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Every — single — piece of content you have ever seen from a business has been tied to an objective. By design, content is used to achieve a number of feats. Whether it’s building a brand, beefing up an online community or building awareness around a recent product release.

Using content to support the sales cycle & buying process has always been the bread and butter of content marketing. With the rise of marketing automation over past years, there’s been a emphasis placed on managing the customer’s overall experience and making sure that their not just being shuffled through the customer journey.

Utilizing content that is tailored to different leads is a great way to turn first-time purchasers into repeat consumers. In this article I’m going to be discussing how you can use content to communicate, influence and transform the way your business reaches your target audience.

Let’s take a look below.

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Mastering The Sales Cycle

Always remember, customers are people and people are prospects. The goal is to transform those customers into brand ambassadors and regular purchasers of your product or service. The sales cycle can be defined as the amount of time spent trying to turn that ‘prospect’ into a repeat customer.

A major key to success is to understand where customers are within the sales cycle. This will allow you to leverage your content creation efforts in a way that influences the customer to make a decision that supports your business objectives.

Every customer is different, that is why relying on data to support your content creation and marketing automation efforts should be your primary focus (Creation + Distribution). For your content to be truly effective, it needs to do three things on a consistent basis:

• Communicate
• Influence
• Transform

All great sales cycles understand the customer’s needs and wants. It’s a science that must be worked into your content mix repeatedly. What does your business say? How does your products or services make your customers feel? Are they coming back for more?

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Mastering The Buying Process

The buying process and sales cycle are two similar but very different components when it comes to content creation and distribution. The sales cycle is focused on a set path and the buying process focuses more on evoking emotion. How does your content speak to people when they are primed to buy a product or service? It comes down to two things:

• Does your content address a need?
• Does your content help solve a problem?

The buying process is about helping your customer’s relieve these pressure points. Creating content that supports the buying process can be achieved by listening to what your customers want and going beyond the basic product offerings. The key is to properly display ‘WHY’ your product or service can bring repeat value.

If you can show repeat value, you can make a repeat customer.

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