Content Marketing Funnel: 101

You may have the heard the term funnel in marketing before, but what does it mean really, at least a content marketing funnel.

The content marketing funnel represents the customer’s journey from being a prospect to paying client. It has to through the various stages before the last stage paying client. Here is the content marketing funnel which defines the various stages.

Top of the funnel (TOFU)

The only goal for this stage to make person aware of WHO your brand is, and WHAT products you offer that will resolve their problems or queries.

Create contents around your brand or products to entertain the prospects. Make sure this is the where your audience needs to get engage and proceed to the next stage, contents like blogs, social media posts, podcasts, ebooks, infographics, ads in publications and others. These piece of content should be highly engaging

Your goal with ToFu content should educate to your audience on a specific question, need or pain point that they’re looking to address. You’ll get the opportunity to do this with your MoFu content as explained below.

Middle of funnel (MOFU)

Once a lead/ prospect converts on an initial ToFu content offer, they’ll progress into the MoFu stage. This is viewed as the most complicated funnel stage because you need to build a relationship with your prospect so that they can get to know you, like you, and trust you.

In this stage of the funnel, your content should continue to nurture. Use free content like lead magnets to gather leads or prospects emails. Advanced eBooks are a great form of content in this stage, but case studies, white papers, quizzes, resources (checklist, guide, calendar) and videos will do wonders for building your trust.

Bottom of the funnel (BOFU)

So, you’ve got a good amount of leads with your ToFu content and continued to engage and nurture them up with your MoFu content. Now what? In comes, the BoFu stage which is obviously the most crucial since goal or CTA is defined in this stage to sale.

For many industry types, your BoFu stage may not consist of content at all. At this point, your leads know you and are comfortable engaging one-on-one. This is where a free assessment, evaluation or trial works nicely to start the dialogue and to begin to fully qualify your most interested leads. If you have an e-Commerce-based product, you can leverage a discount code to use at the time of the transaction to establish some urgency around making the purchase.

Automating Lead Nurturing Content

Although the concept of lead nurturing through ToFu, MoFu and BoFu content may sound simple in theory, it’s not. It takes significant time and efforts to consider your overall lead nurturing strategy, create the necessary content, and evaluate the leads you convert as they move down the funnel.

Putting an effort will definitely pay off! Research shows that companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads and those leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.

It’s unrealistic, however, to think you have the time in your day to manage this process manually. This is where marketing automation comes in a plan to implement multiple leads nurturing campaigns. The ROI on such an investment will come quickly for most companies, as those that automate lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue within 6–9 months.

Automating your campaigns doesn’t mean you have to lose your personal touch. You can still deploy emails with a customized greeting or subject line and have them sent from a specific contact within your company. They can be created before a lead even converts and then triggered based on a specific conversion that is then scheduled at a frequency that aligns with your company’s buying cycle.

This frees up your time to create more compelling content and keeps your sales team well fed with warm MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) and SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads) that are closer to the point of making a purchase of your product or service.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Funnel

As you’ve seen by now, content marketing funnel is modular.

You use one tool at the top of the funnel, a second tool at the middle of the funnel, and a third tool at the bottom of the funnel.

You might even use multiple tools in each section — testing to see which ones work better.

By trying a few different tools, you can use the data you gather to improve the performance of each step.

You will almost always find that one part of your funnel is performing well, but another part is lagging behind.

To improve the effectiveness of your funnel, don’t scrap the whole thing out and start over.

Just find the part that’s not performing well, then improve just that part.

That’s how small changes can lead to significant improvements in the overall change in you goals by your content marketing funnel.

Original Source: https://growthmarketo.com/content-marketing-funnel-101/