Today, buy­ers are more informed than ever. They have access to all types of infor­ma­tion at their fin­ger­tips. They tend to research and get to know all of their options before decid­ing to buy a prod­uct or service.

When it comes to sell­ing a prod­uct or ser­vice, all this leads to a change in the focus of the sales funnel.

The focus is no longer on what you have to offer, but rather on the pain points of the buy­ers and how the prod­uct or ser­vice you are try­ing to sell could help them address those pain points.

This is why the “old salesy tac­tics” of spam­ming and pres­sur­ing your poten­tial cus­tomers are no longer effective.

To suc­cess­ful­ly sell your ser­vice or prod­uct, you need to change your mind­set. Shift it from try­ing to sell some­thing to try­ing to help your tar­get audi­ence. The best way to achieve it is to get to know your cus­tomers and find out how they usu­al­ly decide to buy a ser­vice or product.

In oth­er words, you need to under­stand their journey.

By under­stand­ing the buy­er’s jour­ney, you can under­stand the prob­lems and pain points that your poten­tial cus­tomers are expe­ri­enc­ing along the way. In this way, you’ll be able to under­stand the influ­enc­ing fac­tors that shape their think­ing and the way they make decisions.

When you under­stand the buy­er’s jour­ney, you will be able to empathise with buy­ers, and posi­tion your prod­ucts and ser­vices along the way.

Let’s start with the basics.

What Is The Buyer’s Journey?

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, the buy­er’s jour­ney is how the client pur­chas­es a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct or ser­vice. Every­one goes through a cer­tain process before decid­ing to make a purchase.

Peo­ple rarely buy ran­dom­ly or impul­sive­ly, espe­cial­ly when it comes to prod­ucts that add a cer­tain val­ue to their lives. They plan, research, and analyse before mak­ing a final decision.

This is why you, as a busi­ness own­er, need to under­stand why peo­ple buy your prod­ucts or services.

All these dif­fer­ent stages that cus­tomers go through are known as the buy­er’s journey.

The dif­fer­ent stages of this jour­ney are aware­ness, con­sid­er­a­tion, and decision-making.

How To Create A Buyer’s Persona

The first step to fig­ur­ing out the buy­er’s jour­ney is cre­at­ing a buy­er’s persona.

The buy­er’s per­sona is the col­lec­tive image of your tar­get audi­ence. It rep­re­sents their inter­ests, hob­bies, and behav­iours. Cre­at­ing a buy­er’s per­sona can help you to write con­tent that address­es your poten­tial clien­t’s needs.

Step 1. Col­lect data from your past customers

If you already have past cus­tomers, send out a sur­vey to col­lect insights from them. Ask them ques­tions to learn more about their motives, prob­lems, and frustrations.

Here are some ques­tions that you could ask:

• How did you learn about the company?
• What prob­lem did you try to solve?
• How did you decide to buy from us?
• With which con­tent on the web­site did you interact?

Step 2. Use Google Analytics

Your Google Ana­lyt­ics account holds a lot of data that can help you build your buy­er’s persona.

Here are some of the sta­tis­tics that can help you:

• Age and Gender

Go to your Google Ana­lyt­ics dash­board, click on the “Audi­ence” tab — “Demo­graph­ics” and click “Pre­view”.

Here is the screen you’re going to see.

In our case, you can see that our male audi­ence is 55% and female is 45%. Most of our vis­i­tors are with­in the age range of 25–34.

• Lan­guage and locations

To access the lan­guage and loca­tion that go to the “Audi­ence” tab and click on “Geo”, then click “Lan­guage”.

Next, click on the “Loca­tion” tab, right below the “Lan­guage” one. This is what you’ll see.

From the screen­shots above, we can draw con­clu­sions that the major­i­ty of our audi­ence comes from the Unit­ed States. How­ev­er, the vis­i­tors from India, Unit­ed King­dom, and Ger­many have a bet­ter con­ver­sion rate.

• Inter­ests

To check out your cus­tomers’ inter­ests, go to the “Audi­ence” tab, click on the “Inter­est” and then “Affin­i­ty Categories”.

Step 3. Define your ide­al customer

Who is your ide­al cus­tomer? You can make edu­ca­tion­al guess­es regard­ing the prob­lems and chal­lenges your ide­al cus­tomer has. You can use that infor­ma­tion to cre­ate your buy­er’s persona.

Here are some of the ques­tions that you can ask your­self, so grab a pen and start answer­ing them.

• How do your prod­ucts or ser­vices ben­e­fit your ide­al cus­tomers’ life?
• What prob­lems and chal­lenges does your ide­al cus­tomer face in their life?
• What are the ben­e­fits of your prod­uct? Write down all of them.
• When will the ide­al cus­tomer pur­chase your prod­uct? In what life setting?
• What is the process that your ide­al cus­tomer fol­lows to buy your product?

Awareness Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey

The aware­ness stage is the first step of the buy­er’s jour­ney. In this stage, your prospec­tive clients are becom­ing aware of the fact that they have a prob­lem or a need. They are still not sure if, or how, they can solve their prob­lems. They are inves­ti­gat­ing and research­ing dif­fer­ent options on the mar­ket. They are still not ready to make a purchase.

What Type Of Content To Use In The Awareness Stage

Peo­ple in the aware­ness stage of the jour­ney are almost impos­si­ble to con­vert. Many sales teams avoid con­tact­ing aware­ness stage leads as they are not qual­i­fied to make a deci­sion yet.

The con­tent for aware­ness-stage users must be focused on pro­vid­ing as much val­ue as pos­si­ble in order to nur­ture the prospect at that stage.

Share insights, explain how you can help to solve their prob­lems. If you’re sell­ing a prod­uct, share help­ful tips on how the cus­tomer can use the prod­uct in the most effec­tive way.

Do not pres­sure your vis­i­tors to make a pur­chase yet, focus on build­ing trust and posi­tion­ing your­self as the indus­try expert.

Here are some types of con­tent you can share with your users:

Write Blog Posts

One of the most com­mon forms of aware­ness-stage con­tent are arti­cles and blog posts. They cov­er a wide range of top­ics, they are infor­ma­tive, acces­si­ble, and with­in a few sim­ple clicks from Google search results.

Share blog posts that answer ques­tions and solve prob­lems of the users on this stage. They need to be easy to read and under­stand­able but also com­pre­hen­sive enough to actu­al­ly pro­vide val­ue and help the readers.

Here are some exam­ples from the Com­mon Sense Advi­sors’ blog.

They share help­ful invest­ment and mon­ey man­age­ment tips to grab the atten­tion of their readers.

Here’s how you can gath­er top­ic ideas for the aware­ness stage.

Start by mak­ing a list of all ques­tions that buy­ers are usu­al­ly ask­ing you before final­is­ing their pur­chase. Whether they con­tact you through email, chat, or phone, start tak­ing notes on what ques­tions they ask before mak­ing the informed deci­sion to buy from you.

Don’t focus only on the ques­tions that are relat­ed to your prod­uct or ser­vice. Focus on ques­tions that help solve the prob­lems of your users.

If your com­pa­ny is sell­ing online lan­guage cours­es, for exam­ple, you don’t want to write all about how your prod­uct can help them learn a dif­fer­ent lan­guage. Instead, cre­ate arti­cles on ways to learn new for­eign words fast, study guide­lines, time man­age­ment tips, and more.

Share Videos

Videos and visu­al con­tent in gen­er­al are becom­ing one of the most pop­u­lar ways for peo­ple to con­sume infor­ma­tion. YouTube and Tik­Tok are no longer only fun places to relax after long work­ing hours. You can find help­ful infor­ma­tion there on almost every topic.

Videos can deliv­er help­ful infor­ma­tion faster than writ­ten con­tent. How-to videos and Q&As are great video top­ic ideas to start.

You can repur­pose your blog post ideas and answer the same ques­tions in video for­mat. You can share the videos on YouTube, Insta­gram, or Tik­Tok and broad­en your audi­ence reach.

You can even include links to the videos in your blog posts for peo­ple that pre­fer to watch tuto­ri­als rather than read­ing articles.

Share Infographics

Info­graph­ics are anoth­er form of infor­ma­tion shar­ing that you should con­sid­er. They are engag­ing, pleas­ant to look at, and high­ly infor­ma­tive. They help to present impor­tant data in a fun and inter­est­ing way.

Info­graph­ics are ben­e­fi­cial in the aware­ness stage of the jour­ney because they are easy to con­sume. Read­ers can receive the infor­ma­tion they are inter­est­ed in with­in a few sec­onds, rather than spend­ing time on read­ing long blog posts on the topic.

What you should take into con­sid­er­a­tion is that not all types of con­tent are suit­able to be pre­sent­ed as an infographic.

On the oth­er hand, the use of info­graph­ics can help pique the inter­est of your read­ers on a par­tic­u­lar top­ic and inspire them to look for more infor­ma­tion on your site.

Info­graph­ics are real­ly easy to share and usu­al­ly get lots of atten­tion on social media chan­nels. Peo­ple pre­fer to share info­graph­ics rather than long blog articles.

You can repur­pose your exist­ing blog posts and cre­ate info­graph­ics with the syn­the­sised infor­ma­tion that can be shared on social media channels.

Here is a part of an info­graph­ic from our own blog.

You can see the full info­graph­ic here.

Consideration Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey

In the con­sid­er­a­tion stage, your prospects already have an under­stand­ing of their prob­lems and needs. They are defin­ing their options, but they still haven’t made a pur­chase deci­sion. Prospects are basi­cal­ly putting all their options on the table so they can make the best choice later.

Peo­ple in the con­sid­er­a­tion stage of the buy­er’s jour­ney are a lot eas­i­er to con­vert than those in the aware­ness stage. How­ev­er, many sales strate­gists choose not to make direct con­tact with them.

You should decide on your own whether or not to con­tact prospects in the con­sid­er­a­tion stage, but we rec­om­mend bas­ing your deci­sion on the val­ue of the prod­ucts and the type of indus­try you’re work­ing in. Some­times it’s worth the effort.

What Type Of Content To Use For The Consideration Stage

In the con­sid­er­a­tion stage, the prospec­tive clients are still not ready to buy. They need help in decid­ing how to find the best solu­tion. You can address this issue in your content.

Here are some types of con­tent that you can share with your users:

Ebooks or other downloadable resources

Ebooks, cheat sheets, check­lists, guides, and oth­er down­load­able resources are very suit­able for the next nat­ur­al step of the buy­er’s jour­ney. They pro­vide lots of val­ue to read­ers and help you to posi­tion your­self as an indus­try expert. You can also let the read­ers peek behind the cur­tains of your busi­ness and show them some of the ben­e­fits that you can provide.

When cre­at­ing con­tent for the con­sid­er­a­tion stage you need to focus on deliv­er­ing as much val­ue as you can. Don’t hold any­thing back, share every­thing that can help your readers.

Cre­ate resources that are so good that you should be charg­ing for them. And offer them com­plete­ly for free to your tar­get­ed audience.

You can ask peo­ple to exchange their con­tact infor­ma­tion for your down­load­able resources. Lat­er, you can use that infor­ma­tion to keep in touch with them, and send them more valu­able con­tent and devel­op your rela­tion­ship to a conversion.

We have many help­ful guides in the form of blog posts that help users who are strug­gling with their mar­ket­ing or web­site design.

Before and after, and comparison videos

Video con­tent is a great way to answer ques­tions about your prod­ucts and ser­vices, make com­par­isons with your com­peti­tors, show­case how your prod­uct can be used to solve prob­lems, and more.

Remem­ber to be authen­tic. Talk hon­est­ly about the pros and cons of your prod­ucts or ser­vices. This will cre­ate a sense of trust in your poten­tial cus­tomers. Don’t be too aggres­sive in sell­ing your prod­ucts, as this is not a commercial.

Here is how Com­mon Sense Advi­sors are doing it.

Webinars and online training

You can go the extra mile and upgrade your video con­tent. Peo­ple appre­ci­ate it when they receive insights and help­ful tips for free. You can use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to show them what your prod­ucts or ser­vices can do.

How­ev­er, this type of con­tent can be more suit­able for the deci­sion stage of your buy­ers’ jour­ney. It all depends on the product.

You can test the waters by includ­ing CTAs in your newslet­ters and resources for peo­ple in dif­fer­ent stages of the fun­nel, and see when peo­ple are inter­act­ing with them the most.

That’s a great way to show your poten­tial clients what you do and give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get to know your brand better.

Decision Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey

When buy­ers enter the deci­sion stage of their jour­ney they are ready to buy from you. They have researched their options, they have already set a bud­get, and they are now look­ing for rea­sons to buy from you.

This is the moment when you should show­case the ben­e­fits and fea­tures of your prod­ucts or ser­vices. This is the moment to answer why you’re the best in what you do.

What Type Of Content To Use For The Decision Stage

This is the stage in which con­tent plays the biggest role in influ­enc­ing peo­ple to buy. You need to go beyond the con­tent on your web­site and utilise social media chan­nels as well.

Peo­ple in the deci­sion stage of their jour­ney are way more inter­est­ed in your offer than on oth­er stages. This is the moment to back­up the claims you made befor. with the right resources.

Share clients’ suc­cess sto­ries, case stud­ies, reports, and more. Speak about the ben­e­fits of your prod­ucts and ser­vices and show how you’ve helped oth­ers to over­come their problems.

Peo­ple in the deci­sion stage look for a ser­vice page or more in-depth infor­ma­tion about your prod­uct. Explain what comes with your prod­ucts, how they can be used, why, when, and by whom? Talk about the mis­sion of your com­pa­ny, why it was cre­at­ed, what it strives to achieve. This is your oppor­tu­ni­ty to “WOW” your poten­tial clients.

Here’s how Fel­low Health Part­ners are doing it.

They are con­fi­dent that the prod­uct they offer is of the high­est qual­i­ty and they are using clients’ tes­ti­mo­ni­als to back it up.

We also have a Port­fo­lio sec­tion where we share case stud­ies and results that we’ve achieved with our clients.

Sus­pend­ed Cof­fees, on the oth­er hand, love to share their per­son­al sto­ries and their big “WHY” behind their existence.

There is no right way to do it.

To cre­ate a suc­cess­ful cus­tomer jour­ney, you need to take the time to get to know your cus­tomers and under­stand their prob­lems. Try dif­fer­ent strate­gies and see what brings the best results for your business.