How to Increase Leads in the Consideration Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

Figuring out the buyer’s journey is an essential task for all marketers, as it perfectly encapsulates the process most people go through when they buy something. It is a simple, three-step scheme that covers how they learn about a need, research about possible solutions, and finally, commit to a purchase to address their situation.
The thing is that sometimes potential customers end up stuck at one of these stages, and never progress down your funnel.

In this sense, the consideration stage is usually the trickier one. So, identifying and solving issues with your customers’ progression at this junction is crucial. Otherwise, you risk derailing your entire conversion funnel!

Luckily for you (and the rest of us, really,) there are plenty of options you have available to address these situations!

From leveraging your social media presence to overhauling your website, or creating video pieces like whiteboard animations geared toward the consideration stage… There are plenty of content tools that work wonders during the consideration stage, and that’s exactly what we are going to explore today!

What’s Going on During the Consideration Stage?

When your prospects have arrived at the consideration stage, it means that they are already aware of the fact that they have a problem that needs to be solved. What they don’t know yet is how they can do it!

In short, during this stage, potential customers are doing research — they want to figure out what alternatives are available on the market.

With that in mind, here are a few questions you should ask yourself when looking to improve your conversions at this stage:

• How do your potential customers find possible solutions? 
• How do they educate themselves?
• What types of solutions are they looking for?
• How do buyers perceive the pros and cons of each option?
• How do they decide on the one that’s right for them?

Figuring these answers out can give you a valuable, deep understanding of how your potential customers interact with content during the consideration stage. An Understanding that you can – and should – apply to the content you generate. 

Get to know your customers and how they conduct their decision-making. The more you get to understand these things, the better equipped you’ll be to produce and distribute compelling pieces that generate conversions.

Effective Types of Content to Use in the Consideration Stage

Downloadable material is a great way to give your audience the information they need during this part of their journey. 

You want your potential customers to see you as a reference in your field as an expert that they can trust, and providing useful written resources to your audience will give them just that!

Expert guides, infographics, eBooks, whitepapers… These pieces give you the perfect stage to go in-depth on topics that would be difficult to cover otherwise. More importantly, you get to do so while packaging tidbits of information that help your marketing efforts, like the reasons why your products are better than the alternatives, descriptions of how and why it works, and other, more direct marketing elements.

Moreover, things like eBooks are perfect incentives to give your potential customers a reason to provide you with their contact data!

Capturing emails can be one of the most challenging parts of lead generation, but it becomes much easier when you are giving your audience something of value in return. Asking for their contact information in exchange for an eBook, for example, is a tried and true practice at this stage.

However, as mentioned before, not all types of content work the same for all industries and niches. For some, eBooks can be way too long and cumbersome to digest. Maybe your audience would respond better to more straightforward content at this stage. In such cases, videos can be your best alternative.

Explainer Videos and Whiteboard Animations

These types of videos – perfect for the consideration stage – also allow you to provide a lot of valuable information to your audience, but in a much faster and straightforward manner. 

Explainer videos are short, informative pieces that can describe any element related to your business – products, services, inner workings, etc. – combining an engaging narrative with engaging animations. They excel at quickly conveying what your business or product does and why it’s the answer your customers are looking for.

They particularly excel at conveying complex business propositions or tech solutions that would otherwise be too complex to be explained quickly.

Explainers come in many styles – character animation, motion graphics, etc. – but one that works exceptionally well during the consideration stage are whiteboard animated videos. 

With the help of an animation maker, whiteboard animations bring together all of the best graphic qualities of educational content (hence, the whiteboard aesthetics) while also using a narrative that makes it easier to communicate any difficult or intricate topic.

Ask any skilled video company worth their salt, and they’ll be quick to sing praises about these types of explainer videos, and for good reasons!

Sweepstakes and Contests

We all like free things. Sweepstakes and contests take advantage of that fact!

The premise is simple: Create the possibility for the participants to win a prize, the winners are selected at random, so that winning is just a matter of luck – Making the whole thing fair and appealing to a wide group of your target audience. 

Much like eBooks, these contests are a great way to motivate people to provide their contact information or register for a newsletter. During the awareness stage, it’s not uncommon to ask participants to follow your social media accounts and share your content as participation conditions. However, for the consideration stage, you can get a bit more involved with your requirements for participation!

For example, you could make it so that the only way to enter is to fill a form in which they have to provide an email and, maybe, some other useful information related to lead-generation. The company they work at, their position, etc. — or some demographic information that will help you determine if they are a valuable lead.

The linchpin to these things is to offer a prize directly related to your product or service and your target audience’s relevant interests! Not only does this filter out people who wouldn’t be interested in doing business with you, but it helps differentiate your contest from more generic ones.

Optimized Landing Pages

The crux of the consideration stage is to have your potential customers find you online and interact with your content. It’s not surprising, then, that if you want to increase leads and boost your sales, you’ll want to create optimized landing pages that capture their attention!

However, capturing their attention is just the start! — You’re also going to need to retain that attention and prompt them to convert from a visitor to a lead. But how can you accomplish both of these things? 

By having an optimized landing page that provides valuable information and interesting content, and combine it with an optimized, high-performing CTA (Calls to Action).

Think of this as a canvas where you can combine two or more of the elements we’ve been discussing. Optimize your landing pages with SEO to make sure the audience you are looking for finds your content. 

Video can have them stay longer and listen to your message. Downloadable content can motivate them to provide their information. The point is to engage your visitors through value and leveraging CTAs to get the most out of that engagement.

READ ALSO: 7 Great On-page Lead Generation Tools You Should Test

Social Media Promotions and Offers

Promotions and offers on social platforms are a great way for audiences to keep your brand relevant, and consider you as an interesting and valuable alternative!

With the power of social media advertising, you can target your audience by interests and various demographic information (including age range, location, gender, etc.), helping you reach precisely the type of client you are after. Moreover, you can entice your audience with advertisement content with a seasonal twist!

Let’s Wrap It Up!

A great mid-funnel strategy – that is, set right in the consideration stage – usually delivers a boost in response rates between four and ten times more when compared to a more generic outreach approach.

Figures like that shouldn’t be taken lightly, and reveal how vital it is to nurture your prospects at this stage of the journey. Long story short, doing so can boost leads and conversions BIG TIME.

Focus on providing valuable content and delivering the information your potential customers are looking for to move on to the decision stage. Always keeping your brand and products at the forefront!

Something you’ll have a much easier time doing by crafting the appropriate kinds of content. The type they are already looking for.

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