Most firms nowadays recognize the need of creating content for the marketing funnel. One of the most successful methods to grow your brand, interact with prospects, and improve your reputation is through content marketing. However, 63% of businesses lack a written plan for their content marketing activities.
So, what exactly is a good content strategy?
Well, it all begins with matching your content to your marketing funnel. Otherwise, you risk spending your time and effort, marketing budget, as well as other resources on content that does not fit the demands of your target market. Most marketers create content for various stages of the buyer’s journey. Understanding which particular format works best for each stage is a valuable asset for providing value to your end-users and developing a robust content marketing strategy for your brand.
In this informative blog post, we will discuss what a content marketing funnel is, why it’s so important, and how to create content for each stage of the marketing funnel to eventually increase your bottom line. Let us get this started!
Content Marketing Funnel: What Is It?
Whether you operate a well-established business or a startup, you have definitely invested quite a lot of time and effort in how to sell your product or attract consumers to purchase from you.
Well, you are not alone. Every business faces this quandary.
Here is what you need to know. Before purchasing from a brand, consumers go through a series or a journey of steps. Visualizing the stages of the purchasing process might assist you in matching your product or service with the appropriate consumers.
However, how can you acquire leads and nurture them into paying consumers? It all begins with developing an efficient marketing funnel with the right content at each stage of it.
A content marketing funnel is basically a system that allows you to develop content that corresponds to the demand of your prospects as they progress through the buyer’s journey.
This particular system permits you to produce content that meets the unique demands of your potential consumers, distribute it more strategically, and follow the progression of your target audience and leads towards purchase.
Content Marketing Funnel: Stages
The content marketing funnel includes three unique stages, and each stage necessitates the development of content to meet the demands of consumers at that stage of your marketing funnel.
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TOFU (Top of the Funnel): Steer Traffic and Awareness
You want to bring visitors to your official website, storefront, or social media at the top of your content marketing funnel. Furthermore, you should inform your potential clients about an issue that your solution addresses and what your product accomplishes to remedy that issue.
This particular stage of operations frequently comes to people’s minds when they think of traditional marketing tactics. This category includes direct email marketing, online advertising, SEO, and helpful videos.
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MOFU (Middle of the Funnel): Generate Leads
Well, the middle of the content marketing funnel is where you convert the engagement and awareness you gained at the top into quality leads for your sales unit. The most common method to do so is using gated content.
Yes, gated content is important to your audience, but it needs them to make an action (usually email signup) in order to access it. Unlike TOFU activities, this content stage transforms existing traffic into leads that your sales unit may follow up on.
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BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel): Converts Leads into Sales
You have successfully engaged your audience, delivered good content, gathered emails, and provided qualified leads for your sales staff to follow up on, but they cannot do it alone. For this very stage of the funnel, you must develop content that supports your sales staff and helps potential consumers to conduct a confident purchase.
This content might contain case studies, particular product use cases, free trials, or statistics demonstrating the benefits of utilizing your product. At this particular stage of the content marketing funnel, your content must assist your leads in feeling confident in buying from you.
The Elements of a Successful Content Marketing Funnel
So now that you’ve identified the stages of your content marketing funnel, it is important to know why these stages align with the buyer’s journey. The stages of your buyer’s journey – Awareness, Consideration, and Decision – are critical to remember when you create content for each marketing funnel cycle:
- Awareness
- Track down issues
- Conduct online research
- Consideration
- Research vendors
- Explore solutions
- Determine pertinent strategies
- Decision
- Chalk out a shortlist of solutions
- Gauge the ROI of each
- Make a purchase decision
Well, if you understand what requirements you are addressing for potential consumers via your content at each marketing funnel stage, you may be certain that you are making the right decisions to make them feel supported and get them closer to buying your service or product.
For instance, TOFU content boosts traffic to your website and raises customer awareness of the issue you solve and prospective solutions (particularly yours!). Your content must be aimed at assisting your audience in identifying problems or opportunities for growth by providing actual value without expecting a payback.
Customize Your Marketing Funnel Based on the Buyer’s Journey
Bear into account the stage of the buyer’s journey that your content is supposed to serve as you create content for each stage of the marketing funnel.
Leverage this approach to develop the proper content for each stage of the marketing funnel, and then ensure to keep your target audience’s problems and thought process in mind at each stage to generate the best possible content to bring you more paying consumers.
Creating Content for Each Stage of a Marketing Funnel
Now that you are aware of the stages of the content marketing funnel as well as the phases of the buyer’s journey that you are required to cover in each stage, you may proceed by creating your content:
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Sparking Interest (TOFU Stage)
Consideration is the term used to describe the first stage of the marketing funnel. In this stage, users have a look at your brand and content for the very first time at the time of their research.
You must deliver content that addresses consumer queries and provide unique solutions during this stage.
All TOFU content must be authoritative and informative.
When it comes to promoting and reaching consumers mid-funnel, it’s where offsite content creation and sharing come in handy. You may reach consumers mid-funnel on:
- Organic search results
- Social media (organic and paid promotions)
- Influencers
- External publications (press releases, guest posting, link building)
When it comes to keyword queries, optimize meta descriptions and titles for phrases like:
- What
- How
- When
- Why
- Where
- Tutorial
- Guide
- Tips
- Hacks
- Tricks
You may use online tools such as UnscrambleX since it will assist you in finding the right set of words when you are required to find a catchy and creative set of words for your content marketing endeavours. You will be able to create anything from 2-letter words to even 15-letter words.
The finest content type to address this particular research would be:
- Blog posts
- eBooks
- Webinars
- White papers
- Evergreen guides
- Guest posts
Incorporating other types of media (for example, interactive quizzes, infographics, and videos) is another approach to make your brand look more authoritative and professional.
You may lead consumers to the next stage of your marketing funnel by differentiating your brand from the competitors.
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Nurturing Leads (MOFU Stage)
When a consumer visits your website, they will undertake extensive research on your brand and the kind of services you provide before making a purchase choice. Consumers will look at anything from success stories to user reviews you have had.
Here, you will need to promote your brand more than your content.
Users are seeking the following at this stage:
- A swift and engaging website
- A powerful and clear value proposition
- Positive user reviews
- Social evidence or proof of your brand
To expand on the final point, you must provide content that perfectly communicates your experience as an industry authority. Provide the following types of content for social evidence and proof:
- Testimonials
- Industry recognition/Awards
- User-generated content
- Case studies
You should also include more information about your services and goods.
Consumers will be able to see how your business runs and what you can offer for their specific requirements if you put forward how-to videos, demos, and tutorials.
When you’ve persuaded your consumers that your brand is great, it’s time to complete the deal.
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Getting the Sale (BOFU Stage)
BOFU content will often include sales copy and keywords with strong shopping intent.
Here, you will provide your consumers with a page copy that includes a CTA (call to action), limited-time deals, discounts, promotions, and everything else.
Users that do not enter the TOFU may also benefit from links to high-level blog posts and evergreen content. Use call to action with the scarcity principle and emotional appeal.
The Key Takeaway
Irrespective of the size of your company, creating content for each stage of the marketing funnel must be a continuous effort. Creating content for each stage of the marketing funnel aids in the optimization of your entire marketing process, ensuring revenue growth.
You need to create content that engages, pleases, and intrigues consumers at each stage of the buyer’s journey if you want to develop a successful and high-content funnel. Also, don’t forget about the importance of marketing ethics.
If you’re interested in getting additional data-driven insights for your content strategy, you can check out our other blogs associated with the same.