Content marketing is something that bamboozles many business owners & entrepreneurs. But once you understand the buying cycle, you will feel like you’ve put glasses on for the first time and you’ll be saying ‘ah ha’ when you finally realise just how powerful your content can be for you (and doing a lot of the hard work for you.)

It’s easy to get into a cycle of ‘showing’ just as a tick box exercise. Loosely showing people your products or services, perhaps what you had for lunch and marking it off on your to do list (hurrah!!)… But, that’s probably not getting you the result you expected – Hence why you’re reading this! So, let me tell you how you can unlock the power of your content and use it to properly support your business growth… Like the sound of that? Great!

First things first you’ll need to understand the buying cycle, which in short is the process (or cycle) people go through when they first realise they need what you sell and when they buy.

This can be simplified into 6 stages:

Which I like to simplify into my 3 stage D.N.A method – Discovery, Nurture, Action.

Now typically people focus on creating content for the awareness stage AKA “hey, look at me” and purchase “here’s what I sell”. But now that you see these different stages infront of you, you’re probably already thinking “ah ha”… Because what about that bit in the middle, right?

Here’s 3 things you need to think about when you’re planning content for these stages:

1. Are you attracting people with the right content?

So, sure you may well be used to going out with content that says “ here I am and here’s what I do”, but these days you need to think beyond that. You need to attract people in a way that really wows them.

Start thinking about the problems that your business solves for people. Make sure you get that across in your discovery content, to really grab attention and instantly relate to the people you want to attract.

i.e Instead of me saying “Hey I’m Pamela and I can help you with your marketing”… I could say “ Don’t you just hate it when you get to 4pm on a Friday and you’ve not posted a thig on social media”

The aim with this stage is to get them to say “Gosh, that’s me!”

2. Are you nurturing through your content?

So this is the bit people often forget about. These days it’s not enough to only provide content for discovery & action, because if you leave people to fill that nurture gap themselves, they’ll simply fill that gap with someone else’s content to help them consider & realise they have to buy a solution and you can lose the sale.

Start thinking about those problems you solve and start to provide valuable content that illustrates the ‘why’ and ‘how’ you solve that problem.

3. Are you selling through your content?

Now this is a default ‘easy grab’ option for quick content creation AKA “buy my thing”. But again go a step further here. Don’t just tell people what you sell & the price of it,… Tell them why they need it. Think testimonials from other customers, demonstrations, the transformation they’ll have… What the end result it AKA the utopia!

This is just one of the things we cover inside my 1:1 content coaching. Where we work together to create and implement simple & manageable marketing strategies for your business to help you scale online.