The first stage of the buying cycle is where your content will most likely be doing a lot of heavy lifting to quickly give prospective customers an idea of whether or not they might want to do business with you. While it is still very important, this early content will probably provide more extrinsic than intrinsic value, pointing to value that can be found in the offering or content to be discovered later.

At this point you want to convey the basic sense of who you are and what you do (a.k.a. your positioning).

While those things may be easily stated in various ways, also consider what it is that your current customers value about working with or buying from you that goes beyond the actual offering itself. (Hopefully this is something more than just price…)

Is it how skilled and effective you are at what you do, or some other technical detail of your craft? Or maybe it’s a feeling of a friendly working relationship or a cozy retail environment.

Now consider how you can match the form of the content you present at this stage to match the desired effect of this first impression?

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P.S. Depending on what content you are providing for customers in the later stages of buying, it is entirely possible that some customers will completely skip this stage and jump in at a later stage. However it is still useful to have some content that addresses this stage for those who do come in cold, or for those who jump in later and need to back up and reinforce an incomplete first impression.