Content Mapping: the core of your content strategy

How much time do you give to the monkey on a typewriter?

Jeroen Huynen

jeroen@contentmappingtool.com

+31 6 2361778

www.contentmappingtool.com

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Beyond the hype: Content Marketing

In this whitepaper I will explain content mapping, as one of the key pillars of your content

marketing strategy. The last couple of years the field of content marketing has matured, and

part of this development is the growing need for a structural, clear workflow to get the best

results out of your efforts. I firmly believe that content mapping is an important part of your

way to success.

In this whitepaper..

You will learn what content mapping is and why it is important for your content strategy.

You will learn what buyer personas are and how you use them in your content map.

You will learn what a typical buying cycle looks like.

I will show you by using examples how you can get started with content mapping.

You will find out what those monkeys have to do with it!

Are you ready?

Every week a new blog item please!

Without thinking twice, the whole online marketing world is hopping on board of the content

marketing train. Every company starts blogging and publishing whitepapers. Because, that’s

what you should be doing, right? Marketing department of companies and organizations are

starting up content teams. Their most important target? Publish a blog every week. Or

something like that.

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And there you have it. Without really creating a vision or a strategy, you start writing content.

On Monday morning, the content team has a meeting and sooner or later you are going to

hear this question: Does anyone have an idea for a new blog item yet for next week?

And this is where things can get complicated.

The problem is, there is no real strategy formulated. There is no plan. And indeed, that is a real

problem that needs solving. Because, just like with social media a couple of years back, the

ghost of ROI (return on investment) becomes more apparent each day. How much are you

spending on content marketing? And what are the actual results? The ROI of content

marketing is intrinsically hard to determine. But, I can promise you one thing. You will never

get the full potential ROI of content marketing if your content team acts like a bunch of

infinitely typing monkeys.

What’s that now? Infinitely typing monkeys?

A content team of infinitely typing monkeys

I really don’t want to insult anyone: I am definitely not claiming that your content team also

consists of infinitely typing monkeys. Or that you are one yourself. But, as an experienced

content marketer and consultant, I have seen those monkeys making their way through the

content marketing jungle more than once.

The idea is as simple as it is absurd.

If you would put a monkey in a room with a typewriter and you give the monkey an infinite

amount of time, the monkey will type the entire work of Shakespeare for you.

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Like I said, it sounds absurd. The monkey will, of course, start hitting random keys. After a

couple of hours, no doubt the monkey will accidentally have typed a proper English word. But

the entire work of Shakespeare, that’s impossible right? Well, no, it’s not. Of course, the

chances of it happening are incredibly small, but they are definitely not zero. This is the

Infinite Monkey Theorem.

Unfortunately, lots of content team are working as if they were monkeys on typewriters.

Typing, typing, typing, and hoping for a result.

Stop working with targets based on time and numbers…

Don’t define your content marketing targets by the number of content items you want to

create in a given amount of time. By doing so, you would use ‘time’ and ‘numbers’ as your

defining components of the content planning. Sure, you could do it this way. And yes, sooner

or later you will get results. And although this probably would be sooner than our friend the

monkey finished his copy of Hamlet, you are definitely not using your resources in the most

optimal way.

That’s why I urge you: stop using targets based on time and numbers in your content strategy.

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.. and aim for quality and relevance!

Throw away you content calendar for a moment or two. Send the monkeys back to the zoo. It

is time to start working on a content strategy that is actually aimed at quality and relevance.

The first step? Well, maybe it is time to put on some new shoes. The shoes of your customer,

that is.

How well do you know your customers?

How well do you know your customers? Sure, you can see exactly how many products you sold

last year. How many visitors you had on your website. And how many emails you received and

answered. But do you really know these people, that are your customers? Do you know what

their questions and needs are? Their pains and gains? Do you know how they make their

purchase decision exactly?

No? Then it is time for a change.

Great content is content that answers to the

informational needs of your audience

Content marketing is all about creating valuable content, to get your potential customer to

come to you, instead of you having to blast commercial messages to him. This is the reason

that content marketing works. You see, people have become immune for commercial

messages and advertising. We all have adblocker-software on our computers and we watch

television on demand so we don’t have to look at commercials.

And do you know what people do when they are actually interested in buying something?

They will go search for the right party themselves. People have become more critical. And

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smarter. And, very important, they have increasing access to ways to find the right supplier as

they see fit. They don’t trust advertising anymore and they can do their research themselves.

Often online, but also offline. They talk to influencers. And, they will only listen to you if they

choose to do so themselves. This is where your challenge really is: making sure you will be

found when your potential customer is looking for a solution to his problem.

But how do you go about this? Ideally, you would know the exact informational needs of each

of your customers. But, of course, that is impossible. That is why you should group your

customers, so you can pinpoint your messages on the segments of customers with similar

needs.

Thinking beyond demographics

It would be to easy to just think of demographic and geographic criteria when you are defining

your segments. Sure, it is interesting to find that a certain group of your clients is between 20

en 39 years old and lives in the big cities. But still, what does this information really tell you

about who you reach these people with meaningful content? Virtually nothing. You need to go

further.

Your customers are not just numbers, part of a segment. No they are people. They have

feelings, they worry about stuff and can get excited about stuff. And, they will come to their

purchase decision all in a different way and a different tempo.

The more you know about your customer, the easier it gets to give meaning to your content

strategy by creating actual valuable content. That is why it is so important to start working

with buyer personas.

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About buyer personas

A buyer persona is an archetype customer with certain qualities, who represents a bigger

group of customers.

Some of these qualities are of a demographic nature (like age, income and family situation),

but the most important qualities go quite a bit deeper. For example, you should think about

what values are the most important for you persona (like freedom, spending time with family)

and what are their real pains and gains. Also it is important to think about what drives their

(purchase) decisions and who are the most important influencers for your personas. Finally,

since your goal is to create valuable, meaningful content, you should also consider the way

your persona uses media and devices.

The 7C-model for personas

A useful starting point for developing personas is the 7C-Model, created by Persona Company

(www.personacompany.com).

Core Values: which values and believes are influencing the behavior?

Category Needs: what are the specific needs? How would you define the pains and

gains?

Category Behavior: what kind of solution does your persona purchase? Which brands?

How much is your persona spending?

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Company Value: what is the current and potential value of this persona for your

company?

Channel Usage: what channels does your persona use for orientation, purchase and

service? In which way? What is the best way to approach your persona?

Communication: what tv-channels, websites, magazines? Online of offline? What tone-

of-voice?

Character: what is the gender, age, income etc? What are the hobbys?

The 7C-model is just one of the many ways you can use to define your personas. In upcoming

whitepapers and articles I will explore other ways, so you can find the model that works best

for you.

The most important thing you should remember for now is that you have different kinds of

customers. Each of them have their own contexts and have different ways of getting to the

actual point of purchasing something. Some of them are very online minded and do very

thorough research before purchasing your solution. Others really just would like to talk to a

sales person and be informed in a more classical way. In your content strategy it is very

important that you should consider all of these different kinds of customers!

How many buyer personas do you need?

As a rule of thumb, three to five personas should be plenty. But beware, ideally you would

create personas for one specific product (range). Let’s say you run a webshop in which you sell

both smartphones and tablets. Many marketers would be inclined to create a persona

‘Smartphone buyer John’ and another persona ‘Tablet buyer Peter’. This distinction seems to

make sense, but you should really try to distinguish your personas on a personal level instead

of product level. I will explain.

In the example of the webshop with mobile devices it is important to note that the product are

actually quite similar and potentially would appeal to the same audience. This means that your

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product is not either ‘smartphones’ or ‘tablets’. No, your product is ‘mobile devices’, and you

could distinguish personas like this:

David, student and in his early twenties. Loves gadgets and is real early adaptor. He

doesn’t care much about brands and he uses the internet to do extensive research

before making a purchase. Avid user of social media and is online virtually 24/7

Mary, forty years old and stay at home mom of three kids. Uses smartphones and

tablets only when she really needs them, for example to stay in touch with her

children. Mary values economic solutions and really depends on the opinion of others

when it comes to making a purchase decision about products she doesn’t know much

about.

James, early thirties and entrepreneur. Reliability and security are the most important

values for him when it comes to mobile devices. Doesn’t have the time to do extensive

research and therefore usually goes for brands and products with a proven track

record.

Amy, almost seventy years old and retired. Amy needs easy to use technology so she

can communicate with her children and grandchildren. She likes to be a ‘cool’

grandmother, who keeps up with her time. The price of the product does not matter

that much, but she really cares about being helped personally. Is not afraid of online

shopping, but would really prefer to be helped in a brick and mortars store in the city

she lives in.

Notice the difference? With these buyer personas you could create content about both

smartphones and tablets, while all of your content can answer to the needs of your personas.

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The buying cycle

Whether you like it or not, your customer will very rarely be ready to instantly get his credit

card and buy your product. Usually, there is period of time in which the customer does his

research, evaluate his options, and then finally makes a decision. This is what we call the buyer

cycle.

The buying cycle looks like this and has four stages:

1. Problem Awareness. People rarely buy something just because they like it or want to

spend money. Instead, they buy something because they have problem which needs a

solution. Depending on the size of the problem, people usually start their search for a

solution by doing research on the problem itself.

2. Researching Solutions. So, the problem needs to be solved. What kind of solutions are

available? This is the second step towards the purchase: determining what solutions

there are and comparing them.

3. Purchase Decision. When the time comes for the actual purchase decision, your

customers needs just that last little bit of convincing. People now are looking for more

information about pricing, availability, terms and conditions, and implementation.

4. Happy Customers. This may not seem like a real part of the buyer cycle and if is often

forgotten, but it actually is. And it is an important one too. Your current customers, if

they are happy with your products and services, are the ideal target audience for

cross- & upselling. Also you should actively motivate your customers to become brand

ambassadors and try to get them to share your messages with their network.

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Probably, if you are not a monkey on a typewriter, the message has become quite clear by

now:

In each stage of the buying cycle you should consider the specific informational needs of

each of your potential customers.

Now we have covered the topics of personas and buying stages, the most important parts of

your content strategy and your content map have become visible. The next step is creating

your content grid.

The beating heart of your content strategy: the content grid

Creating the content grid is a very important step in further developing your content strategy.

The content grid has two main axes:

1. Personas - on the horizontal axis

2. Buying stages - on the vertical axis.

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The premise is quite simple. In each of the tiles of the content grid, action is needed. Each tile

represents informational needs of that persona in that buying stage. For you this means you

need to start plotting content items to each tile of the content grid as well.

This way, you are essentially always creating content that actually responds to the

informational need of your audience. If your content program were to actually fulfill the entire

informational need of your entire audience, you would see content items mapped to every

single tile of the content map.

Questions & Answers

In order to start coming up with the right content items, it is critical that you determine the

informational needs of each of your personas in each of the buying stages they go through. I

like to formulate questions & answers to make the informational needs more clear. As your

persona is going through the buying stages, I am sure you are able to come up with the

questions they are having in each buying stage. It’s up to you to determine the right (relevant)

answers to these questions and to publish them as content items.

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There are several ways to determine the questions & answers:

Use your own F.A.Q. (but be very cautious and make sure the questions are actually

relevant)

Check the incoming emails and phone calls to your customer service over the last

couple of months, or longer if needed.

Perform a (market) research among your existing clients.

If you are working in a B2B environment, then don’t forget to involve your sales

department in the process. Your sales people are talking to your clients daily and

should be very aware of the problems and questions your clients are having regarding

the problems you are here to solve.

For answering the questions you will have use the knowledge available in your organization.

No doubt you have people working for you (or maybe it’s just yourself, that’s fine as well) that

know everything about the subject. Use these subject experts to come up with great answers

to the questions of your audience and don’t be afraid to share your knowledge!

A huge advantage of this approach is that it will also help you come up with new ideas for

content items. Let’s say you have determined 5 personas, each of which will go through the 4

buying stages. In each tile of the content grid you can come up with 3 questions & answers on

average. This will give you 60 new ideas for content items! And, don’t forget, one question &

answer could be used to create not just one, but several new content items.

Content is not just about blogs and whitepapers

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Oftentimes the first thing people think about when we’re talking about content marketing is:

blogging. And the second thing is: whitepapers. Although these are probably two of the most

common (and most effective) content types, there are lots of other types of content that you

should consider in your content strategy.

Just like the topics and subjects of your content, the type of content should also be tuned to

your target audience. It would not make any sense to only publish blogs and whitepapers if a

significant part of your audience doesn’t do their research online, right? I does make sense

though, to host workshops and events for the part of your audience that likes to test your

product in a live environment and wants to talk to the people involved.

So, you should tune the content types to the target audience. When you define your personas,

try to determine their media preferences as well. Are they very online minded? Do they use

social media? Do they like visual content?

Another thing to keep in mind is that certain content types make more sense in certain buying

stages. Let me explain. In the first buying stages, when your customer is just exploring the

nature of his problem and possible solutions, you should not assume that he will already be on

your website. So, your great webcontent about the subject, is not yet visible to him. This

means you should try to get your content in the places where you know your customer is

starting his search. You could for example consider writing guest blogs or articles. Make sure

your content is attractive to share on social media, to increase your reach. While in the later

stages of the buying cycle, when your customer is ready for more in-depth information, you

should consider content types like whitepapers, e-books, workshops and eventually you can

persuade your customer to take the final steps using client testimonials and pricing details.

In the previous chapter I suggested that one question & answer combination can be used to

create more than one content item. You can write several blogs about complicated subjects,

for instance. This kind of repetition could work great, as long as you highlight new aspects

every time. Besides that, it is also important to note that you can create several pieces of

content of different content types about a certain subject. If you have published a whitepaper,

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for instance, often you can also publish several blogs blogs about the subject. Or do a webinar

about it. Or both.

An example: robovacs for sale

Let’s suppose you have a webshop specialized in robotic vacuum cleaners (robovacs). You

offer several brands in different price ranges. Your main target group has always been

private/domestic users, but lately you have noticed that small offices also are increasingly

interested in your products.

How would you start filing in you content map?

Step 1: Define your personas

Let’s start with defining a couple of personas. This is a difficult step, but it’s also an important

one. The challenge is to define personas that are not only representatives of your target

audience, but that they also differ from each other to a certain degree so you can make

meaningful decisions in your content subjects and content types. Please also note that

defining your personas can be a project on its own, one that you may or may not need external

consultants for. For the sake of brevity though, here we are going to assume that we did all of

our persona research and came up with the following three personas.

1. Jake, 26 years old and living in his own place for the first time of his life. Quite recently

graduated from college and already landed a job as investment banker. He always loved

gadgets and now he has his own place he has become increasingly interested in gadgets

that can make his life easier. Although he now has an above average income, he still is

always looking for the best deal available. On the other hand, he wants to make sure he

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buys the right products that perfectly suit his needs and he can expect to last for a long

time. Jake does his research online and loves visual content.

2. Susan, 45 years old and mother of three children. Since the two oldest kids have left for

college, and the third will follow soon, Susan decided to start working parttime again. Her

main concern is keeping the house nice and tidy, especially now she has less time to spend

on it. Susan is not too internet savvy and also tends to get lost in too much technical

specifications. She just wants a product that works and in her research she relies for a great

deal on the opinion of other people, both in her own environment as on online reviews.

Susan would like to see and try a product in real life, before purchasing it.

3. Henry, 37 years old, owns a small business. He rented some office space recently for his

staff of 3 and really doesn’t want to spend too much time on household activities. Henry is

always looking for the easiest, most efficient solutions and doesn’t mind spending money

on quality. He doesn’t have time to do thorough research, but likes to rely on proven

brands and technology. He already owned a robovac in the past, so he know what to look

for.

As you will have noticed, we are dealing here with three quite different potential buyers. The

main differences are the knowledge level of the customers, and the degree and way of

research they to before they purchase .

Please note: if you were to do in-depth persona research for this specific case, you might come

up with more/other personas. The personas described above are just examples we can use for

explaining the content mapping methodology.

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Step 2: the buying stages

Good news, everyone! The buying cycle typically is the same for every product or service. Like

pointed out before, we usually distinguish four stages:

1. Problem Awareness

2. Researching Solutions

3. Purchase Decision

4. Happy Customers

Each of the defined personas will to a certain degree go through each of the buying stages.

However, there are some things to consider. We can assume that Henry, who already owned a

robovac before, will go through the first buying stages fairly quickly. He already knows that he

wants one for his small business, but is just to figure out which one exactly. Jake on the other

hand, is fairly new to household equipment in general, let alone robotic vacuum cleaners. Jake

will probably spend more time on deciding if even should be interested in a robovac, or that a

conventional vacuum cleaner will do just fine. So Jake will probably spend more time in

evaluating his problem (dirty floors in his new apartment) and the possible solutions.

Most important takeaway: the informational needs (both in regard to depth as quantity) will

vary for each persona since they have a different pace as they go through the buying stages.

Step 3: map Questions & Answers to the Content Grid

To really get a feeling for the informational needs of your personas as they go through the

buying stages, we use Questions & Answers (Q&A’s). These Q&A’s will be the main source of

inspiration for new content items. A content item, after all, should always in a way be an

answer to a question of your target audience. If it is not, then why should you even bother to

write and publish it?

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Takeaway: if you have an idea for a new content item, but you can’t seem to map it on the

content grid, then you should seriously ask yourself if the content is going to be relevant and

therefore worth publishing.

In this example I will show you some ideas for Q&A’s for one of the personas (Jake), for each of

the buying stages. For the other personas, you would use the same technique.

Stage 1 - Problem Awareness:

o How often should I vacuum?

o How can I prevent dust from settling on my floors?

o Is there a way to easily clean my floors without too much effort?

Stage 2 - Researching Solutions:

o What different kinds of vacuum cleaners are available?

o How does a robotic vacuum cleaner work exactly?

o How long will a robotic vacuum cleaner last?

Stage 3 - Purchase Decision:

o What is the warranty on a new robotic vacuum cleaner?

o What are the most popular brands and types of robotic vacuum cleaners?

o Is there a money-back guarantee on the product?

Stage 4 - Happy Customers

o What kind on maintenance do I have to do on my robovac?

o How can I change the battery of my new robovac?

o I love this product, can I write a review somewhere?

As you can see, it’s not that hard to come up with the initial questions of your personas as they

go through the buying stages. If you now look back and think about the other personas, you

will no doubt understand that you could create quite different questions for the personas

Susan and Henry. This will show you that you indeed could (and probably, should) create lots

of different content items, to fulfill the informational needs of all of your personas.

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Step 4: Creating Content Items

All right, this is where the fun part really starts: creating actual content items. Every Q&A can

now be used to come up with new ideas for content items. Just like the Q&A’s, the content

items can be mapped to a tile in the content grid. An example of a new content item could be:

Persona: Jake

Stage: 2 - Researching Solutions

Questions: What different kinds of vacuum cleaners are available?

Content Type: Infographic

Title: Vacuum Cleaners 101: Every type with pro’s and cons!

This content item would be perfect for customers like Jake who are researching the best

solution to their problem and want this information to be visually presented. Please note that

other personas, like Susan, will probably have little to no interest in an infographic like this.

And that’s fine. Your goal here is to create content specifically aimed at a certain part of your

audience. It’s better to create 3 small content items that perfectly fit 3 of your personas, than

1 big content item that no one really can relate to.

You will also find from time to time that there are content items that really belong to more

than one - or even all - of your personas. Or content items that span multiple buying stages.

That’s also fine. The content mapping methodology is a way of thinking, a philosophy how to

deal with content. The most important part is that on this point, you have put the necessary

thought into the process. If you are dedicated to map each content item into the grid (which I

do recommend), in case of doubt you can just map it to the tile it fits best.

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So, what’s next?

I truly hope that after reading this whitepaper you have become excited about the content

mapping methodology. By using this methodology, you are no longer using time and numbers

as your prime content targets, but instead you are focused on quality and relevance. More

importantly: no more monkeys and typewriters.

The challenge now is to keep working in this structured way. How you do this, is up to you. The

content grid is a very important tool in this method. I know companies how use Post-its on a

white wall, or use a whiteboard to draw the content grid on. If it works, it works. If you are

looking for a digital environment, you could try using spreadsheets. You will probably find

quite soon that you are missing the real overview you need, as the number of content items

grow. Well, that’s what I found anyway. That’s why we developed this handy online tool, to

help you with your content mapping:

http://www.contentmappingtool.com/

The tool offers a free trial for 30 days.

Please feel free to send me a message if you are having any questions about the content

mapping methodology, or the content mapping tool. I’d be glad to help you get started!

For now: happy content mapping!