There are tons of marketing tactics that boost conversions.

Whether you prefer quantitative or qualitative evidence, we all know the right marketing is key in order for a lead generation site to find conversion success.

With so many options, your head is most likely spinning, confused as to where to deploy your marketing campaigns, and how to make them successful.

The answer to the question of how to boost your conversion is this: Leverage your client or customer buying cycle.

What’s a buying cycle?

In a nutshell, it’s the process that your ideal client or customer goes through before they decide to buy from your small business or IT company.

Before we go much further, let’s dive deeper into what buying cycles are, how they impact your business, and how to use buying cycles as you create content to target prospects.

The 3 critical stages of your prospects buying cycle

Here are the 3 critical stages of the buying cycle and why you need to know, and love, these stages.

1. Awareness : Prospective buyers become aware of your product or service, or they have a need that must be fulfilled.
2. Consideration : A prospective buyer evaluates and considers your product or service to determine if it meets their needs.
3. Decision: The action of a prospect buying your service.

Create targeted content for each stage

Now that you know what each stage is, it’s time to start taking advantage of them.

First, in the awareness stage of the buying cycle, you need to effectively answer questions that are relevant to each stage.

Think about each stage in terms of college courses.

For example, any college in America has classes that are labeled 101, 201, and 301 level.

101 level are less weighty, and most likely for the wide-eyed freshman. 201 level classes are more in-depth, but still not the meat and potatoes, as 301. And 301 level courses are very deep, and “salesy” in nature.

Buyers and prospects that are at the 101 level know they have a problem.

Buyers at the 201 level, have identified their issue, and are now ready to begin addressing the problem.

Buyers at the 301 level, are ready to make a buying decision, based on all the content that influenced their decision.

The goal is always to create content that moves your prospective buyer down the sales pipeline, ultimately closer to a purchase. That’s where leveraging customer testimonials, providing case studies, and telling your story through videos will push buyers closer to the decision stage.

Another best practice that moves buyers to act, and motivates them to purchase, could be a limited time discount, or some sort of time-based-promotion.

Finally, once buyers make it to the promise land of becoming full-fledged paying customers, you can now begin sending them monthly newsletters with helpful tips and tricks to keep your brand top of mind.

Make content available through the right channels

Here are some great methods on how to market to your buyer, through the right channels, in each stage of the buying cycle.

• Awareness : For the majority of B2B sites, it’s all about being found via search engine marketing. You need to be sure and complete a content audit, along with a keyword and keyphrase list (long-tail keywords), that identifies the ways in which your persona is searching for your product/service. Be sure and use social media in the awareness stage to promote your 101 level content, as well as your website.
• Consideration : Once prospects or buyers find you in search via Google, Yahoo, or Bing, you need to have specific landing pages with content that’s tailored for your buyer and their needs. Use specific copy, comparison charts, and targeted messaging that highlights key benefit points to help your service stand out from the competition.

Learn how to build landing pages that convert, here.

• Decision: This is where your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) comes in handy and where your content about special offers, integration discounts, etc, will help. By now, your prospect or buyer should know the ‘why’ behind making a decision to do business with you. Content on LinkedIn, social, and strong calls-to-action (CTA) will help influence this stage of the buying cycle.

It is common for business owners to only focus on the sale, but it is equally important to remember that your flock of clients are scattered across the field. Some might be ready to give you a sale, some may not be ready depending on where they are at in the buying stage.

It’s your job to help them while they’re in the right stage of the buying cycle, so you can enjoy the fruits of your labor of a more dependable customer pipeline.

Create content that impacts prospects in the 3 critical stages

Contact us here to learn more about what steps to take with your own marketing and website, so you can earn your customer’s business in

their buying stage.