3 steps to implementing a content map to ensure campaign success

How good is your content strategy? It probably meets the needs and expectations of your ideal customers, giving them detailed information on your products or services so that they can make informed decisions when purchasing. But does it follow the buying journey as they move through your sales and marketing funnels? 

An effective content policy has to go beyond just informing. You should be considering where each buyer is on their journey. At each stage, they may want to know something different that moves them onto the next step. Having a content map can help you achieve that goal. 

What is a content map?

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Put simply, a content map ensures your marketing team is delivering the right content at the right time to the right people, following the basic principles of customer experience. It recognizes the different buyer personae that apply to your product or service and also where those buyers are on their journey. It helps your marketers know what content a person needs to see at any particular stage of their journey so that they can move to the next stage. 

Why is a content map important?

Every business strives to ensure that the customer experience is as smooth as possible and that they are moved through your sales funnel to a successful conclusion. Part of that effort recognizes that potential customers want a personalized experience that informs and educates them so that any decision they make is an informed one. Your content map could involve everything from event streaming architecture to how-to videos. 

Additionally, focusing on process improvement ensures that the mechanisms behind content delivery are continuously enhanced for efficiency and effectiveness.

Every customer is different, which is why you build different buyer personae. A content map combined with those personae ensures that content is delivered at the right time, allowing your campaign to do everything from generating leads to moving the customer over that final checkout line. Content mapping every campaign should be an integral part of your marketing process. 

Benefits of content mapping

Mapping every campaign sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? One thing to consider is that, unless your campaigns are for very different products or services, they will look pretty similar. Another thing to consider is that if you have very diverse campaigns, the first you produce for each can act as a template for future initiatives.

For instance, consider an online travel agent who uses content mapping to enhance the travel planning experience. By understanding the typical stages of a traveler’s journey, from initial curiosity to booking, the agent can deliver tailored information on destinations, travel tips, and special promotions at the most impactful moments. 

This could involve sending personalized destination guides and travel deals when a traveler shows interest in specific locations, thus boosting engagement, conversion rates, and fostering follower growth.

But it still involves some work and collaboration. If you experience any pushback from any of your team, you want to be able to list all the benefits that can come with a robust content mapping strategy:

• Engagement. Your map lets you see the path different personae take from awareness to (hopefully) purchase. By understanding that path and the pain points they may experience, you better understand the customers and can produce the content they want and will engage with. 
• Sales. Of course, increased sales and revenue (along with better customer retention rates) are your ultimate goals. By understanding your customers and targeting them with personalized content, you will ideally drive them to click on that Buy button. 
• Content. Your current content may be high quality, but is it good enough to convert visitors? Content mapping can help you review your content with a neutral(ish) eye. Are you repeating content or producing content with low levels of engagement? A good content map can be a real eye-opener when it comes to reviewing content. 
• Experience. That all-important customer experience again. Providing a better customer experience equals happy customers, which equals more sales and retained customers.
• Products/services. A content map gives you insights not only into what your customers think, but what they want. This means that you can develop new products that meet their needs and improve current ones by adding features your customers want. A knock-on effect of this is that your customers (and others) will recognize that you listen to them and will be more likely to remain a customer. 
• Resources. How much does your marketing team spend every year? How much time and money is spent on ideas that never see the light of day or fall flat on their face? Understanding your customers is key to efficient resource allocation. With content mapping, you’re taking the guesswork out of the equation. Over time, you will find that the process is more streamlined and that you’re saving in terms of money, time, and people. 

How to create a content map

You can see how content mapping your campaigns can bring benefits (and potentially more sales). But if you’re completely new to the idea of a content map, where do you begin?

1) Build your buyer personae

This is the foundation of your content mapping strategy as it defines the customers you are targeting with your content. To build a buyer persona, you need relevant data on the type of people who may buy from you. Some of that data you will already have though rather than having a CDP vs CRM (customer data platform vs. customer relationship management) debate, look at using relevant data from both sources. 

You can also gather new data through surveys. You may target qualified leads or people who follow your social media posts or even anyone identified as being interested in what you offer. A third option is to access any available and relevant industry data to create a persona based on different traits. 

Now, you may find that after some initial work, you have multiple personae. No need to see a psychiatrist, just drill down into the data and see where you can combine them according to behavioral and other similarities. This is no different from the marketing segmentation you do, Look for overlaps where different personae will be together on your completed content map. 

2) Create a map

Your own content map may vary slightly according to your business and customer types, and there are many content mapping templates available online. Generally speaking, it should incorporate the following stages. 

• Awareness stage. In this initial stage, your potential customer is just becoming aware of your brand and your products or services. More importantly, they are becoming aware that you may be the solution to their problems or needs. Content in this stage doesn’t always have to focus on the product but on the brand, its reliability, and your reputation. 
• Interest or consideration stage. The customer has now entered your marketing funnel proper and you want to produce content that shows how you offer the ideal solution. You can post everything from customer reviews and testimonials to white papers that show how effective your product is.
• Decision. The customer is getting closer to the ultimate goal of a buying decision. You want to address any concerns the customer may have in this stage, as well as reinforce previous messages about suitability. Any questions the customer has should also be answered, and you can compare to what your competitors offer if applicable. 
• Retention. Your work doesn’t end with a confirmed purchase. You can help with onboarding and direct the customer to FAQs and how-to guides so they get the most out of the product. In some ways, this stage is similar to the awareness one in that you are selling your brand’s quality and why they should become a loyal customer.

As said, your version of a content map may vary, and the example above is just a rough guide. Build your own template and customize it where needed. Once you have a map, you need to look at your existing content and see what stages of the map it fits with. Now, as you look more closely at your content, you may find two possible scenarios:

• Some content fits different stages. If this is the case, look at where that content fits best. If it supports one stage more than another, then choose that one. 
• It doesn’t fit in any stage. If this is the case, should you just discard the content? No, you can adapt or update the content pieces to fit or it could be useful when other marketing questions such as “what is an ABM campaign?” arise. 

3) Look for gaps

One advantage of content mapping is that you can learn new things about the customer journey in relation to your brand and add new strategies to your future outreach. Gaps may be specific to your business, and when you find one you need to consider whether any existing content can service that stage or if you need to create new personalized content that addresses the particular issues raised in that stage. 

There are four approaches to filling any gaps that may help you consider how to successfully address the issues raised in that stage. 

• SEO

How is your target audience finding results when searching? That could be for your content or your products/services. You can also use clickstream data analysis to understand how a customer moves through your website, what pages they visit, and in what order. Keyword research can identify the SEO tactics that you are already using but also what customers are using and you are not. 

Remember, when you have your content fully optimized with an SEO strategy, you will see the number of organic users to your site or page increase. Look at every single new visitor as a potential conversion. The richer your SEO and keywords, the better the content map will perform so pay close attention to all relevant words and phrases. 

• Look at your competitors

Facilitating follower growth can sometimes require a bit of corporate spying. Don’t think of analyzing what your competitors are doing as cheating, they do exactly the same. By seeing what works (and what doesn’t) for them, you can refine both your SEO strategy and your content creation. Are they producing content that fills any of the gaps you have identified? If so, then you want to replicate (and improve on) it so that you no longer have a gap.

• Cast your net wider

Another solution to content gaps is to look at what the people associated with your industry or your audience are saying. This could be as simple as conversations in specialist groups on social media or white papers or academic studies that focus on particular subjects and/or issues. 

You may find that any work in this area will duplicate work you have already done on keyword research. But you will also find some new ideas that can lead to new content and fill gaps. For example, you may find a conversation on social media where people are asking, “What is go to market strategy?” and realize that no one has answered that question in regards to your industry. So, you can take inspiration from that and create a piece of content that does just that.  

• Ask your targets

Of course, the best experts on what sort of content to fill gaps is your audience itself. If you have spotted any gaps, in either the content or the buyer journey, simply ask your audience what they’d like to see. You can do this in a number of ways:

• Send a survey out to your existing customers and email subscribers.
• Post a survey on your social media platforms. 
• Post a survey on your website.
• Outsource the work to a specialist market research company or survey provider. 

What sort of questions should you be asking? 

1. What type of content would you like to see?
2. Are there any subjects in blog posts we haven’t covered that you think are needed?
3. What challenges does your business face? 
4. How do you see new and emerging technology helping your business?
5. How did you become aware of our business?
6. Where do you normally find information about job-related subjects?

As with the content map template, your questions may be specific to your business type but these can act as a rough guide. 

The takeaway

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You may already be producing many different content types, but how do they fit with the buyer journey? Creating a content map relevant to your business and then undertaking a content audit can help you identify any gaps. The content mapping process should take into consideration both general points and any specific to the nature of your business. 

You need to think about how potential customers find information about you via search engines and also the type of content you already have. Once you have a content map that takes the customer journey, SEO, and brand awareness into account, you may need to create additional content to achieve your content marketing goals. Implementing a content map can lead to more successful campaigns, more satisfied customers, and improvements to your important metrics.