The second stage of the buying cycle, which comes between the first impression and commitment, is the longest stage. This is where the customer is learning more about what it is that you have to offer which might address a specific need they have.
While your first impression content should be easy to stumble upon and generally applicable, this second-stage learning content should be something of a guided discovery process into areas of particular interest for the customer. This can look a lot of different ways, but most likely this will involve some kind of repository of content to be explored by the customer.
If we return to our idea of ambience, i.e. controlling the amount of repetitive information desired for either clarity or resonance respectively, we can start to decide what shape that repository might take. It could be a gallery of photos of an event space being used in different ways (repetition to create an experiential desire), or a static list of specs about a specialized tool that is unique to your process (low repetition but high clarity of information).
Whatever it looks like, keep in mind that there are two goals of this phase that your content ought to help achieve:
- build confidence to advance to the buying stage
- turn away those who will never advance to the buying stage, which avoids wasting either their time or yours with an unnecessary introduction
The content which details your offering should make it clear who it is for, and just as importantly, who it is not for. If this is done well, it makes the critical commitment decision in the next stage that much easier.
