are the top ways to create great content for every stage of the customer journey.

How Does the Customer Journey Differ from the Buyer Journey?

Before you can start producing high-performing content for each stage of the sales cycle, you must understand what the customer journey is in the first place.

At first glance, the term may seem equivalent to the much-more-used “buyer’s journey,” but the concept of a customer journey is somewhat more extensive.

While the buyer’s journey contains only three phases (awareness, consideration, and decision), the customer journey involves two additional stages: retention and loyalty.

In essence, producing content that works for the entire sales cycle doesn’t just involve converting new customers with customer-oriented resources. It also includes post-purchase content that can help you turn shoppers into repeat customers who’ll spend more with your business and be happy to recommend it to their peers.

Different Stages of Customer Journey

1. Awareness Stage Content: Attracting New Leads with High-Value Educational Resources

When it comes to attracting new leads, awareness-stage content is the name of the game.

These posts offer an excellent opportunity to raise brand and product awareness among your target audience. More importantly, content made for the topmost stage of the customer journey allows you to position your business in a positive light from the first interaction your prospects have with your brand.

As a rule, when targeting consumers who are just entering the sales cycle, you’ll want to invest in blogging, search engine marketing, and social media. Focus your energy on educational articles and videos, and do your best to optimize each post in a way that will help you maximize reach.

For example, the Semrush State of Content Marketing Report for 2023 found that some of the most effective tactics for making blog posts perform better included:

• Researching and adding related keywords in addition to primary keywords.
• Analyzing and addressing customer questions. And;
• Utilizing more visual formats (images and videos).

With this in mind, explore methods to transform run-of-the-mill posts into resources that help your audience solve their pain points (or at least point them in the right direction) and are engaging and entertaining, encouraging readers and viewers to continue interacting with your business in the future.

For example, the BJJ Fanatics comprehensive guide on Jiu-Jitsu is the ideal piece of awareness-stage content. It targets a high-volume keyword, provides readers with a comprehensive answer, and points them in the right direction for learning more about martial arts.

Source: bjjfanatics.com

Or, you can check out Going’s detailed resource on How to Use Google Flights. It’s the perfect tool for capturing new leads due to being super helpful, with lots of actionable advice for budget travelers. Note how the commercial links peppered throughout the text are subtle yet relevant, maximizing the chances of readers understanding that Going’s solution could help them remove their pain points without being too sales-oriented to frustrate readers and make them perceive the brand as pushy.

Source: going.com

Investing in blog posts ensures a low production cost and a high ROI, but it’s not always the most effective way to attract awareness-stage consumers.

According to data, video tops the list of the most effective content marketing formats for 2024. Plus, interactive resources are also gaining popularity, with almost twice as many businesses using interactive formats to engage audiences.

With this in mind, it’s always a good idea to allot a portion of your content marketing budget to these more advanced formats. Then, you can use them on their own by posting them on relevant social channels. Or, you can do what Classical Guitar Shed does so well in their Classical Guitar 101 article and combine the power of text, imagery, and video to create a user-friendly learning experience that first-time web visitors will love.

Source: classicalguitarshed.com

2. Consideration Stage Content: Helping Consumers Make the Best Buying Decisions

Once your potential customers know what they need to remove their pain points, it’s time to start helping them make informed buying decisions they’ll be happy with in the long run.

The latest data shows that most people research purchases before committing to a single product/service.

In fact, 99.5% of people do so at least sometimes. And 29% of consumers use price comparison sites as their primary source of pre-purchase information.

So, as you explore ways to create content for every stage of the customer journey, invest in resources that will serve people populating the consideration stage of the sales funnel.

Creating product comparison content is one of the easiest ways to support and educate your audience during this phase of the buyer’s journey.

Don’t hesitate to pit your solutions against those made by your competitors. Yes, this strategy may call your potential client’s attention to an alternative to one of your products. Nonetheless, it also allows you to highlight everything that makes your offer the better option for removing their pain points, allowing you to move prospects to the lower stages of the sales funnel without them ever leaving your website.

The Duda vs. Squarespace landing page is an exceptional example of this type of content. It makes it easy for prospects to evaluate the two solutions without jumping between browser tabs. On top of that, it clearly points out everything that Duda does better than its competition, successfully highlighting that it’s the superior option for clients looking for a customizable solution.

Source: duda.co

Additionally, if you want to combine the power of evaluation-stage content with social proof, you could produce case studies that will educate web visitors about the benefits of your solutions while backing up your claims with empirical data.

Sendible does a tremendous job with this type of content. Instead of just listing how its product has helped customers reach their goals, this brand uses case studies as an opportunity to describe product features in context. This helps maximize product understanding. Plus, it proves that Sendible’s product has what it takes to successfully remove common user frustrations.

Source: sendible.com

3. Decision Stage Content: Convincing Prospects to Opt for Your Solutions

Although great content may convince your target audience that your solution offers the best benefits, it may not always be enough to get them to click that “Buy” button.

Why? Because people consider much more than product quality, reliability, and features when deciding what solutions to invest in.

According to some of the latest data, price and convenience play just as big a part in buyers’ decision-making journey.

For example, Jungle Scout’s Consumer Trends Report Q2 2024 discovered that 71% of Amazon buyers search for the product with the lowest price. Additionally, 16% more people make use of flexible payment options than they did last year. Furthermore, the popularity of subscriptions increased as well, most notably because they allow buyers to save money.

With this in mind, it’s more important than ever to produce decision-stage content to incentivize prospects to choose your solutions.

For example, a landing page that calls your audience’s attention to the fact they can use your product for free — like this Church Texting Service page from Dial My Calls  — can be an exceptional way to secure new leads. This type of content effectively minimizes risk perception and incentivizes web visitors to convert. Plus, it acts as a pared-down product demo, thanks to the fact that it describes each product feature from the perspective of a specific buyer persona.

Source: dialmycalls.com

4. Retention Stage Content: Enhancing Customer Satisfaction and Encouraging Re-Purchase

Although your primary business goal may be to maximize sales, it’s safe to say that the sales cycle — or the customer journey, for that matter — doesn’t end once you’ve converted a client.

Instead, to ensure your business’s longevity and financial prosperity, you need to employ tactics to secure sufficient customer retention rates.

After all, if customer acquisition costs several times more than retention, it’s only natural that you’ll want to employ strategies to make your marketing spend yield a higher ROI.

Now, the best way to keep buyers using your products is, of course, to deliver an exceptional customer experience. However, investing in a few key content formats can significantly enhance customer satisfaction and encourage re-purchase.

A detailed help page — like the Panorama 3 Support page from Bowers & Wilkins — can be a great way to help your buyers get the most from their purchases. You’ll notice that this example includes setup instructions, documentation, links to firmware updates, as well as a “Most popular topics” section to answer common customer questions.

Source: bowerswilkins.com

Alternatively, a more conversion-oriented approach to content production and distribution could also help you inspire re-purchases.

In fact, a great email marketing strategy can make it exceptionally easy to re-engage existing customers, remind them to use your solutions, help them get more out of their purchases, or even present them with attractive special offers to boost customer lifetime value.

5. Loyalty Stage Content: Inspiring Commitment

The last phase of the customer journey — the loyalty stage — is often the most difficult to perfect. Because even if you do everything right, your customers may switch brands, a behavior that has grown from a pandemic-driven necessity to a persistent consumer trend.

Nonetheless, the rewards for investing in loyalty-stage content are more than worth aspiring to.

Knowing that committed customers spend more and are more likely to champion your brand, producing and distributing resources that cultivate strong customer-brand relationships is a no-brainer.

For the most part, loyalty-stage content should highlight your conversion-oriented initiatives. Provide existing clients with exclusive perks. Give them sneak peeks of your new solutions. Or encourage them to recommend your business to their peers.

However, it’s also essential to invest in content that will make your customers want to return to your brand due to the value it offers.

For instance, Shop Solar Kits has an excellent Solar Calculators resource page, which helps people collect information on how to plan, maintain, install, and expand their solar systems. By encouraging people to bookmark the page, Shop Solar ensures it’s the first place people think of going when they need help with their solar energy needs, maximizing loyalty and minimizing the chances of existing buyers opting for a different retailer once they realize they need additional equipment.

Wrapping Up

As you work to create content for each stage of the customer journey, remember that the best way to produce exceptional results is to know your audience through and through.

So, do your homework and continually analyze your prospects’ wants and needs. And don’t be afraid to experiment with alternative content formats. Who knows, your ideal buyer persona may just love that unique resource that’s different from anything else they can find online.