If you are a content marketer, then I am going to tell you How to Create a Content Map, so if you want to know about it, then keep reading this article. Because I am going to give you complete information about it, so let’s start.
A content map is a tool to see the gaps in your content where potential buyers might need help. The idea is to produce the right content, and deliver it to the right people, at the right time.
It’s typically broken down by the stages in a buying journey and the personas of the buyers in a table format. Content mapping helps address customers at different cycles in the buyer’s journey.
This makes it easy to see the missing pieces that should be written to help the buyers complete their journey.
So let’s get complete information about How to Create a Content Map without wasting any time, come on.
Table of Contents
Why is content mapping important?
The goal of content mapping is to make sure that you have the right content at the right stage for the right person.
Content maps can be used for B2B, B2C, and any kind of industry.
It’s not simple to check off each box with one content piece and move on to the next. It’s important to know how many touch points someone needs to progress to the next stage in their buyer’s journey.
The content should be versatile and dynamic enough to satisfy all the needs of your prospects and customers.
Estimates range between 8 to 13 touch points are needed to convert a customer. So you can pretty quickly imagine that particular stages in the buyer journey are going to require a lot more content than others.
How to Create a Content Map?
Below I am going to tell you 6 tips about How to Create a Content Map, which is as follows.
Identify Customer
Sketching a buyer’s persona is the first step in content mapping.
What is a persona?- A buyer’s persona is the semi-fictional representation of the ideal buyer you want to attract.
Personas are a way of representing the different segments you have in your prospective buyers.
They are typically built on demographic and psychographic data.
- Demographic data is how you could define the profile characteristics like income, age, sex, location, title, and marital status.
- Psychographic data is how they behave like runners, movie buffs, vegans, dog moms, bookworms, and gadget geeks.
In order to build a persona, you must gather information about who your target audience is and your current customers to see how many people have the most common characteristics; this forms the basis for your persona.Sketch the customer journey
Once you’ve identified the largest combination of characteristics for your target audience, you could start mapping out the journey they would take to purchase your product.
For the customer’s journey, start with three columns: problem awareness, solution awareness, and product awareness.
Mark down what your persona would do when they become aware of the problem you solve.
For example, as a hungry person in New York, I would most likely pull out my phone and search for local restaurants.
Then mark down what they would do when they become solution aware.
Continuing the example, I could become aware of a new bagel shop you own down the street by looking at Google maps. And I want to check out the menu and the reviews of that location.
Then write out how would they decide once they became aware
In this fictitious bagel shop, I can walk in as a customer and try to decide what exactly I want to eat, going to solve my hunger among all your menu items.
Having the descriptions of how people will behave in each of the columns will help identify the types of content you need in each section. Each section should have resonating and adequate content. If you need help with ideas, here’s a list of marketing ideas.
And the row should be labeled as the persona or personas you identified in step one.
Layout your current content
Now that we’ve established who the prospect is and what is their most likely path to becoming a customer, we need to map out our existing content into our newly created map.
This could be a time-consuming process depending on how much content you already have created, but the idea here is that you would evaluate each one and how it falls into the current map you created.
If you are not a newbie in the business world, you probably already have a presence in the digital world. That being said, you probably have a marketing strategy that comprises a content strategy. Revise and update it to fill in the gaps.
Once you finish sorting your content into the correct columns, it should be pretty easy to see where you might be missing content or that you have a ton of content. A nice balance is necessary between stages.
But before you start creating new content, there are some considerations that you should take.
Plan new content
Every customer’s journey is different, so the closer you get to understand how people make a purchase, the easier you can make their path.
Let’s take a simple scenario of someone trying to buy a car. First, they would have to figure out what things are most important when looking for cars.
They might read 3-4 articles about the most important things to look for when car shopping.
Then they would go to maybe 4-5 different vendor sites to see if they have something that fits their criteria.
Then they would probably read 2-4 reviews for in-depth articles on the car models.
And finally, they would probably go shopping for the cars they want.
You can see from this example it’s not enough just to have one type of content for each stage in the customer’s journey. You have to understand how much information someone needs in each stage to feel comfortable moving on to the next one.
The type of content is essential but also the format you make in it and the channels you use.
Content-type Consideration
For the problem-aware column, how-to guides, infographics, and checklists draw people in. Great channels to focus on are organic search, social media, and video.
For solution aware column, product overviews, case studies, and quizzes work well in converting. Channels to focus on are organic search, email marketing, and paid social.
For the product aware column, product detail sheets, customer reviews, and calculators get results. Good channels to covert prospects are email marketing, paid search, and direct communication (phone, text, in-person).
If you want more content ideas, here is a list of B2B marketing ideas.
Generate Topic Ideas
When planning out your content, you should make sure to cover all the subjects you will cover for each stage. It gives you a safe ground to lean on. Taking some time to identify the key content ideas will pay off.
Studies show that content subjects should be based on keyword research, previous experience, information, and most importantly the needs and wants of buyers’ personas.
To include the whole scope of topics, identify the problems your target audience is having and ways you can help find solutions. Reflect on the persona’s profile, observe social media and analyze reviews. All these steps will give you insight into what to concentrate on.
Hope you have read about How to Create a Content Map above, so now if you want, you can watch the video above to know more about How to Create a Content Map. And you can get more information on this topic.
Conclusion:)
You now have all the pieces to build your content map, from identifying who your personas are to exactly what type of content, format, and channel you should use.
Content mapping is a great strategy to clearly lay out your customer’s journey and how you can assist them at each step of the path.
With information so easily available, buyers are educating themselves as much as possible before even engaging with a sales rep or company. If you can gain their trust by educating them, you can be a step ahead of your competition.
Go for and start mapping.
Read also:)
- 15+ Benefits of Content Marketing for Your Brand: Full Guide!
- 5+ Benefits of Content Marketing in Digital Marketing: Full Guide!
- How to Create a Content Strategy for eCommerce Website: A-to-Z Guide!
So hope you liked this article How to Create a Content Map. And if you still have any questions and suggestions related to this, then you can tell us in the comment box below. And thank you very much for reading this article.