How to Build a Content Strategy That's Actually Aligned to the Buyer Journey
Most content strategies are built around what's easy to publish, not how buyers actually think. Here's the framework I use — and how to build yours.
Someone asks you to build a content strategy. You open a doc, map out awareness → consideration → decision, assign some formats to each bucket, attach a publishing calendar, and call it done.
That's not a content strategy. That's a content schedule with extra steps.
The problem isn't TOFU/MOFU/BOFU; that model isn't wrong; it's just too shallow to be useful. Three buckets look the same whether you're selling project management software or a solution for a risk category most buyers have never heard of. Same framework. Completely different buyer journey. That mismatch is why most content strategies produce traffic without pipeline.
The number of stages your content strategy needs depends entirely on where your buyer's awareness actually starts.
That one question, “what does your buyer already know?”, determines the shape of your entire strategy before you write a single brief.
The three things to diagnose first
Before you touch keywords or content formats, answer these three questions about your buyer.
1. Do they know the problem exists?
Some buyers feel the pain but can't name it. Some don't know there's a problem at all. Some know exactly what's wrong and are actively comparing solutions. Where they start determines whether you even need problem-awareness content, or whether you can skip straight to evaluation.
2. Do they know your solution category exists?
If you're selling a CRM, your buyer knows what a CRM is. You're not explaining the category; you're competing in it. But if you're selling something that fills a gap nobody has named yet, you have to build that understanding before you can sell anything. That's an entire content stage most strategies skip.
3. How complex is the buying decision?
For a low-cost self-serve tool, one person decides fast. But an enterprise purchase has five stakeholders across multiple teams, and each role has different questions at different stages. Complexity of the decision changes how many stages you need, and how much content lives at each one.
These three answers give you the skeleton of your strategy before you've written a word.
What stages actually are, and what they're not
Stages aren't funnel positions. They're buyer mindsets.
Funnel position tells you where someone is in a linear process. Mindset tells you what they're trying to figure out right now, and that's what determines what content will actually be useful to them.
Two examples.
A well-understood product in a competitive market
Think email marketing software, payroll tools, project management apps. Your buyer already knows they need this category. They're not looking for education on why email marketing matters; they're comparing options. Your content strategy can start at stage 3 or 4. You might only need four stages total: problem articulation, solution comparison, vendor evaluation, and conversion.
A product solving a problem buyers haven't recognised yet
Here the buyer starts at zero. They're unaware the risk exists. They've never heard of the solution category. They haven't searched for a vendor because they don't know one is needed. Walking them from "I didn't know this was a problem" to "I want to see a demo" could genuinely be six or seven stages, each one unlocking the next.
The framework isn't three stages or seven stages. It's however many mindshifts your buyer needs to make before they're ready to buy.
How to map your stages
Step 1: Write your buyer's journey in plain sentences.
Not marketing language. Not funnel language. Write out what your buyer is thinking at the very start and what needs to be true in their head before they take the next step.
For each stage, one sentence:
Each of those is a different stage. Each needs different content.
Step 2: Identify where your buyer actually starts.
Look at your first sentence. Does your buyer already know this, or do you need to create that understanding? Cross out every stage that doesn't apply. What's left is your funnel.
If you're selling a watch, you're probably starting at stage 3 or 4. Nobody needs you to explain what a watch is or why people need one. But if you're introducing a genuinely new category, you might need all six.
Step 3: One objective per stage.
Not a keyword. Not a format. An objective: what does the reader need to think, feel, or understand by the end of this piece?
The content brief flows from the objective. Not the other way around.
Step 4: Match keywords to mindset, not just topic.
This is where most keyword strategies break down. Keywords are assigned by topic without considering what the buyer is actually searching for at that specific stage.
A buyer at stage 1 Googles (naming a problem): "why is my email open rate dropping”
A buyer at stage 3 Googles (comparing approaches): "content marketing vs paid ads”
A buyer at stage 5 Googles (down to a shortlist): "Mailchimp vs Klaviyo”
Same broad topic. Completely different intent. If you write one blog post trying to serve all three, you serve none of them.
For each stage: one primary keyword, secondary keywords, and long-tail variations. Keep all of this in the same document as your content plan, not a separate SEO sheet nobody reads alongside the strategy.
Step 5: Match page type and CTA to buyer readiness.
The format and the ask need to match where the buyer is.
Putting a "book a demo" CTA on a stage 1 blog isn't aggressive. It's just misaligned. The buyer isn't there yet.
Paid media follows the same logic
Where you put ad spend should follow the same stage map.
Early stages → organic does the heavy lifting. The audience is cold, and conversion is far away.
Middle stages → this is where paid earns its keep. Buyers are actively researching. Getting in front of them here with the right content is high value.
Retargeting → only makes sense from the middle stages onward. Retargeting someone who read one awareness blog is too early. Retargeting someone who downloaded your comparison guide is exactly the right approach.
Most teams run paid and content as separate workstreams. Budget decisions happen in a different room from content decisions. So you end up spending money amplifying content to audiences who aren't ready for it yet.
Build them from the same document.
To end with
The framework is simple once you stop treating the buyer journey as three generic buckets and start treating it as a real map of how a specific buyer thinks their way to a decision.
Ask what your buyer already knows. Draw a line from there to "ready to buy." Count the mindshifts in between. That's your content strategy.
Not sure where to start?
→ Steal the template. Map your stages, assign your keywords, align your CTAs. Use it Monday.