Buyer Personas: Creating Content for Every Stage of the Sales Funnel

No matter how appealing your product or service is, your customers often don't decide to purchase it the same way. They have different considerations, needs, and journeys.

Developing a deep understanding of your buyer personas can help you target content that wins them over, no matter what stage of the sales funnel they're currently in. Here's everything you need to consider to nail the marketing funnel stages and convert more viewers to customers.

Buyer's Journey in Marketing Overview

When you last made a big purchase, it's unlikely you simply rolled out of bed and headed directly to a store to buy it as your first step. Many purchase decisions, particularly expensive or long-term, come after multiple research and consideration steps.

Source: Hubspot

Let's say you book a trip to Italy and realize it would be helpful to learn some basic Italian before you go. Before buying an audio option to listen to in the car, you begin researching different ways to learn Italian, including courses and apps.

Awareness Stage

In the awareness stage, you experience a problem or pain and become aware that you will need to name and solve it. For example, after perusing guidebooks for your upcoming Italy trip, it begins to dawn on you that it will involve some communication barriers since you don't speak Italian.

You might begin your quest to learn by contextualizing your issue. Knowing the language barrier stokes a curiosity to frame and name your problem. Eventually, you realize that you don't speak Italian and need a way to get around that barrier before you leave.

Consideration Stage

In the consideration stage, you begin to consider possible solutions to your issue. For example, you could use a translation app to interpret in real-time when you're in Italy. You could hire a native guide who can explain signs for you and speak to locals on your behalf. Or you could learn some basic Italian yourself so you can navigate more easily.

The consideration stage includes researching all the options that have occurred to you as you ponder your problem. You're not ready to buy anything yet, but you are deciding on your solution based on your research and understanding.

Decision Stage

The decision stage is, of course, decision time. You decide you'd like to learn a bit of Italian to enhance your trip and because you enjoy learning other languages. Now, you begin to look into the available options to learn Italian—free mobile apps, in-person courses, and audio tutorials.

You research by watching YouTube videos about learning Italian and realize that your daily driving commute is the perfect time to listen to lessons. You compare possible vendors for ease of use and price. At the end of the journey, you make your purchase with the solution and provider you selected, and you're on your way to an incredible Italian experience.

Understanding Your Buyer's Personas

Buyers will go through different journeys to make their purchase decisions, even when they buy the same product. People have different needs, lifestyles, preferences, and situations that affect their buyer journey.

Your buyer personas will help you customize your sales funnel and content to their needs. You can be sure that you're speaking effectively to your prospects at every point of their buyer journey, no matter how they enter the funnel.

How can you determine your audience and what they are looking for when they find your content? SEO is an underrated tool for conducting buyer research. You can choose what your prospects search for when they encounter your content and create additional content that speaks to their needs based on search terms and analytics.

Why is it Important to Create Content for Each Buyer's Journey Stage?

Today, the buyer journey and sales funnel are much less linear than in the past. Your prospects and customers have unprecedented information at their fingertips and are bombarded with marketing coming from many directions.

Some prospects might hear about your company through your organic Instagram content, others through videos an industry expert has created on YouTube, and others through searching for a related topic on Google, to name just a few potential paths.

And that content must speak to buyers differently depending on where they are in their journey. Someone in the awareness stage who is just figuring out they have a problem probably doesn't need content that breaks down the granular difference between vendors or pricing options, for example.

Creating content for each stage of the buyer's journey and marketing funnel stages means allowing prospects to move at their own pace through awareness, consideration, and conversion stages with your company until they decide to buy. You give them all the information and education they need to make their choice without gaps or hard selling, and in return, you see better conversion rates—when it's done well.

To pull as many people as possible into the sales funnel, you need to create content that speaks to all of those different personas and reaches them where they spend their time. This can seem overwhelming, but we'll go over ways to streamline this below.

Content for Each Stage of the Buyer's Journey

Your buyer's journey will depend on their persona and your industry. Journeys are typically much longer and more complex in the B2B world than in the B2C one since buying a software product for thousands of dollars is a very different decision than purchasing an Italian guidebook.

However, there are similarities across buyer journeys and marketing funnel stages that can give you some great examples of potential content ideas.

Awareness Stage Content

What content works best in the awareness stage of the customer journey? In this stage, buyers are looking for more educational content to help them solve a problem or get an answer.

Awareness stage content examples can include informative blog posts, how-to videos, and a solid SEO/SEM strategy to bring buyers to the top of the funnel. Ebooks, tip sheets, and tools can provide valuable information to prospects looking to explore their problem further. How-to videos introduce a new skill or solution to viewers so they can learn more about the topic on their own time (and connect with your business through the content as well).

Social media posts are another good way to get prospects into the sales funnel by providing enticing images or short but impactful tips for your viewers.

Your content at this stage should be more educational than sales-oriented—you're providing help and information more than selling a solution. And much of it can be evergreen, so you're not constantly chasing new content ideas once the initial plan is in place.

An example of content we created for the awareness stage is an animated video for our Google Business Profile Lead Optimizer product.

Consideration Stage Content

In the consideration stage, your pool of leads has narrowed from a broad range of people searching for information to prospects who are stronger leads. In this phase, you want to build trust and nourish the relationship with them as they consider solutions to their problem.

Consideration content examples could include:

• Product comparison guides.
• Case studies illustrate the results of people with similar problems.
• Free samples that help buyers evaluate their options.

Content like blog posts can be effective in this stage to establish your business as a trusted authority in this space. Content can also be repurposed in many ways to help scale your marketing efforts.

Video marketing can help build relationships with your prospects at this stage as you provide them with potential solutions to their problems. Video testimonials from current customers can be quite effective here.

The video below is an example of a customer testimonial for Zoom.

Source: Zoom

Decision Stage Content

Finally, when the time comes for your prospect to make a purchase, you want to have content that encourages them to choose your business over all the other options on the market.

They're evaluating specific options and offers, so your decision stage content should include pieces that handle their objections and remove their hesitation about purchasing from you.

Live demos or video product tours can be persuasive at this stage, so prospects can take your product for a test drive before they buy. A consultation offer can help remove their hesitancy by answering questions and providing value for larger, more complex purchases. And everyone loves a coupon or special deal—it shows prospects they might miss out if they don't jump on the purchase now.

Miles RV of Dallas posted a video in which they tour one of their fifth wheels.

Source: Miles RV

Content for Sales Funnel: Key Takeaways

Creating great content for your sales funnel means providing each buyer persona with the information and persuasion they need to move to the next stage and ultimately become customers.

• Knowing the sales funnel stages is essential: awareness of where the problem becomes evident, consideration of where they explore all kinds of solutions, and decision on where they select a vendor and purchase.
  
  
• Stepping into our buyers' shoes can help you determine what kind of content they want at each stage of the journey, so get clear on your buyer personas.
  
  
• No one plan will work for every business because your buyer journeys are unique.

How Hearst Bay Area Can Help

Want to start creating the right kind of content for each marketing funnel stage but aren't sure where to start or what will work for your business? Hearst Bay Area is here to help.

Get in touch today to see how we can help your funnel and business grow.