If you’re a company or website that sells products or services, you’re going to need content that not only talks to each persona but also that maps to your customer’s journey.

A customer journey is part of a sales funnel and is the process buyers go through to become aware of, evaluate, and purchase a new product or service.

Hot Tip: Different kinds of content and advertising appeal to different buyers in different stages of their journey, by mapping your buying stages, you’ll better understand the process buyers go through when considering your product or service and therefor create content and advertising relevant to each stage.

What is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is the process buyers go through to become aware of, evaluate, and purchase a new product or service and it typically has common stages.

1. Awareness Stage
2. Desire/Consideration Stage
3. Research Stage
4. Decision/Purchase Stage
5. Advocacy Stage

A Sales Funnel Explained

Awareness Stage

Buyers in this stage could potentially become customers but probably aren’t in the market for your product yet. These buyers are looking for educational and entertaining content.

For this stage create content that builds products and services awareness and trust.

Consideration Stage

In this stage, your buyers are aware of your brand and are more actively researching your products. You can start to present more product-specific content, aimed at keeping your potential customers engaged as they research.

Decision Stage

In this stage, buyers are close to making a purchase. Content should speak directly to your offering and highlight product differentiators – think demos, feature comparisons, free trial, and things like free shipping etc.

How to Apply This to Digital Content & Advertising

When you are going to create a monthly content strategy with each week consider what content you're going to create that will target different areas of your sales funnel.

1. What area of the sales funnel am I targeting?
2. What types of content do I need to produce?
3. Where is the content going to click through to? (website or Instagram page)
4. What are the values, needs & goals of the audience I want to target?
5. What does success look like? (sales, new followers, new store email enquires)

Save and print our marketing funnel infographic to place above your workspace for when you're strategising any content.