ent mapping: who, what, when, where and why?

You can create content at every stage of the customer journey.

You can avoid content creation being a guessing-game by following these steps.

You can influence your ideal customers whether they are just discovering your brand via your blog, or stuck on the product/service pages weighing up a purchase. And every stage in between.

Each piece of content that you create can be an effective motivator and educator, speaking directly to your prospects’ hearts.

You can use every blog, article or ebook you create, as well as landing pages, infographics, videos, and case studies to reach your audience at just the right time.

What is the key to making sure this happens?

Content mapping.

What is a map of content?

A content map is an outline of how you will provide content to your ideal clients, no matter where in the buyer’s cycle they are.

A content map is a way to plan out how you will deliver your content at the best time and place.

This guide will also show you how to customize your content according to your personas and their journey of buying.

It is brilliant to create a map of content alongside when creating a strategy for.

What is content mapping?

Content mapping is the creation of your content map, which will outline your target audience, their actions at different stages in the buying cycle, and how you can align your content with them to help them achieve their ultimate goal.

Content mapping’s ultimate goal depends on the goals of your business. The goal is to provide a personalized experience for your audience.

A content map will help you to plan your strategy for engaging, nurturing, and attracting potential customers, no matter what stage they’re at in their purchasing journey.

Why do you need to map your content?

Content mapping is essential to ensure that your content marketing is consistent and well-spread across the customer journey.

Not only is it good for you, but also your customers. Let’s explore the benefits in more detail.

Create relevant content for every buying stage

Content marketing is a great way to create content that’s targeted and nurture your audience.

Content mapping is a great way to create targeted content for your audience, at each stage of their buying journey .

The buyer’s journey refers to the research that your buyer does as they become aware a problem and consider their options before making a final decision.

The decision to purchase something is not made randomly. It’s a result of a variety of factors and actions. This is the buyer’s experience.

Content mapping ensures that your customer doesn’t miss out on any important information as they progress along the path of purchase.

If you create a lot of blogs for the awareness phase but none for consideration, you may lose some of the initial leads that you brought to your brand. You may have helped them to understand and define their problem but did not show them how to solve it or reach their goals.

A brand with consideration-based content may swoop into this space and pick up where you left. Now you’ve lost a potential customer.

A content map, on the other hand, helps you keep that customer with you until they hover over the “purchase button” in your shopping cart. It probably got them there!

This is a powerful video.

Increase your return on each piece of content

Content mapping can also help you determine the purpose of each piece of content you create.

Each one will have a specific purpose that aligns with your goals and audience needs. You can also create them according to the stage of the buyer’s journey.

This makes every piece work harder.

There’s a huge difference between:

• You can’t just hit “publish” without hoping that the content will help your business.
• You can hit “publish” knowing what the piece is capable of doing, and likely what will do in terms results.

More engaged, invested and loyal customers

What do you expect to happen when you deliver great content throughout your buyer’s journey?

Your customers will be equally invested and engaged if you can build affinity, engagement, and connection.

You’ll have them completely hooked if you deliver a quality product or service.

How to create brand ambassadors. Fans who are raving. Delighted customers.

The goal of content mapping, in the end, is to help your prospects along every step. This level of care and personalization will naturally produce customers that are enamored with you.

How to do content mapping

Are you ready to create a map of content?

It is important to have a strategy for your content before you begin. It will save you time and effort by laying out content goals, researching the audience, creating personas and much more.

This guide will still be useful even if you do not have a strategy for your content. It may even inspire you to create a content strategy sooner!

You’ll know how to map your content to the different stages of the buyer journey for each audience once you have completed your content map.

Create personas based on your research and audience.

The most important part of content mapping is your target audience. You’ll be lost without a thorough understanding of your target audience.

To deliver personalized content at the right time, you need to know their preferences, behavior, habits, and needs.

How can you gain this knowledge? By conducting audience research.

Audience Research

Never make assumptions about your audience. You can use your assumptions to help you get started, but it’s important to test them and ensure they are accurate so that you can target and map content accurately.

This is what audience research does. There are several ways to do it.

• You can find data about your target audience in reports, surveys, studies and statistics. If your business is brand new, and you have no established audience yet, this is a great way to start.
• You can conduct your own polls and interviews. You can also get data from your real customers, leads, social media followers or people who are interested in what you offer.

Focus on gaining insights from people who are in your immediate vicinity. Your personas will be more accurate.

You’re already ahead of the game if you have a strategy for your content. You’ve probably done some audience research, and you have personas that summarize that research.

Buyer personas

How can you make the information you gather from audience research more useful?

Create buyer persons are fictional characters or avatars that represent real data about your target audience. Each persona represents the similarities among your audience.

Imagine: You could probably describe the type of customer who buys from most brands. You can think of busy moms at home who rush to Starbucks in between dropping their kids off at school, preparing meals, and attending soccer practice. This is an example of a buyer persona.

Create personas to map the different purchasing journeys of your ideal customers. Starbucks, for example, might include a persona of a student or professional to their list.

2. How to: Map the stages of buying for your personas

Once you have your personas, you can outline the typical buying stages that each persona experiences, including their goals, thoughts, and challenges.

The stages of the buying journey are as follows:

• Aware: Buyers are aware of a problem but don’t yet know what it is or can’t identify it. They’re experiencing symptoms that indicate a problem.
• Consideration : The buyer knows the exact problem they are facing. They can define and name the problem. They’re now looking for possible solutions.
• Decision : The buyer is comparing products or providers that provide the solution they have chosen.

Your personas’ concerns, needs and questions will differ at each stage. You can identify these concerns, needs, questions and goals for each persona at each stage of the buying process.

Let’s take, for example, the persona of a stay-at home mom. We can create a possible buying journey based on her challenges and goals, which we have learned from the audience research. Here is just one example:

Challenge She struggles to find time in the day. Objective She wants to have time for herself.

• Awareness : “How can I make time for myself?”
• Consideration “I should schedule myself a break during the day.” What could I do to relax myself?
• Decision “A delicious coffee drink will help me to slow down and treat myself.” What should I do?”

3. When and where: Map out the content types for each stage in the buyer’s journey

We can now look at the different stages of buying to see what content we can produce to help each persona.

Consider:

• What content can you use to address the buyer’s goals and needs at each stage?
• What words might they use at each stage of their research to find out the solution to their problem?

You can target buyers at each stage, based on their awareness, consideration, or decision.

Note: Certain types of content are appropriate for multiple stages, as they benefit more than one buyer type.

Awareness Content

Your awareness content should aim to inform your audience. It should be able to help your audience identify a problem and understand why it is important, or what they should do.

Types of content: Checklists, Infographics, Informative Blogs, eBooks and Social Media Posts.

Awareness topics examples:

• BetterUp 10 ways to take time for yourself
• Mint: Saving Money

Consideration

Content that encourages consideration should guide your audience to choose from a variety of options. You could, for example, teach your audience all the possible solutions to a particular problem and compare/contrast each one. You could also teach them why a particular solution is the best.

Content types include: product reviews, comparisons and case studies.

Consideration topics Examples

• 20 ways to make your website more visible by localiQ
• The Spruce’s 7 Best down comforters for 2023

Decision content

The goal of decision content is to convince your audience that you have the best product or service for their needs. It’s not about making sales pitches, but rather presenting your product or service in a way to demonstrate your expertise.

Types of content: landing pages for products, testimonials, reviews, case studies and demos.

Example of decision topics

• 
  12 Things Only Ahrefs can Do
  
• Webflow’s landing page

4. Use your content map for evaluating existing content/planning new content

A content map can be a great tool to help you see all of your content and the value each piece provides.

You will be able to identify any gaps in your marketing and find more customers in an area you might have been ignoring.

Categorize older content according to the buying stage it assists

Start by categorizing all of the content that you have published according to the stage(s) at which it is most likely to be used.

• Choose the category that helps the most.
• Add it to the list of content that could be updated if you feel this content does not fit anywhere. This piece could be edited to make it more relevant to a certain buying stage.

Create new content ideas using your content map

After you have classified your old content you will know what gaps you need to fill in your strategy to reach different buyer stages.

Filling in those gaps should be your first priority. You can use your content map as a guide.

Your content map should now have three types information:

• Your buyer personas.
• Content types that correspond to the stages of your buyer’s journey.
• Each persona’s challenges, goals and possible actions during each stage of the buying process.

Use your content map as you brainstorm new topics to create targeted, personalized content at every stage of the personas’ buying journey.

• Consider your persona, and the needs they have at each stage. Also consider what words they use to find what they are looking for.
  • Use a keyword tool and research these needs to discover opportunities for content optimization.
  • You can also use these terms to search for related topics.
• Consider the content that best suits your persona and stage.
• Create a mix of topics and formats that will help your persona move forward on their journey at the appropriate time.

5. Document all content in your map

The content map is a reference that you can use during the creation of content.

Document your content map so that it’s simple to read and understand. You should also be able to add content as you expand your inventory.

You could, for example, create a simple excel spreadsheet listing your personas and their challenges and goals in each stage of the buying cycle, as well as what types of content to create to reach them. Include topics and formats.

Create amazing customer experiences by mapping your content.

The process of mapping out content can be confusing at first.

You need a map of content if you’re going to offer your customers amazing content throughout their entire buying journey.

The hardest part is learning how to make one.

You can use the content map to get insights into your persona, their buying journey and to create content that is tailored to their needs.

It’s as strategic as you can get. strategy is the same as results, we know this.

The first Search Engine land post content mapping: who, what, when, where, why, and how.