Content marketing is important to your business because it helps transport people throughout their journeys to becoming and remaining your customer.
The outcomes we discussed in the Outcomes section relate closely to the phases people go through in their journeys to:
- Becoming your customers,
- Remaining your customers, returning to buy again, or for service or parts, and
- Recommending your business to others, i.e., advocating or evangelizing.
As we will see, different types of content can help move them through each phase, as well as transition them from one phase to the next.
The Purchase Funnel
The concept of the customer journey evolved from the concept of the classic purchase funnel, which itself was initially conceived as a phased model in which businesses:
- Attract the attention of consumers,
- Create interest in and then
- Desire for the business or product, and ultimately
- Get them to take action—presumably purchasing the business’s solution in the form of a product or service.
The original A-I-D-A model is attributed to an advertising pioneer named Elias St. Elmo Lewis, who began articulating it as early as 1898.
The metaphor of the funnel was associated with the model in the 1920s to help illustrate the size of a business’s target audience the closer it gets to purchase.
The number of phases and their names also evolved as the marketing and advertising industry grew with the classic simple version of the funnel containing three phases of the target audience’s mindset:
- Awareness
- Consideration and
- Intent
In this model, the number of people “in market” or intending to purchase are always fewer than the number of people who are aware of your brand—and are in fact, a subset of the audience in each of the previous phases over time.
The Customer Journey
However, we know customers rarely if ever follow such a logical, linear process. Nor are there any formal rules for such behavior and every brand or product acquisition experience is different.
Over time, with the advent of new media distribution channels, digital online technology and interactive communications, the funnel model transformed into more of a circular or looping model where the customer still moves through phases but may loop
back to the beginning or earlier phases to repeat all or part of the journey.
In 2009, McKinsey & Company documented this evolutionary view and called it the consumer decision journey.
Our research showed that the proliferation of media and products requires marketers to find new ways to get their brands included in the initial-consideration set that consumers develop as they begin their decision journey. We also found that because of the shift away from one-way communication—from marketers to consumers—toward a two-way conversation, marketers need a more systematic way to satisfy customer demands and manage word-of-mouth.
Thanks to the rise of digital and cloud technologies, widespread access to broadband internet and the proliferation of personal screens with faster processors and greater storage, content emerged as a highly effective and affordable way to create awareness, engage consumers and business customers, get them to take action and stay connected.
Discover information resources for more insights to how content helps move customers through their journeys with your business.