Start by always keeping in mind: Your customer is the priority. The type of content that you should be producing should rely upon your customer’s needs suited for their various stages of the buyer journey. Firstly, it is recommended that you start with creating buyer personas (there are many free templates you can use to accomplish this) to identify and distinguish what your audience’s motivations and objectives are and the challenges they might be facing with your company’s offerings. On a fundamental level, your online content should assist them with meeting these objectives and defeat their difficulties.

At that point, you must also consider when they will be prepared to consume this content in regard to the different stages of their journey and this is what we call content mapping. With content mapping, the goal is to target content according to:

• The characteristics of the individual that the content will be consumed by (aka buyer personas)
• What is the life-cycle parameters and how close are the prospects to making the final purchase decision
• There are a lot of various methods to try and various formats of content, creatives and campaign elements for you to explore

Here are some options to consider at each stage of the buyer’s journey:

Awareness Stage
• Blog posts – Creating compelling content in the form of blog posts is recommended to do often for your website as it will assist in increasing your organic traffic together with ongoing SEO and keyword strategy
• Infographics – There are various free infographics templates that you can subscribe to and use in your content, which is a great way to share on your social media platforms, which in return increase your chances of being found via social media when others share your content. Infographics are easy to the eye, and provide a summarized information about various topics of your choice.
• Short videos –Short videos are highly recommended as they tend to engage the audience a lot easier rather than still images. Video’s are also easily shareable and can help your brand obtain further exposure and even opportunities to go viral. It is recommended to also host your videos on your YouTube channel.

Consideration Stage
• Ebooks – This type of content is great for digital lead generation as it serves as a lead magnet. Ebooks are generally more comprehensive than a blog post or infographic, and your customers are likely to opt in to register providing their contact information to receive the Ebook or brochure.
• Research reports –  This kind of valuable content is another great lead magnet and often used for lead generation purposes in order to obtain exchange of contact information of a customer. Research reports, case studies and new data that is industry related is an excellent way to provide insightful information for customer journey awareness stage and can as they are often picked-up by the media or industry press.
• Webinars – For the consideration stages of the customers journey, websinars are ideal as they are often more detailed allowing interaction form of video content, and this content format is more comprehensive content than a blog post or short video.
Decision Stage
• Case studies – Producing detailed case studies documents on your website are an effective form of content for customers that have made it to final stages of the sales cycle – the purchasing decision. Case studies assists the customer with comparative and real life information and it helps you positively influence their decision.
• Testimonials – For some businesses case studies might not be possible to produce and are not a good fit for their business, obtaining short testimonials on your website or positive customer reviews is a good alternative. For clothing brands for example, these might be in the form of photos providing different styling options, with branded hashtags where people can further contribute.

How long will it take to see results from my content?
Digital marketing  is enabling businesses to see results much faster than traditional offline marketing due to the fact that it is easier to measure ROI. However, it ultimately depends on the scale and effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy.

Given that you have spent ample and required time in building comprehensive buyer personas to identify the needs of your target audience, and then focusing on creating quality and compelling online content to attract and convert the customers, as a result you are then likely to see strong results within the first months. Through organic lead generation process it may take upto 6 months.

If paid advertising is part of your digital strategy, then the results come even quicker, as fast as the very first month you activate your targeted and carefully implemented digital campaign. It is advisable to focus on building your organic (or ‘free’) reach of target audience by the usage of content, SEO, and social media for long-term, sustainable success.

Do I need a big budget for digital marketing?
In digital marketing, having to decide what your budget should be monthly and for the year really depends on what elements of digital marketing you are looking to add to your strategy.
If your focus is on inbound techniques such as SEO, social media, and content creation for a preexisting website, the good news is your budget does not need to be heavy at all. With inbound marketing, the main focus is on creating high quality content for your target audience consumption, will account for your timely investment. Outsourcing this type of work to an agency will offcourse require an investment.
If you have a light marketing and digital budget but require a website, you can get started by using WordPress hosted on WP Engine and using a simple template themes provided. With outbound techniques like online advertising and email blasts, you will need to allocate your budget for the online media spend. Again, the types of budgets you must consider will be influenced by your overall objectives such as what kind of visibility are you looking for to obtain and the results of digital advertising. Talk to our team today to understand better how to compose your digital budget and to understand what types of digital strategies are suitable for your organisation. Many companies fail at this step as they avoid consulting with professionals within this field, and in most cases even the budgets allocated are wasted or mismanaged.