I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from you on last week’s blog and podcast about The Buyer Journey Pyramid and what content you must create for each stage of the buyer journey. If you missed it, you can re-read last week’s blog here and listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
I received a request from Lucy at Forth: “I would love to hear your thoughts on how to plan the promotion of this content and segment your audience into each bucket?”.
I love receiving requests from my followers, so let’s stuck in…
As a reminder, below is the Buyer Journey Pyramid:
Now let me outline how to segment your audience into each of the above 4 sections and how to promote your content to them.
🔝 Top of the Pyramid (3%) – Ready to Buy Now
Audience Segmentation:
These are your high-intent prospects who are ready to make a purchase. These people are easy to identify, as they would have previously booked a demo or started a free trial.
Therefore, it is mainly the sales team’s job to convert these people into customers; however, marketing still plays a crucial role.
Promotion Strategies:
Your focus here is to make the final push and close the sale:
- Retargeting Ads: Use retargeting ads that focus on conversion-driven content like case studies, testimonials, or limited-time offers. Set up retargeting ads on LinkedIn and Meta, targeting users who have visited high-intent pages such as the pricing, free trial or book a demo.
- Email Nurture Campaigns: If people have signed up for demos, trials or high-intent webinars, you can send highly personalised emails with subject lines like “[first name], here’s your limited-time offer for [product]” or “Here’s how [Product Name] can solve [problem] today.” Include CTAs for scheduling a call or signing up.
- Google Ads: Target keywords specific to high-intent buyers, such as “[Product Name] pricing” or “best [solution category] for [problem].” This will capture users actively searching to make a purchase.
- Landing pages: Make sure your landing pages are optimised for conversions. Create different landing pages for each of your target industries and job titles so that you are sending your audience highly targeted content.
📊 Second Row (17%) – Information Gathering
Audience Segmentation:
These prospects are researching their options, gathering information, and comparing solutions. You can identify them by:
- Engagement with Product-Focused Content: Consider anyone who has signed up for a group product webinar or downloaded a product guide. These people can be nurtured via emails. Also, users who have visited your competitor comparison pages should go in their own retargeting campaign.
- Lead Scoring: Assign points to leads based on behaviours like downloading resources, attending webinars, or viewing your solution pages, and segment them as “information gatherers” once they reach a certain score.
Promotion Strategies:
To win over this group, you need to provide the right information at the right time:
- Competitor-Focused Ads: Run Google and social media ads that target competitor keywords like “alternative to [competitor]” or simply the competitor name. Your ad should lead to a comparison page, where you outline the benefits of your product over the competition.
- Email Campaigns From a Group Demo Webinar: Create a group demo webinar where you outline the latest features and benefits of your product. Then, for everyone who signs up, put them through an email drip campaign that walks them through your product’s value proposition over several emails. For example, the first email could cover a detailed competitor comparison, the second could showcase a customer success story, and the third might offer a time-sensitive trial.
- Webinar Retargeting: If someone has attended one of your webinars or watched product demos, follow up with retargeting ads that highlight further educational resources, competitor comparisons, case studies or a special trial offer. These ads can appear on LinkedIn, Meta or Google retargeting display ads.
🤔 Third Row (20%) – Problem Aware
Audience Segmentation:
These leads know they have a problem but haven’t started searching for a solution. Here’s how to identify them:
- Content Consumption: Track visits to problem-focused blog posts, videos, webinars or guides, like “5 Signs Your [industry] Process Is Inefficient.” They are engaging with content that speaks to their challenges but haven’t moved to solution-based pages yet.
- LinkedIn Polls: Engage users with LinkedIn polls from personal LinkedIn accounts, asking questions about their pain points. Responses indicating they recognise an issue (but haven’t searched for a solution). Add all the voters to your “Problem aware” list.
Promotion Strategies:
This group needs to be nudged towards urgency, so your promotion should focus on educating them about the consequences of not addressing their problem:
- Problem-Oriented Blog, Videos, Webinars and Guides: Promote content like “How Inefficient Processes in [industry] Are Costing You Time and Money” through paid ads on Google or LinkedIn. Focus on problem keywords (e.g., “how to fix [problem]”) and industry-specific pain points to attract clicks.
- Retargeting Ads Based on Engagement: After they’ve visited your blog, watched a video, registered for a webinar or downloaded a guide, retarget them with ads featuring related content that subtly introduces your solution, like a guide titled “5 Ways to Improve [problem] without [objection]”. Your solution will be one of the 5 recommendations.
- Webinar Series: Host a series of webinars around the topic of their pain points (e.g., “Common [industry] Pitfalls and how to avoid them”). The first 80% of the webinar will be educational. Then final 20% will be focused on how your solution will help them overcome the problem. Promote these via social ads and email invitations. Webinars offer an excellent opportunity to move this group from problem awareness to exploring your solution.
🔍 Bottom of the Pyramid (60%) – Problem Unaware
Audience Segmentation:
This group doesn’t even know they have a problem. To identify them, focus on broad, top-of-funnel activities:
- Website Engagement with General Content: Track visitors engaging with broad industry-related content, such as blog posts or guides that don’t specifically address a problem but focus on industry trends or challenges. Here, you are simply trying to identify people in your target audience, which will be somewhat broad.
Promotion Strategies:
Your goal here is to raise awareness and educate them on their hidden problems. Focus on creating curiosity and gently introducing the idea that they could benefit from your solution:
- Broad Awareness Campaigns: Use display ads, YouTube ads, and LinkedIn Ads to reach a large audience with high-level, awareness-building content. Examples include videos titled “The Hidden Costs of Manual Processes in [industry]” or “Why Excel Is Failing Your Business.”
- Partner with Industry Influencers: Collaborate with influencers or industry publications to promote educational content. This will extend your reach to a broad, relevant audience who may not be directly searching for your solution yet. By piggybacking off their audience, this is a fantastic way to generate more followers and brand awareness.
- Content Distribution via Syndication: Promote top-of-funnel content on platforms like Medium or industry-specific sites. Write articles that raise general awareness about inefficiencies or problems that most companies in their industry face, leading back to your product as the solution.
By segmenting your audience and aligning your content promotion strategies with their stage in the Buyer Journey Pyramid, you’ll engage each group effectively—ultimately driving more leads and unlocking the full potential of your target market.
