To create content that generates leads and sales, you have to understand the buyer's journey. Most creators and solopreneurs publish one size fits all content, hoping that each piece will address new and existing audience, low and high ticket customers alike. But if you don't align each piece of content to specific segments of your audience and where they are in their buyer's journey, your content marketing will fail.
Hi, I'm David Ziembicki, and you're about to learn how to grow from struggling solopreneur to successful virtual CEO of your own expert business. Your knowledge and skills can change lives and make the world a better place. Are you ready to hit the accelerator to scale your results and impact? Then it's time to build your expert business.
This week I was preparing for a training I was going to deliver in my Facebook group, and the top challenge mentioned by people registering was not knowing what type of content helps generate leads and sales. Part of the answer is the classic marketing concept of the buyer's journey. These are the common stages. Unaware. Someone's unaware they have a problem. Then they become problem aware. They're aware that they have the given problem. Then they become solution aware.
Aware that there are solutions to that problem. Then provider aware. Meaning aware of specific providers of solutions. And then finally, They become a customer of one of the providers. As you've seen in previous content of mine, I talk a lot about the stages of attract, convert, and ascend. Attracting a new audience, converting existing audience into leads or customers of your entry level products, and ascending customers into your flagship programs.
They're basically different terms for the similar stages. But a key lesson of our content system is that specific types of content may work great for one stage, but they may be completely ineffective for the others. So you want each piece of content to target just one stage of the buyer's journey, and then you rotate through the stages over time, so you address all of your audience. And here's why. Imagine you're a business coach.
A piece of content like 5 Reasons Why a Business Coach Can Help You Increase Profits would be a good fit for the problem aware audience, like a business owner who isn't hitting their profit goals. But that content will be a complete miss for someone that's provider aware. They already know they have the problem, that there are solutions, and they found other solution providers like other business coaches.
For that provider aware audience segment, you need to make sure they know you can solve their specific problems and why you are the best choice of provider. Content like case studies, testimonials, and comparisons or behind the scenes with you are much more helpful since they're in the decision stage between multiple options. That example alone shows that it's not going to be possible for a given piece of content to address every segment of your audience. So what do we do?
Well, we need a new model for content planning. I've taught and written about aspects of this before, but this week a new concept clicked that I don't think I've seen discussed anywhere else. At first, I thought my three stages, attract, convert, and ascend, were just a different version of the buyer's journey, and that I should just pick one or the other system. But then I re looked at the terms and realized a significant difference. Stages versus goals.
The buyer's journey are stages like problem aware. My framework is actions like attracting, converting, or ascending. And right then a vision popped into my head of a simple matrix with the buyer's journey as the columns and my framework tiers as the rows. But are the two models redundant? At first I still thought these were redundant, but then another insight hit. Different people come into our audience at all of the different stages and tiers of the buyer matrix.
Each person's path isn't linear. It basically flows from left to right, then carriage returns like a typewriter. If they're starting in a tract or unaware, we need to help them progress left to right so they become aware we have a solution to their first problem. At that point, they jump down to convert by opting into a lead magnet or, you know, buying an entry level product.
But at that point, the buyer's journey resets as they may have been unaware they have a bigger problem that our flagship program addresses. So they progress through the buyer's journey again, but at the next tier. This is a much better match for real life. It explains why there isn't a simple linear path, and why it takes many different touchpoints with each person before they move to the next stage of awareness within a tier, and when they take action to move between tiers. What's the takeaway?
For each piece of content, we should laser target it on one tier of our audience. Like convert or attract and moving them from one stage of the buyer's journey to the next. Here's what this looks like. Notice that in my content for the last six weeks, I've been talking all about how and why to create content at scale to generate leads and sales. I've been targeting my problem aware audience. Those of you who know you want to create more content to generate leads and sales, but don't know how.
For the folks in the attract tier of my audience, my content and social posts were designed to get new people into my audience to opt in and move into the convert stage. So they move left to right in a tract by seeing they had a problem, seeing my content in masterclass might be a solution, and then choosing me as a provider of a possible answer by opting into my newsletter or masterclass. At that point they converted are entering the next tier. Now the cycle starts again.
In the masterclass the audience is problem aware and I need to move them to being solution aware, i. e. that their strategy, systems, tools, and team to help them create content at scale. Then I need to get them provider aware. Knowing that my agency provides those done for you services to do most of the work for them. A masterclass or webinar is a much longer form piece of content, so you can move people through the entire journey for that tier. But is the journey the same for everyone?
This sounds linear, but realize people may come into your world at any stage or tier, and people can pause at any stage or tier. There are people in my audience who haven't seen any of the above content yet, but they because they were busy or missed it. There are others that have opted in to my newsletter or lead magnets but not the masterclass. Then there are folks who watched part of it but didn't see my offer at the end. And so on and so forth.
My audience matrix has people in every stage and tier. Over time, I need to continuously create content that moves people left to right within their tier and beyond. Then top to bottom between the tiers. So what stage and tier should you focus on? The answer depends on your stage of business. If you're just starting out and need revenue and cash flow now, then you want to focus on the tier and stages closest to your flagship program. This is your warmest audience.
Anyone who is provider aware of your flagship program. At the other end of the spectrum, if you've been in business for a couple years, maybe you have launched many times to your audience and already converted most of them. In that scenario, you'd want to focus more on the attract tier and expanding your audience. And here's why a high volume of content helps.
If you do put in place a content engine like I talk about, where you can be publishing hundreds of pieces of content a month, then you can sort of have your cake and eat it too. Meaning you can create multiple pieces of core content every month, where each is designed for a different tier and stage. Your audience will self select the content most relevant to them. This way you can steadily attract new audience. Convert them to customers and ascend customers into your flagship programs.
It's basically because you're putting out enough volume that you can have targeted content, but covering multiple targets. So here's how to take action. These concepts are hot off the presses and this past week's masterclass was the first time I've taught them in this format. So if it's still available, you should definitely check out the replay. Then second, learn how you can get one on one coaching for me and my team working for you to start your content engine.