Congratulations! You’ve expertly navigated the content landscape of the awareness stage, guiding your audience through the labyrinth of problem recognition and solution glimpses. Now, as the dust settles on newfound awareness, a crucial stage awaits—welcome to the consideration stage.
This is the rendezvous point where your potential clients, armed with knowledge and curiosity, stand at the crossroads of decision-making.
These prospective clients are now placed in a position where they’re considering various resolution options to their initial problem, including your business’s products or services. When looking at this stage, the target audience is still in an educational mindset and is going to be looking for information to ultimately provide them with the ability to make a calculated, intelligent, and confident purchase.
Formulating the best content that targets the elements making up the consideration stage is going to offer these potential buyers information on their resolution options. Offering the target audience with as much information as possible is going to aid them in progressing further into your buyer’s journey and ultimately converting leads into customers.
Of course, a well-set foundation is going to play a fundamental role in helping these potential buyers move along in the buyer’s journey. Why? The beginning stage of the buyer’s journey plays a crucial role in encouraging the conversion of these leads into customers.
The awareness stage offers information that increases brand awareness. Without this brand awareness, the target audience isn’t going to be able to consider resolution options as they don’t know what their problem is yet.
That’s why it’s important to create content and implement strategies revolving around the awareness stage before beginning the consideration stage. We will be giving you content creation strategies for the consideration stage, as well as types of content that you can use to help promote your product or service as a resolution option.
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What is the Consideration Stage?
The consideration stage is known as the phase of the buyer’s journey where you offer this target audience (who you have helped identify their problem) with information that considers your product or service as a viable resolution option to this problem. The consideration stage is essentially where your potential buyers consider your product or services as a possible option to solve the problem that you helped identify in the awareness stage.
What are the Goals of the Consideration Stage?
The consideration stage’s primary goal is to create content that aids in these potential buyers considering your product or service as a possible choice to solve their problem. By creating consideration-stage content, you’re able to place your products or services in your prospective client’s shortlist choices that can be used to revolve around the issue they have.
The objective of creating such content is to build trust with your target audience. Potential clients don’t just want to buy something, they want their money to support a brand that they trust. Creating content that establishes your brand as trustworthy is going to help convert leads to customers.
What Role Does the Consideration Stage Play in the Buyer’s Journey?
The ultimate role of the content centered around the consideration stage is to make your product or service the best option for your audience when looking to solve their problems. The target audience is still in the educational and informative phase and isn’t ready to have any promotional content.
In this stage, they are purely looking for as much information as possible to make the best, most intelligent, and calculated decision regarding solving their problem. No promotional content should be used as this can drive them away. The role of this part of the buyer’s journey is to offer information that will make your brand and its products or services look like a credible and trustworthy purchase.
Marketing Strategies for the Consideration Stage
When planning to create content for the consideration stage, you’re going to want to consider some features to better identify the marketing strategies you will use during the content creation phase.
The elements you should consider when creating the best marketing strategies for the consideration stage are:
1. Understanding Your Buyers
You should be able to establish a rough idea of who your buyer is when using the buyer’s journey that you have mapped out for your business. Understanding the characteristics making up your buyer is going to help you identify the questions that these potential buyers are going to think of as they gain more information on your business and its competitors. Creating and understanding your buyer personas is primordial at this stage.
Identifying these pain points is going to help you create content that effectively answers these questions. During the consideration stage, one of the most common questions that people need to know before moving on to the next stage of the buyer’s journey is about pricing. Having these particular answers helps the buyer feel more comfortable moving into the decision stage with your product or service still on the buyer’s mind.
2. Planning Your Content Around Solutions
The consideration stage is generally longer and involves buyers taking multiple looks at each option before removing it from their list of options. It’s imperative that you make your content as informative as possible and center it around solving the buyer’s problem.
The key to developing effective content for the consideration stage is not to push your product or service onto the potential client. Rather, you should position your product or services as one of the options that can be used to solve your target audience’s problem.
There is a balance of confidence and honesty that you should keep when creating such content. When developing this content, you should offer the benefits of your product or service without embellishing the facts. Offer information as if you were a jury considering all the options.
3. Acknowledge What the Next Step is
The consideration step isn’t the final phase of the buyer’s journey. You’re still going to need to progress to the decision step of the buyer’s journey, which is where the target audience is going to make their purchasing decision. That’s why you should plan the next piece of content that’s going to branch from your consideration stage-centered content to the decision stage-centered content.
4. Tactics that Can Help You Achieve These Considerations
- Browse customer reviews on third-party sites to develop ideas on what buyers like about your or your competitors’ products. This can help create topics that you can address in your content.
- Incorporate search engine optimization (SEO) into your content to help this information rank higher in search engines and reach a greater audience.
- Ensure that your content addresses both the average person interested in your brand and the final decision-maker. For example, the goals of middle management aren’t always aligned with the wishes of a Vice President.
- Constantly track the activity of your website. Your business should always be aware of your potential buyer’s lead scores and their information.
Best Performing Content for the Consideration Stage
Providing content for the middle of the funnel that answers your target audience’s needs helps to guide these buyers down a stream that showcases your product or service. The ultimate goal is to be as helpful and informative as possible. You can provide this content through various channels, including:
Videos
It doesn’t matter the nature of your product or service. Offering video content about these products or services is going to tell a story to a buyer in a way that articles and blog posts won’t. Videos tend to offer more engagement and conversions while being more content-dense and longer.
Cost Calculators
Marketing a product or service always comes down to budget. Thus, when having a cost-effective product or service, you shouldn’t just say it. You could develop a cost calculator that the target audience can use to see the costs of each option they’re considering, as well as how much they can save by choosing your product or service.
Original Research and Reports
Developing original research and reports can help establish you as an industry leader. Commission research or a survey if it can fit into your marketing budget, as these results can be packed into a downloadable asset.
In the vast landscape of your industry, original research always stands out, as it brings new information. These results, carefully curated and orchestrated, become a downloadable asset—a treasure trove of insights waiting to captivate your audience.
As the architect of this research, you’re not merely presenting data; you’re shaping the narrative. Your brand transcends from being a participant to a thought leader. Your audience perceives you not just as a solution provider but as the sage, the oracle with the pulse on industry trends and insight.
Podcasts and Webinars
Podcasts and webinars are known to be incredibly popular and for a good reason. This type of content offers visual and audio engagement. This helps you develop interesting content that’s more informative than other forms of content while still having the ability to hold the buyer’s attention.
Podcasts are like radio shows where people talk about interesting and useful stuff. In the consideration stage, when you’re deciding what to do about a problem, a podcast can be a great way to learn. Experts or knowledgeable people discuss different solutions, share experiences, and give helpful information. Your prospect can listen to these discussions whenever you want, absorbing the knowledge at your own pace.
Webinars, on the other hand, are like online classes or events. Experts come together to teach you specific things, answer your questions, and show you practical examples. It’s a bit like a virtual workshop where you can interact with the presenters. During the consideration stage, webinars are valuable because they offer a more interactive learning experience. You can participate, ask questions, and get real-time guidance.
So, in simpler terms, podcasts are like informative talks your customers can listen to any time, while webinars are live events where experts teach them things directly. Both are great ways to gather information and make informed decisions during the consideration stage!
The Bottom Line
The consideration stage of the buyer’s journey is the phase that helps your target audience consider your product or service as an option to resolve their problem. This is a key part of converting these leads to customers. Which is why analyzing your target audience is going to help you develop content that’s centered around answering vital questions.
These potential buyers need these questions answered before confidently moving into the decision stage with your product or service remaining in their shortlist of possible options. Once you take into account all the features mentioned above that make up the consideration stage, you should be well-equipped to start creating content centered around the consideration stage.
