For those of you up to the task of doing a content mapping yourself, read on! This blog post will cover a three-step process to help you create the content you need to align with The Buyer’s Journey. Let’s get started!
There comes a point for every inbound marketer who has been creating content for a while where you realize you have no idea where all of the content is or how much you have. Content has likely been created by you, your predecessors, other individuals in the marketing department, and subject matter experts from other departments and is scattered to the wind.
In this scenario, good, quality content that someone invested time, effort and expertise into creating falls through the cracks and gets lost. Taking an hour now to put out the bat signal to find lost content can save you hours of time down the road.
There are lots of places where you can look to find your lost content. I’d recommend systematically combing through the following dark corners where content can typically be found hiding:
Before you can catalog the content you found in Step 1, you’ll need to set up a system for your content inventory to capture important information about each content offer. Think of this step as setting up your own Dewey Decimal System; a multi-faceted library classification system which allows for the arrangement of library materials in multiple ways according to subject, title, author, etc., with the goal of providing a useful ordering of documents.
In your digital world as an inbound marketer, setting up your spreadsheet to capture detail about each content offer in your digital library will enable you to easily access your content for use in various campaigns and marketing initiatives.
Start by downloading the HubSpot Content Inventory Worksheet template.
For now, you’ll need to identify the categories of detail that are specific to your business and the appropriate values. I'd recommend the following in addition to any others you want to include:
EXPERT TIP: You can download aPDF file of each of your Personas for quick reference by clicking on the Persona name in your dashboard. Then, once on the individual persona detail page, click “Print Persona”in the upper right hand corner. Change the destination to “Save as PDF” instead of selecting a printer and you're all set!
You’ll want to have the persona details readily available for quick reference when you get to Step 3 and need to determine the relevant persona for each content offer.
Now that you have your spreadsheet set up (Step 2), and you’ve added all of your existing content offers that you found in Step 1 into the content inventory spreadsheet, you’re ready to map each content offer to the appropriate stage of The Buyer’s Journey. As an inbound marketer, you want to deliver the right content, to the right person, at the right time.
In order to achieve this, it’s essential to know which stage of The Buyer’s Journey readers would likely find your content offer most helpful. There are 3 key considerations you must take into account for an individual content offer in order to accurately determine which stage in The Buyer’s Journey your target persona would find this content offer most helpful. Here they are:
In the Awareness stage, a prospective buyer starts experiencing symptoms of a problem in their work environment or personal life and begins doing research to understand these symptoms more clearly, develop context around the symptoms, and ultimately define their problem and give their problem a name. They are seeking educational information around their symptoms that helps them to understand the problem they experience. It is important to note that the name of this phase, the “Awareness” stage, refers to a person gaining self-awareness of a problem, not to be confused with awareness of your brand or product. The person in the awareness stage is really self-involved at this point and not ready for product or vendor specific information until later in the buyer’s journey. This self-indulgent time spent learning about their own problems in the awareness stage will help them prioritize their research efforts moving forward and articulate their needs for features later in their buying journey. At the end of the Awareness stage, a prospective buyer has now defined their problem and is committed to finding a solution to the problem.
In the Consideration stage, a prospect is researching all available solution strategies and options in the marketplace. They consider all of the technologies, alternatives, and paths they could take to solve their problem. At the end of the consideration stage, they’ve chosen the solution strategy that is right for their business and best suits the problem defined earlier.
In the Decision stage, a prospect is building a long list of potential vendors, products and services and seeking information to help them whittle that long list down to a short list, make a decision and based on that decision they’ll confidently make a purchase that they will not experience buyer’s remorse about later.
There are clues within the title and text of your content offer in the form of the terminology and vocabulary used that can help you identify the aspect of the topic being discussed in your content offer and thus, the corresponding stage of the buyer’s journey. Below is a detailed chart of the terms indicating relevance in each stage of the buyer’s journey.
Use the steps in this blog post to consolidate your content into a content inventory and then categorize each content offer into its appropriate stage in The Buyer’s Journey. Once your content library is nicely organized with your content inventory spreadsheet, you’ll be able to take action by using this content in your inbound marketing in the following ways:
For those of you interested in a hands-on learning experience, with in-person help from HubSpot content experts, you may consider attending the 1-day HubSpot Classroom Training: Creating Effective Inbound Content .
Originally published Mar 15, 2016 1:00:00 PM, updated May 09 2018