Each stage of the customer’s journey requires specific content types.
In the awareness stage, buyers need educational content to guide them to a solution.
In the consideration stage, where prospects evaluate their options, content like product comparison guides and case studies helps make an informed decision.
And in the purchase stage, testimonials and customer stories help buyers feel confident about their choice.
A content map allows you to curate highly targeted, personalized content at each stage, helping to acquire leads and drive purchasing decisions.
In this blog, we’ll cover:
• What Is Content Mapping?
• Why Content Mapping Matters
• How To Create a Content Map
• Content Mapping Examples That Work
What Is Content Mapping?
Content mapping, also referred to as content journey mapping, is the process of creating a content plan and aligning it with each stage of the buyers journey.
Content journey mapping helps marketers identify where customers are in their buying cycle and what kind of content they need to move them through the funnel to convert into paying customers.
Why Content Mapping Matters
A content journey map transforms complex insights and ideas into a clear, organized and actionable plan. Laying out your content in the customer’s journey makes it easier to identify areas where you can create more content, what kind of content is most effective and where you can optimize for better performance.
• Boost brand reputation: Thoughtfully mapped, high-quality content positions you as a trusted source in your industry.
• Content segmentation: Content segmentation allows you to create targeted content based on consumer behavior and other relevant factors.
• Increased engagement: Customers who find value in your content are likelier to click and share your content.
• Streamlined navigation: Organizing content into relevant sections and categories helps readers quickly find the necessary information.
How To Create a Content Map
Not sure how to create a content map? This content mapping template is a great starting point to improve your website content effectiveness.
1. Identify Your Target Audience
Your target audience is the first step in developing a content mapping strategy. Understanding their needs, preferences and behaviors provides direction for content development.
Audience research allows you to acquire this information.
Understanding Audience Research
Audience research involves identifying the demographics and psychographics of your readers – researching their interests, understanding what content they prefer and learning what platforms they use to consume content.
There are two ways to collect data:
• Refer to existing studies, statistics, reports and surveys to understand your audience. This is particularly useful for new businesses without an established • following.
• Conduct customer surveys, polls and interviews. This allows you to gather firsthand information and build relationships with potential customers.
This information will help you create a buyer persona, which serves as an archetype of your ideal customer.
2. Create Buyer Personas
User personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers based on market research and insights from actual customers. They help inform your content strategy in many ways:
• Identify customer pain points for targeted messaging and customized offerings.
• Know where potential customers spend time (online and offline) to distribute content effectively.
• Document key buyer persona profiles to align marketing efforts with customer needs.
Quick Tips for Creating Buyer Personas
A mistake commonly made by marketers is creating buyer personas based on stereotypes, assumptions or unverified information. Don’t make the same rookie mistake by implementing the following:
• Conduct quantitative (e.g., surveys, polls) and qualitative (e.g., interviews, focus groups) research to ensure accuracy in profile data.
• Analyze trends, patterns and insights from customer feedback.
• Use analytics tools (e.g., Google Analytics) to analyze website data.
• Segment customers into groups based on needs and behaviors.
• Communicate with your customer-facing teams to validate user personas.
When done correctly, buyer personas can be invaluable tools for aligning content marketing activities and product or service offerings with customer needs.
3. Consider the Customer’s Purchase Journey
The buyer persona is just one element of the content journey map. Alongside knowing who they are, it’s crucial to understand their position in the buying cycle (e.g., product awareness, purchase consideration). This is referred to as a lifecycle stage.
There are three core stages to the customer lifecycle:
• Awareness: Educate prospects on your product/service, what problem it solves and its unique value proposition.
• Consideration: Show how your solution meets customer needs and why they should purchase from you over competitors.
• Purchase stage: Encourage customers to commit to a purchase or provider by providing proof points such as case studies
Combining buyer personas with lifecycle stages helps you focus on specific audience segments and tailor content accordingly.
4. Map Out Content for Each Stage of the Buyers Journey
Now comes the fun part: mapping out the content. This involves identifying what type of content is best for each lifecycle stage, when to post it and how to distribute it.
Content Formats for Each Stage
The type of content to develop depends on a number of factors such as the goals you are trying to achieve (e.g., leads generation) and where your target audience is in the purchase cycle.
• Awareness Stage: At this stage, buyers are trying to understand a problem and what solutions are available. High-level educational content is helpful in building trust and awareness.
• Blog posts
• Whitepaper
• Checklist
• Tutorial Video
• Infographics
• Ebook
• Educational Webinar
• Consideration Stage: This is when buyers have a better understanding of their problem and begin comparing solutions to find the best fit. Content that is more detailed can help them understand your offering in more depth:
• Case Studies
• Product Comparisons
• Video Tutorials
• Customer Stories
• Webinars/Podcasts
• Purchase Stage: Customers are ready to commit and put their money on the line. Content that is more persuasive can help them make an informed decision:
• Free trials/demos
• Testimonials/Reviews
• Discount codes
5. Start Mapping
Using the information you gathered, create a content plan that aligns with your buyer personas and their individual journey stages. This provides direction for content creation and ensures all bases are covered.
HubSpot’s content mapping template is a great template to get started. It lets you focus on the specified goal, outlining the necessary steps to gradually attract buyers. You can schedule content publication on a monthly or quarterly basis, all in one convenient place.
6. Identify Content Gaps
It doesn’t end there – having a visual representation of your content mapping process makes it easier to identify potential gaps. You can use it in tandem with a content audit.
A content audit analyzes your existing content assets to help you identify gaps in target coverage, optimize current content and uncover opportunities for new pieces.
What if you’re already producing content? You can use the content mapping template to identify what’s missing for each stage and fill any knowledge or engagement gaps.
Gaps could include:
• Too much emphasis on one persona over another
• Not enough educational content to support the awareness stage
• No content addressing customer feedback
• Unexamined needs within one stage of the purchase cycle
The goal is to ensure that no gaps exist in your overall content plan, which requires a comprehensive and ongoing analysis.
7. Monitor & Analyze Content Performance
Having an effective content mapping strategy is only half the battle. The other part involves monitoring and analyzing content effectiveness.
Analytics tools like Google Analytics can help you track visitors, engagement levels and conversions for each lifecycle stage. Pay attention to where traffic is coming from (e.g., organic search, direct, referral) and what types of content resonate best with different personas.
You should also create benchmarks to measure progress over time. For example, content performance can be monitored by tracking metrics such as page views and conversions for each persona or stage.
Comparing results today with those from previous quarters can improve your website effectiveness and attract more visitors.
Content Mapping Examples
Let’s put content journey mapping into practice with a few content mapping examples.
Example 1: Jenny, a gym owner, is shopping for gym membership management software to streamline operations.
| Awareness Stage | Consideration Stage | Decision Stage | |
| Jenny, a gym owner Challenges: • Budget constraints limit her ability to invest in costly solutions. • She needs to stay competitive in a crowded fitness market. • Managing memberships, scheduling and billing manually is time-consuming. | Jenny lacks knowledge about gym management software and how it can benefit her gym. | Jenny is researching her options and comparing features between different software providers. | Jenny is comparing final options and needs that final push to make a purchase decision. She’s looking at comparing pricing plans, user reviews and integration capabilities. |
| Content Types/Topics | |||
| • Blog post: “The Benefits of Gym Management” • Infographics: “Key Features to Look for in Gym Software” | • Comparison Guide: “Top Gym Management Software Providers” • Case study: “How Gym X Increased Efficiency With Software Y” | • Demo Video: “Using Our Gym Management Software” • Pricing Breakdown: “Choosing the Right Plan for Your Gym” |
Example 2: Sarah, a small business owner, runs a local bakery and wants to improve her online presence and foot traffic.
| Awareness Stage | Consideration Stage | Decision Stage | |
| Sarah, a small bakery owner Challenges: • Lacks expertise in digital marketing and needs to acquire foundational knowledge. • She needs to stay competitive in the local market. • Limited resources, including time and budget, to invest in digital marketing efforts. | Sarah is aware that she needs to build an online presence but is not sure where to start. | Consideration: Sarah understands the potential benefits of an online presence and is looking to invest in social media marketing and web development. | Decision: Sarah has zeroed in on potential agencies and is ready to decide. |
| Content Types/Topics | |||
| • Blog Post: “The Power of Digital Marketing for Local Businesses” • Infographics: “Key Digital Marketing Strategies” | • Case study: “How a Local Bakery Increased Sales with Social Media Ads” • CaseWebinar: “Web Design for Local Businesses” | • Customer Success Stories: “How a Local Bakery Got Noticed with Social Media” • Pricing Breakdown: “Selecting the Best Marketing Package” |
What’s Next? Website Content Mapping!
You’ve learned the basics of content mapping. Now, to apply it to the bigger picture, you need to map your entire website content as a whole. This is possible through website mapping.
Website content mapping involves creating a visual diagram of your website’s page hierarchy. It helps plan the pages, blog posts and offers published on your site.
Additionally, you can identify where on the site each buyer persona should land so they can find the content most relevant to them.
Sounds complicated? Don’t worry! There are website content mapping tools to help you get started.
Must-Have Content Mapping Tools
Content mapping may seem like a highly complex task that requires sophisticated software. But did you know that there are FREE, low-cost tools available to make the process easier? Here are a few essential ones:
1. Google Docs
Pricing: Free
Who knew a simple Word Processor could be a great content mapping tool? Google Docs lets you create tables that quickly map out different types of content in one place. Plus, because it’s cloud-based, you can share and collaborate with others on your team in real-time, making the process even more efficient.
2. Lucidchart
Pricing: Free Basic Plan | Individual Plan:$7.95/month | Team Plan: $9/month | Enterprise Plan: available upon request
Lucidchart is a content mapping tool that allows users to create, collaborate on and share flowcharts, mindmaps and other diagrams. You can start quickly with a content map template or create your content journey map from scratch.
3. Airtable
Pricing: Free Basic Plan | Team Plan: $20/month | Business Plan: $45/month | Enterprise Scale: Available upon request
Airtable enables teams to search and filter assets based on specific criteria, like campaign tags or content type. You can also track the lifecycle of an asset from creation to publication across multiple locations with this content mapping tool.
Delight Customers at Every Stage With Curated Content
A content map can help you stay organized and create a cohesive customer experience. You can craft targeted, relevant content for each stage in the purchase cycle to nurture leads and ensure customers remain engaged beyond their initial purchase.
If you need help with your content mapping strategy, partner with a digital marketing expert!
Thrive, a full-service digital marketing agency, can help refine your content strategy, crafting and delivering content that resonates with each buyer persona throughout the purchase cycle.
Our content marketing services include:
• Auditing existing content to identify gaps in coverage
• Developing an individualized strategy based on customer insights
• Optimizing for both local SEO and technical SEO
• Building an editorial calendar to plan content distribution
• Tracking metrics to ensure content effectiveness
Thrive’s Content Marketing in Action
Accurate Leak & Line, a water line repair company, worked with Thrive to update its website and improve organic search visibility. Through a comprehensive content strategy, they successfully increased monthly visitors from organic search by 50.03%, online leads by 82.99%, site visitors by 43.16% and search traffic by 137.03%.
You can achieve similar results! Get in touch to discuss how Thrive can enhance your content mapping strategy and overall content effectiveness.
