In our most recent, article we reviewed the buyer’s journey and specifically the awareness stage.
The awareness stage is primarily focused on a buyer who is in the process of identifying an issue or challenge, and working to define that challenge’s validity and importance to them and their company. During this stage, buyers are trying to understand this issue deeply and consider the pros and cons of focusing on this issue. As they analyze this subject, they begin to seek other’s thoughts and experiences when dealing with this challenge. Typically the buyer seeks information from search engines and social platforms.
For today’s conversation, let’s focus on supporting those buyers who have acquired the information related to their interest, and are now interested in learning what methods and strategies are available for addressing this pain point. This stage is called the consideration stage. In your marketing and sales funnel, this buyer has moved from “visitor” to “lead”, and “lead” now to “marketing qualified lead.”
Buyers that move to the consideration stage have read articles, posts, blogs, and any other information related to their challenge and are now seeking information on available solutions. They may be subscribed to your blog, following you on social, and gave permission to be contacted via email for newsletters, and additional thought leadership content. This could also mean your seo keywords are performing, your content is engaging, your website experience is supporting your buyers, and now the buyer is beginning to see you as a leader within the space. Great job so far!!
Now the next step is providing them with valuable content to meet their needs in the consideration stage. When a buyer enters this stage it’s vital that you develop content that helps them understand available solutions, key components to consider when evaluating solutions, how to make the most of the potential solutions, how to compare alternative solutions and ways in which they can be strategic about overcoming this challenge with potential solutions.
Some content formats you can consider are:
- Expert Guidelines
- Webinars, Podcasts
- Comparison Videos
- Comparison White Papers
- Salesperson Consultation
Your goal is to better identify their exact pain points, their context, and situation, what metrics they use currently to evaluate their situation, and what expectations they have for a potential solution. As you begin to understand these elements, it commonly becomes clear how effective your solution will be. For those buyers that fit your service well and have high interest, they become a “sales qualified lead” Data suggests you are 60 times more likely to earn an opportunity if you follow-up within 1 hour after they request additional information. It’s vital that you in your sales team are working together as it’s common to hand over the buyer to the sales team for consultation and follow up.
When analyzing the effectiveness of your content for the consideration phase some metrics you can measure:
- Website Traffic
- Blog Subscription
- Email List Growth
- Visitor-lead conversion
- Lead-MQL conversion
- Call to action performance
- Form Fill Engagement
If you’re not finding qualified leads taking the above actions, chances are you don’t fully understand what’s most important to your buyer personas, who your buyer personas are, your message isn’t clear, or you’ve focused on your sales process, or selling the customer rather than providing them content that helps educate them. Do you know how many visitors, leads, marketing qualified leads, sales qualified leads, and opportunities it takes to earn the number of customer’s you’d like to earn this year? Do you have a goal as it relates to new customers and sales growth within your current customers? If so, content within the consideration phase can help you tremendously!
Would you like help to audit any of these metrics, or building a custom approach for your business?
Schedule a 30-minute review to analyze what you’re doing today, and what opportunities there are for improving your inbound results.