If you’ve ever questioned the power of a stellar content marketing funnel, consider this — a regular person reads 11.4 pieces of content before making a product decision.
Which means they could potentially be passing over a number of your content pieces only to convert when they land on an article by another brand. Unfortunately, that could mean there’s a flaw in your content marketing funnel.
The Basics
A content marketing funnel comes in three essential pieces:
- Top of the funnel (ToFu)
- Middle of the funnel (MoFu)
- Bottom of the funnel (BoFu)
All of these parts need to work together to create a successful flow. So, it’s essential to know what content belongs in which piece and the goals you should be striving for.
Top of the Funnel
The ToFu is the first step of the funnel and where you build your awareness. Typically, to build awareness, you use tools like:
- Social media
- Podcasts
- Blogging
- Media Placements
- Video
It’s at this stage that you want to tell people who you are and what problem you can solve for them. It’s, essentially, the education piece. Answer questions, give insights, and offer expert opinions.
These are the goals to measure for the ToFu:
- Create awareness about products and services
- Site engagement
- Traffic by channel
- Inbound links
Middle of the Funnel
This is where the action happens. MoFu converts those curious knowledge seekers into sales leads via evaluation.
At this point, you’re developing content that offers your viewers something they can’t resist. Whether that be access to your newsletter, a white paper, or a template they can use to organize their lives. Other enticing offers brands use include:
- Free downloads
- Educational webinars
- Discounts
- Loyalty programs
- Quizzes and surveys
When you’re creating content in the middle of the funnel, these are some goals to measure:
- Increasing leads
- Collecting emails
- Growing your retargeting list
- Increasing opens, clicks, shares, and bounce rates
Whatever it might be, MoFu is where you get the first opportunity to begin building a relationship with users.
Bottom of the Funnel
Now that you’ve got their attention, it’s time to convert them.
The bottom of the funnel is one that sometimes gets overlooked in content marketing. Still, utilizing things like demos and case studies can be incredibly helpful when it comes to converting leads into sales.
This content should help users make an informed decision. There are so many ways you can go about doing this, from highlighting reviews to sharing similar stories.
The type of content you can include in this stage of the funnel includes:
- In-depth demos
- Customer stories
- Spec sheets
- Events
- Webinars
When you’re trying to develop content for this part of the funnel, your goals should revolve around:
- Nurturing customer relationships
- Growing your retargeting lists
- Increasing return buyers
- Increasing retention
The bottom of the funnel is where you finally get the chance to show your content is performing. If you’ve funneled your customer through each channel with the appropriate content, you should see conversions.
Content marketing is a great tool to grow your user-base and convert leads to sales, but you have to know how to use it right. Following the basics of a content marketing funnel is the first step.
