Where does Content Marketing Fit in the Customer Buying Cycle?
Recently I wrote a blog on what Content Marketing is and it’s benefits <link> but where does it fit within the customer buying cycle….. and what the hell is a customer buying cycle?
I’m going to answer the latter question first, what is a customer buying cycle?
The traditional buying cycle features 3 stages:
- Awareness – when a customer first becomes aware of your brand, product or service
- Consideration – when a customer starts evaluating solutions to their need
- Purchase – I don’t need to explain this do I?
However, the modern buying cycle has evolved to look something like this:
So the modern customer buying cycle now includes…
- Loyalty – where customers return to shop with you again and remain loyal to your brand,
- Advocacy – when the customer becomes an advocate for your brand and helps to promote your products / services to their friends, family and social networks
What caused this change? Two words: social media.
In reality these stages have always been there – loyalty is essentially repeat business, and advocacy is effectively word of mouth – however, the advancement of internet and social media technology has seen businesses utilise these stages far more to influence the original 3 stags, and any good marketer or marketing organisation should not overlook these.
So, where does content marketing fit into this?
The answer is, well, wherever you want – and that’s the beauty of content marketing.
You can use content to introduce your brand to new customers, while also increasing consideration within your audience and moving prospects through your sales funnel. And post sale you can use content to grow your customer relationships, and thus increasing loyalty and advocacy within your audience.
And if that’s the beauty of content marketing, the problem is that it can be difficult to track the return on investment.
You may post a piece of content that gets no engagement in it’s first week or month, but the way social media platforms work, is that if you post more content you are more likely to be found and grow your following and engagement. So that piece of content that had little to no engagement within its first month of release has the potential to engage your audience and influence sales years later.
My advice to business owners and marketers is to not only leverage content marketing in your strategy, but to consider the content you will create for every stage of the customer buying cycle.
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