5 Steps to Outsource Writing (and Take Back Your Time)
You’ve decided to gain back valuable time by outsourcing your content – great decision! The only question is, how? Key takeaways:
Key Takeaways:
The buyer’s journey is potentially the most important framework in inbound marketing. Every sale your brand makes is the result of a buyer completing the journey—and every new instance of churn is a result of a buyer prematurely ending it. The most well-known iteration of the buyer’s journey is a three-stage map that includes:
Of course, the journey never really ends if you want to retain customers. Converting that sales funnel into a flywheel turns happy buyers into promoters by attracting, engaging, and delighting them.
Of course, the buyer’s journey can take many different routes—it’s important to anticipate all the potential roads buyers could take to reach you.
"Sellers don’t pilot the buyer’s journey anymore—if they ever did!"
"Buyers are the ones in the driver’s seat, so it’s not enough to build a linear journey map that brings your lead from point A to point B to point C.
Instead, you have to consider the likelihood that your customers want to circle from point B back to point A to review some information, go back to point B to think about their options…
… and maybe then finally make a decision about your product or service.
The point is your buyers are too picky to shoehorn into a linear buyer’s journey that lacks real definition. But they have to be picky because no one else will recognize their pain points and anticipate the solution for them, right?
Hint: That’s where you come in.
These days, it’s not enough to have a killer solution to a big problem. Instead, you have to "show the buyer that you’re inside their head and tackling their problems from a place of understanding".
According to the Salesforce State of the Connected Customer 5th edition report:
If you don’t live up to these expectations, you could lose potential customers before they even reach the end of the buyer’s journey. According to the Salesforce report, 71% of consumers have switched brands at least once over the last year!
The only way to understand your buyer is to ask the right questions and think critically about the answers from the buyer’s perspective. The buyer’s journey is 70% over before your sales team even hears from a prospect. "If you don’t define the stages based on the buyer’s needs, they might bounce before ever landing on your product!"
Ask yourself these questions to define the buyer’s journey at each stage.
Not all iterations of the buyer’s journey include retention as a stage, but it’s a critical fourth stage that’s also represented on the flywheel as delight.
You see, it’s five times as expensive to attract a new customer compared to retaining an existing one. "Simply boosting retention by 5% increases profits between 25% and 95%!"
Ask yourself these questions to guide your buyers from decision to retention:
Telling your brand’s story through the buyer’s journey requires some intensive thought about:
That’s a lot to cover—and in 15 questions, you can get pretty close (but you might still want some extra support). Check out Bacon Bits to read more kickass content about attracting, engaging, and delighting the people who make your business turn on its axis!
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