How to Create Instagram Content for Each Stage of the Buyer's Journey
Here’s the cold, hard truth: content is useless without a purpose. The key to creating content that resonates with your audience and encourages them to take action is to meet them where they are and bring them to you. And for most businesses – e-commerce and service providers alike – that means having a FIRE ‘gram game.
Understanding your buyer’s journey is essential to determining the goals behind your posts and coming up with quality Instagram content ideas. Creating posts for each stage of the journey will help your audience feel like they are meeting a good friend for coffee every time you hit Publish.
From Reels to Carousels and everything in between, Instagram has a wide range of tools that you can use on your Creator or Business account. Establishing a presence and growing your audience means diversifying your content across ALL of these features.
But here’s the catch: How do you decide when to post what? Does one feature dominate over the others? (*cough, cough* Reels). How can you make sure your audience knows, likes, and trusts you with just your Instagram content?
After you’re done here, you’ll know exactly what type of post to publish next time you open the app. We’ll break down:
What is a buyer's journey?
A buyer’s journey is the path your ideal client goes through as they go from a stranger to a paying customer. It’s made up of three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision.
In each of these stages, your ideal client will have varying questions, needs, and emotions and it is your job to address these through your content. The more deeply you understand your ideal client, the more clearly the buyer’s journey for your brand will appear and the easier it will be to create Instagram content accordingly.
Mapping out your buyer’s journey is a fundamental piece of your content strategy and helps to more purposefully create content across your existing channels.
In the Awareness Stage, your audience is struggling with a problem and looking to understand how to solve it. They want to know more about the solutions out there. For you, that means the goal is to attract these people with knowledge about who you are, what you do, and why it’s important.
Once your audience knows enough about you and the solution you can provide, they will move on to the Consideration Stage. In this stage, you want them to like your solution enough to pick it. Here, it is crucial to build a connection and emphasize your unique selling points.
Lastly, in the Decision Stage, your audience is looking to trust you before handing over their dollar. They will want to learn more about what it takes to purchase your offer and, more importantly, what transformation they can expect. Your goal in this stage is to delight them with your content.
From a content perspective, each stage aligns with a goal emotion: attract, connect, and delight.
Think of these stages like dating. As your audience continues to feel good about interacting with your content, they will continue to build a relationship with you and your brand.
That’s why regardless of what stage you are targeting, all of your content should aim to accomplish three things:
Build relationships
Humanize your brand
Lead with your core values
With the buyer’s journey stages in mind, you can craft Instagram content carefully based on the goals and emotions for each stage of the journey so you can seal the deal and take that relationship with your followers to the next level.
Breakdown of Instagram Features
In June 2021, our good friends at the ‘gram explicitly came out to say, “Instagram doesn’t have one algorithm that oversees what people do and don’t see on the app...Each part of the app – Feed, Explore, Reels – uses its own algorithm tailored to how people use it.”
Decoded for all the businesses out there using Instagram, that means you should aim to use each part of the app to maximize your account’s growth and reach. Much like a financial advisor will tell you to diversify your investments, the same goes for Instagram.
Here’s a breakdown of each Instagram feature you should consider and what it is best used for:
Feed Posts
Ah, the classic Feed post. Your Feed posts show up on, well, your Feed.
When someone first lands on your page, they are able to scroll through your content and decide whether or not it is something they want to see more of. Showcasing high-quality images, on-brand aesthetics, and easily digestible information is key to making someone hit Follow.
Feed posts, whether they are single images, video posts under 60 seconds, or Carousels, are for the most relevant content to your audience.
Guides
Instagram Guides is a newer feature, introduced in 2020. They allow users to curate a thread of posts with descriptions, making this a valuable feature for accounts to share tutorials and other resources.
Guides are best used to round up your content by topic so people interested in learning more can easily scroll through. For your business account, you can consider grouping content by FAQs in your industry or about your product and/or by the content pillars of your brand.
Reels
It’s no secret that Instagram has been massively emphasizing its Reels feature. Accounts that frequently and consistently post Reels are seeing insane account growth on all levels: follower count, engagement rate, and more.
To grow your account quickly, Reels is the best platform to channel your energy into. These short-form video posts are perfect for sharing quick tips, sharing more about your brand, and overall entertaining your audience.
Reel from @kavyacreative.co on Instagram
Stories
Born in the aftermath of the Snapchat craze back in 2016, Instagram Stories is one of the best features for businesses to use.
In fact, according to Instagram, over 500 million Instagram accounts use Stories every day and 50% of people surveyed said they have visited a website to buy a product/service as a result of seeing it in Stories.
That makes Stories the best place to humanize your business, build trust, and make sales. With interactive add-ons like polls, stickers, and even Shop tags, you can get your followers to interact with your content and build a deeper connection with your brand.
Highlights
Although Stories disappear after 24 hours, Instagram’s Highlights feature allows you to save your favorite Stories to your profile.
Highlights hang out in a strip right under your bio, making it one of the first things people see when they visit your account for the first time.
This makes it prime real estate for you to create Highlights that explain what your business does, who it helps, and how it helps them.
IGTV
Imagine if YouTube and Instagram had a child; that child would be IGTV.
This corner of Instagram is all for long-form videos (at least 60 seconds long). From reviews and tutorials to storytelling and vlogging, IGTV has it all. This is the best place to educate your followers and establish credibility by showing up and giving presentations and mini training sessions or just explaining who you are and what you do.
LIVE
Instagram Lives are exactly what they sound like: a live video stream that allows your audience to stream your content in real time. Lives are a great way to share authentic, interactive content such as unboxings, Q&A panels, interviews, and more.
This format is great to show transparency and credibility at the same time.
direct messages (DMs)
Perhaps most underestimated as part of your Instagram content strategy is your Direct Messages (DMs). Here, you have the opportunity to have private conversations with followers, create group chats, and ultimately, build meaningful relationships with your audience.
With features like automated responses to frequently asked questions, Story reactions, and more, the DMs are a valuable tool to begin having conversations with your ideal clients and even convert them into paying customers.
With each of these features in mind, you can more strategically select a content format for your next post based on what you are hoping to achieve.
Instagram Content for the Awareness Stage
In the Awareness Stage, there is no guarantee that your audience will make a purchase decision from you any time soon. So, it is important to focus on educational content that informs your followers about who you are, what you do, and why you do it.
With your content, you’ll want to address pain points, reveal new perspectives, and direct them to a solution in an easily discoverable and easy-to-consume way. Measuring your awareness will lean towards vanity metrics or more abstract key performance indicators. The goals here are to:
Grow your audience (Total Followers)
Develop brand awareness (Impressions, Accounts Reached)
Educate followers (Post Interactions: Likes, Comments, Saves, Shares)
This can be best achieved by Reels, Highlights, Feed Posts, Carousels, and Guides.
Instagram Content for the Consideration Stage
In the Consideration Stage, you’ll be communicating your value proposition to your audience. This means focusing on building relationships, providing insights within your niche, and explaining how your product or service aligns with their needs.
The objectives in this stage heavily emphasize engagement and relationship building:
Build relationships (Post Interactions: Comments, Shares, Story Interactions, Engagement Rate, DMs)
Establish credibility (Post Interactions: Likes, Saves, IGTV Video Interactions, Total Followers, Website Taps)
This can be best achieved by DMs, Stories, IGTV, Reels, and Live, as well as by commenting and sharing others’ posts.
Instagram Content for the Decision Stage
Finally, in the Decision Stage, the emphasis is completely on the transformation and process behind what you do. This will include more sales tactics combined with content, such as giveaways, promotions, testimonials, and more.
The idea here is to showcase the outstanding experience that only your brand can provide, add value, and empower people to make a decision. The objectives in this stage heavily emphasize engagement and relationship building:
Strengthen bonds and connections (Post Interactions: Comments, Shares, Story Interactions, Engagement Rate, DMs)
Add value (Post Interactions: Saves, Shares)
Nurture leads (Website Taps, Email Button Taps, Call Button Taps, Link Clicks)
This can be best achieved by DMs, Stories, and Carousels.
Takeaways
The buyer’s journey is an amazing tool to help inform your Instagram content strategy. With more intention behind your content creation, every piece of content you create will help move the needle in your business – whether that means converting leads or building a highly engaged community.
When you think about it, understanding your audience’s needs at every stage of the process and catering to them accordingly is the foundation of all marketing. Once you master this, your customers will be craving more interactions with your brand.
That’s why crafting a unique buyer’s journey for your brand and your ideal clients is essential to a powerful Instagram content strategy. To understand more about developing your custom content strategy, get in touch with me!
