How to identify the content gaps for buying guide?

Buying Guide Content Gap Analysis Services

Buying decisions are essential. Everyone, be it individuals or businesses alike seek some kind of assistance while buying with a retailer or e-commerce site. This is where a buying guide or a buyer’s guide helps.

A buying guide is basically a pamphlet on the web which exists to help buyers make informed decisions in regard to buying something. These guides also do provide all the key information and comparisons needed to find a solution to problems.

Essentially, a buying guide is mostly related to finding a solution in regard to buying a product or service. It has to offer a detailed account of exactly what a product or service brings to buyers or customers.

A buyer’s guide for an eCommerce site can include many things, including –

Product specifications
Product comparisons
Customer reviews
Customer testimonials
Product USPs

Can a buying guide help sway buyers’ decision?

Many marketers ask this question, and to them all, the answer is a resounding, YES! A buying guide is capable of swaying buyers’ decision to a great extent and perhaps this makes them a very valuable marketing tool.

Here is how a buying guide can influence the decisions of customers –

Your buying guide details what your product or service is all about
You give buyers a chance to compare products or services from the industry in a quick manner
Buyers get to see merits of your offers alongside getting a peek into the competitors’ offerings
You show to the buyers how the same product or service ( which others selling at high rate) is available at that lower cost at you
Thus, your buying guide gives a vantage point and sways purchasing decision

Tone and voice of a buying guide

A buying should be a trusted source of information. Clearly, you need to take a lot of care with its tone and voice, else it won’t impact the way it should.

Here is the kind of tone and voice a buying guide should have –

It should be neutral and impartial in approach
It should not resemble a selling copy and the nature of content should never be chatty
Avoid any calls to buy
The tone should be authoritative yet unbiased
Helpful, friendly and interesting
Concise yet comprehensive
Include bullet point lists, diagrams, and tables wherever needed
Convince prospects using infographics

Ingredients of a buyer’s guide

A buyer’s guide is often a cross between a category and product page existing to inform and enlighten customers a lot about buying. Clearly, it should have right ingredients else the right influence can’t be made.

Here are some key ingredients of a buyer’s guide –

Mostly in a learning format
The focus on “How to choose” or “What is the best” or “How this is better than the rest” etc.
Information should be feature/benefit driven
Never a sales-driven pitch
Focus more on the benefits and less on the product
Structured and comparison-based presentation of information
Help drive traffic by linking to related product and content
Provide customer with knowledge expertise
Help customers choose what is suited to them

What Makes a Good Buyer’s Guide?

Every retailer in the eCommerce space should try to have good buyer’s guide to let customers make informed decisions. It however involves a lot of things to do that.

Here is a list of things that helps make a good buyer’s guide –

It should give customers reasons to find value in what your e-shop is good at
Explain why your key value is worth the trust
Help prospects get through the comparison and evaluation phase easier and faster
Speed up the purchase process and help prospects make an informed decision
Showcase the competitors’ weakness along with highlighting the strength of your product
Weed out prospects not fit for the solution offered by you or your product or service
Give more focus on prospects that are more likely to purchase
Neither too long nor complicated so that users won’t feel the need to research a lot than they usually do

Buying guide and SEO

When it comes SEO, the content used in a buying guide comes very handy. The content is very helpful for effective on page SEO and thus holds value.

Here is how buying guide can help eCommerce sites get good SEO mileage –

The content used in the buyer’s guide tend to be naturally rich in keywords
The content used tends to be dense in character count
They drive better SEO results for being original
You can link them to main target category or with popular product pages using relevant anchor text
Use keywords in headings and sub-heads to gain more SEO benefits

Steps involved in creating a buyer’s guide

Since a buyer’s guide influences purchasing decision, it has to be created keeping in mind a lot of things. The way a buying guide is presented makes a lot of difference and this is why its creation holds value.

Let’s look at steps involved in creating a buyer’s guide –

Introduce your topic in a simple and clear manner
Have a clear-cut title specifying it using the phrase “Buyer’s guide” in it
Make it look obvious whether the guide will suit or help someone or not
Display chapter headings or table of contents to let buyers have ease with the content
Now, delve deeper into the product or service offered
Look to educate buyers about merits and benefits of the products
If possible, use statistics and charts to influence decisions further
Use customer testimonials in a subtle way
Offer a comparison with other products or services from the domain
Make a list of benefits / advantages the product generally offers
Give a comparison chart as well

Why to link buying guides with relevant products and categories

Buyers to your website look for information and you should make sure that they get it easily. This is where you should look to leverage links or linking.

Here is how and why you should look to link the buying guide with products and categories –

Keep your links updated
Keep the buying guide relevant for longer using linking
Get the content deep linked to the products
Take away broken links
Keep older content beneficial for readers
Create as many connections to your content and tempt users to click

In overall, the buying process has changed a lot and eCommerce sites need to keep pace with the changes. You should thus look to create a buying guide that informs users and helps influence purchasing decision easily.

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Dharam

Digital Marketing Specialist at SEM Expert India

Dharmendra Tripathi - A Digital Marketing Specialist, having over 17 years of experience working in digital marketing, specializing in SEO, SEM, SMO, Web Analytics & Brand Building, Paid Advertising and Social Media Management.