Creating Content: Using the Buying Cycle of Your Prospect

Okay, let’s admit it. Creating content is hard. Not just creating it, but creating it consistently and in all it’s different formats. But you can’t just slap a bunch of words together, and call it content. Because that’s not going to help – in fact, it could hurt you in the long run.

Content has to be relevant.  It has to be remarkable. It has to grab your prospect or customer’s attention.  And you have to create content often. Not to mention creating content in the different formats that appeal to your prospect or customer.

So how do you do it?  How do you create content that is going to do all that?

Here’s one way:  By creating content that uses the buying cycle of your prospect.

What do I mean?

Well, lets take a look at the visitors to your Website.

Hey – it’s 2012 – do you know WHO your Customers are? If not, you should.  And if you’d like more information about how to figure out who your customers are, and what they want, just post a (relevant) commment or question below, and I’ll answer you. In fact, if there’s a lot of interest in that topic, I’ll create an article – or a series of articles – about it, and share them with you.

Because in order to create killer content that’s tied to the buying cycle of your prospects, you have to know who they are, and what they want.  You have to understand why they’re visiting your Website in the first place.

Okay, actually, since I don’t know who the people who visit your Website are, lets take a look at this Website, and who YOU are.  And I’ll see if I can figure out why you’re visiting the site, and what you you’re looking for when you come here. We’ll use the Wildfire Performance Marketing Website as a case study. And then, in the next article, we’ll get into where I got this information, how I used it to figure out what content i need to create, and why.  And how you can do the same thing!

This should be fun – and eye opening. And hopefully you’ll use it as a case study to help you figure out how to create content for your own Website, based on your customers’ buying cycles.

Creating content based on buying cycles

Right now, half of the visitors to this site are new visitors.  And half of them are returning visitors. (Thank you!)

Interestingly, 2%  of my visitors speak a language other than English – which makes me think I need to consider adding translations to my site at some time in the future, if that trend continues.

One of my most popular pages – that shows no drop-off – in other words, people are visiting that page and watchign the video – is this one: Validate Your Customers

My next most popular post is also about videos.

And  93% of the subscribers to this site are business owners.

So what does that tell me about your buying cycle? Well, everything I’ve learned up to that point has been based on Google Analytics. (In case you don’t know, this is a free service offered by Google, and it can help you learn about the demographics of visitors to your site.)

Then,moving to internal stats,  based on the number of clients I have right now that are interested in doing videos for their businesses, I know that about 53% of them are still in the exploration stage.

They’re interested in getting a piece of the pie for videos, but they’re not sure if it’s right for their businesses, or how to get started.  And I also know that around 25% of the ones who have called me and signed up for services needed more information before they sign up.

Which tells me that I need to create more content for people who are doing research about adding video to their marketing mix. So stay tuned, because that’s exactly what I’m I’m doing right now.

Watch for my next article, and we’ll start going into greater detail about how to figure out what your customers’ buying cycles are and how you can create content based on those buying cycles.