We've all been taught over the years about the traditional buying cycle of customers where you start with a "Suspect," and then it moves to "Prospect," "Engage," "Qualify," "Propose," "Defend" and "Close." However, over the years, this has changed.
I want to teach you how to insert powerful Authority Positioning Assets™ into the buyer’s journey so that you are the obvious choice.
In the new process, the objective is to change "Suspect" to "Calm" and help "frame the problem." Instead of being the suspect, the potential buyer starts in a position of calm, which means they don't even realize that they need or want your product or service. This calm is your prospective client or customer doing things the way they've always done them; there's a calm, but then a change happens or a problem arises. The next step is that they "frame the problem" and look for solutions. They talk to peers, and they look for providers.
Here's an example of how this would look: Let's say that you run three days a week, four miles per day, and you've been doing this for years. What if, one day, you come in and your calf is hurting, and it's not a pain that you're used to. The "calm" would be that you're running just like usual. Then the problem or the change happens: There's a pain, so you search for possible solutions. You would Google the problem, correct? You would pull out your phone or your device or your computer, and you would Google "my calves hurt after a run," or "why do my calves hurt more than normal after running?"
Now you're going to frame the problem to see what other people who have the same problem are talking about. Let's say that you were this runner and you started seeing articles for buying new shoes. It probably would not even cross your mind to click on one of those ads because you bought new shoes six months ago, and that's not on your radar. But what if you saw one of the articles on your Google results or a podcast interview, and it was talking about your exact problem? What if you learned that even if you bought shoes in the last six months, you may need to buy a new pair of shoes with a different type of insole or instep or orthotic because if you run on hard surfaces for six months, you might run through them a lot faster than normal?
You didn't know that was a potential solution. But now, when you've read this article or heard this podcast and someone was explaining their experience with the same problem and the solution they found, you sit up and take notice.
Talking to peers would be either verbally talking to friends/peers or seeing reviews: third-party proof. This is critical to understand as a marketer because research today has shown that our attention to ads has diminished, but if we have a friend, relative or contact online who has used a certain product to solve the same problem we have, we are so much more likely to make that purchase.
How can we tie all this into Authority Positioning?
You, as a marketer or as a brand, insert Authority Positioning Assets™ into that narrative that we just described so when someone has that problem, you are the solution.
If you were a local shoe company's marketing department, rather than relying on Google or Facebook ads, you could do some content marketing and write articles, blog posts and podcast episodes in which the title and the content focused on a problem and the solution you provided. In the case of this local shoe store that wanted to get in front of the people in that city, they would want to write articles, teaching and educating their target audience using research and case studies that identified the problem and the solution, so when that piece of content was indexed on Google, people who were searching to frame up possible solutions would come across their article, video or podcast.
You can even produce one piece of content and then repurpose it by turning it into a quick audio file or a video for YouTube. You can do it the opposite way, too; in fact, this is the way that I am writing this article you're reading right now: I knew I wanted to teach you how to identify the buyer's journey and insert powerful authority positioning to get you in front of your target audience easier. But I didn't want to start by simply opening up a document and typing. So, guess what I'm doing right now. I am speaking. I am looking at a graphic of this sales process, and I am talking as if I'm teaching you in front of a class. I am an adjunct marketing professor at four universities, so I'm creating this article by going into "teaching mode."
You could take this same approach: Pick up a microphone to record the solution you provide to a specific problem, and just talk it through. When you have the audio, that could now become a podcast episode. You could upload that audio file to YouTube with an image, and it becomes a video that Google will index very strongly -- if you put in the right title, tags and description.
You can also take that audio file and have it transcribed through a service like Temi or Rev to create a post for your blog. You have made one piece of content, taking perhaps 20 minutes to speak through a specific problem and solution, and that one action is giving you a podcast episode, a YouTube video and a blog post for your website -- and Google sees that fresh, relevant content. The chances that your target audience will find you have been elevated dramatically.
As we enter 2019, make sure you have an Authority Positioning content marketing plan because Building Your Authority is Your #1 Priority™.
