How to Implement Different Stages of Content Marketing

Making a sale is not where the customer’s journey begins—it’s the final step in a series of important stages. First, customers become aware of a product, then they look for its benefits, and only after cautious consideration do they decide to take action. Content marketing plays a vital role in this process, preparing the audience for purchase during the initial stages and guiding them smoothly toward the decision phase. Beyond that, it helps nurture repeat customers for creating long term beneficial relationships.

In this journey, your content strategy and planning are the pillars that keep your audience engaged, building trust and loyalty at every stage. It’s no surprise that successful brands across industries rely on content marketing to achieve their goals. Understanding the stages of content marketing and knowing how to implement them strategically is essential for any marketer.

After diving deep into books, websites, social media insights, and real-world experiences, I’m here to share a comprehensive guide on the stages of content marketing and how to implement them effectively.

Stages of Content Marketing

There are four stages in content marketing which are:

1. Awareness 
2. Consideration
3. Decision
4. Retention

1. Awareness

Overview, Goals, Content Type and Implementation

This is the first stage in content marketing where a buyer is not ready to purchase something, he is just wondering how to get something done. There are also five parts in it which are;

• Unaware: At this stage people are unaware of you and don’t care about you in their journey to make a purchase. As they are not in need of anything, they don’t pay much attention to irrelevant stuff.
• Problems Aware: It includes those people who are aware of problems but don’t know the solutions. People who are aware of their problems are desperately searching for solutions on the internet, and social media and discussing their issues with their relevant people.
• Solution Aware: This stage people know the problem and are also aware of the fact that the solution exists but they don’t know about you.
• Product Aware: People in this category are aware of solutions and you but they have different options in choosing products for them. For example you provide a solution that email marketing is best for their marketing problems but don’t know which tool is best for them.
• Fully Aware: In this stage people are aware of you, your solution, your products but they need to consider your product before purchasing.

Goals

As we discussed some of the major parts of the awareness stage, thus now we can clearly indicate the goals in awareness stage. These are providing the best possible solutions to people, representing products in such a way that people found nothing better than ours and building strong relationships.

Content Type

Now the question arises, what kind of content should be used for the awareness stage? As the awareness stage is all about informing your audience about your products, the content should be in the form of blogs, images, videos and social media posts.

Implementation

First find the most relevant and high search volume keywords and then write blogs and social media posts with relevant images and videos. If you are new in the field then target short tail specific keywords.

2. Consideration

Overview, Goals, Content Type and Implementation

In this stage people accept the fact that there is something wrong in their life which needs to be changed. Your audience is aware of your products, brand or services and now they will get more information about you at this stage. They will start considering your brand as different and valuable than others if you address their problems in a friendly and professional way.

Goals

In this stage you will not only provide solutions but also make sure that the audience considers that you have completely understood their problems.

Content Types

Content for consideration should be case studies, real life examples, webinars, comparisons and analytics.

Implementation

Provide content in the form of downloadable ebooks, pdfs etc for providing in-depth solutions and don’t be salesy at this stage because the people in consideration have no mind of buying something.

3. Conversion

Overview, Goals, Content Type and Implementation 

In the conversion stage engaging customers convert into paying customers. When leads become sales then we can say the conversion stage started. Your audience is familiar with you, they understand the value of your product as the top choice for solving their problems and now they will definitely go for purchase, this is what conversion is all about.

Goals

Sales, directing audience to take actions and making them a part of your community are some goals in the conversion stage.

Content Type

Product pages optimization, eye catching landing pages, testimonials and compelling email marketing campaigns.

Implementation

Implementation in the conversion stage starts with writing compelling Call to Actions and placing them in the right place. When a buyer is aware of you, he considers your brand as the top choice and now he will need to know what to do next. Make attractive and optimized landing pages by using tools like HubSpot and lead your audience there at the end.

4. Retention

Overview, Goals, Content Type and Implementation

The stage in which people return to make another purchase is called the retention stage. It is the most important but most overlooked stage of content marketing. It is always easy to retain customers rather than attracting new ones. If your products fulfills all the requirements of your audience, then there are 90% chances that they will make another purchase . Now this is up to you how you outreach them for making repeated buyers.

Goal

Increase the repeat sales, higher engagement level, builds trust and brand awareness.

Content Type

Best content type for the retention stage is sending highly professional and personalized emails. We can also arrange loyalty programs and tutorials for retention stages in content marketing.

Implementation

Encourage user generated content in the form of reviews and comments. Arrange survey campaigns to existing buyers for the betterment of your products and retaining customers because you will indirectly ask them to come and buy the product again.

Step by Step Guide to Implement Different Stages of Content Marketing

It is very important to know how we can implement the best strategies of content marketing in multiple stages of the buyer’s journey. I have devided this implementation in 5 easy steps which will be very beneficial for you to implement in different stages of content marketing.

Step: 1 Research

Research is a difficult step in all of the steps and if you have done this in the correct fashion then it will bring some mind blowing results in the future.

Let’s discuss how you can implement research in different stages of content marketing;

• Awareness: Find high search volume and clear intent keywords that your competitors are targeting.
• Consideration: Know about the problems faced by people about your products, brand or service. You can explore Quora, People Also Ask feature of Google and Answer the Public like platforms to know about problems so that your solutions can be considered while targeting.
• Conversion: Research how the customers convert and separate those who ask questions, remain engaged for more time, sign up and don’t buy and show interest in your product but did not buy.
• Retention: Everyone has a different Point of View, research in the retention stage gives us a lot of opportunities to make our products top choice in the audience. Find different reviews, survey results and people’s thoughts on user generated content.

Step: 2 Plan Your Content

Planning your content is what determines your success ratio in content marketing. It is my experience and research that most of the sales comes when you work on your content by keeping pain points, demands and needs of your audience in mind.

Here is how you can plan your content for different content marketing stages;

• Awareness: Address the most common problems faced by people in the content for awareness stage
• Consideration: Provide the best possible solutions highly relevant to people’s problems, so that you can be considered
• Conversion: Use Images, videos and attractive landing pages for the best representation of your products
• Retention: Look at the views of your customers on surveys, emails and UGC then plan the content accordingly

Step: 3 Content Optimization

Ignoring content optimization while implementing content marketing strategies is the biggest mistake because you can not represent your products in the relevant audience without optimization. Always prioritize high quality and optimized content over large quantities.

The optimization of content can done in different stages as;

• Awareness: Target long tail and highly specific keywords and use naturally in the content for being found.
• Consideration: Think as a buyer and write content which clears all the questions of audiences.
• Conversion: Conversion totally depends upon the representation of your product and it must go beyond the audience mind which is only possible when you optimize the images, videos and landing pages according to their problem’s solution.
• Retention: Read the reviews, user generated content, comments, people also ask, answer the public and survey campaigns to optimize the content accordingly.

Step: 4 Choosing Platforms

For selecting a platform you will see the number of your audience. Research on the several platforms and see on which platform your audience is most active and look for solutions to their problems.

The implementation method of platform selection in different stages of content marketing is as follow.

• Awareness: For the awareness stage you can run ads, partner with influencers and affiliates for better results.
• Consideration: Make a website and optimize it on Google search results by Search Engine Marketing to be considered the best solutions provider.
• Conversion: Use email marketing for delivering your optimized content to the existing audience.
• Retention: Use the automation system of email marketing in which you will schedule the time and date for sending personalized emails to happy customers for repeating the purchase.

Step: 5 Analysis of Data

This step is very important in which you will not only know the impacts of your content marketing but also update or launch a new content marketing campaign with more specificity.

Analyzing of data in different stages of content marketing can be implemented as;

• Awareness: You will see the impressions and Clicks Through Rates (CTR) for checking the headlines and content. It will determines that your content is working or not
• Consideration: Check the engagement level for data analytics in this stage
• Conversion: Use trackers for checking the conversion rates which will determine the success of your content marketing efforts in the conversion stage
• Retention: You will use the tool for email marketing for representing your content before an existing audience. The data from this email marketing campaign will be used in analysis for this stage.

Pro Tips for Success

I have noticed the mistakes, problems and algorithms update issues in content marketing and after going toe to toe with these issues, I have found these Pro Tips helpful in Successful Implementation of Content Marketing Stages.

• Craft the content focusing on needs, demands, interests and pain points of your audience after a deep research
• Remain consistent in publishing on the chosen platform to remain memorable in the buyer’s journey
• Publishing quality content 3 times a week is better than random content 5 times
• Make sure your content has targeted keywords, and it is highly optimized for appearing in search results.
• Along with publishing content outreach your audience with personalized emails and product recommendations
• Provide a space for user generated content (UGC) for your audience and invite users to share their thoughts, feedbacks, opinions and testimonials
• Use clear and high optimized CTAs and make sure each piece of content has separate CTAs
• Use multiple tools and strategies for better results and identify what works best
• Engage with existing customers with better offers and follow ups to retain them
• Technology is updating at a very fast pace and if you don’t update yourself accordingly then all the above discussion will not help you
• Adapt specific and meaningful content for blog posts, social media posts, images and videos for marketing.

Conclusion

After all the discussion we can summarize it as we should keep these 4 stages of content marketing in mind while doing online marketing for our businesses. When we have strategy and planning for all these stages of content marketing and know how to implement in the correct way then the chances of our success will increase. Do this at the first sight and compare your success ratio with your competitors.

FAQs About Implementing Content marketing at Different Stages