What comes into your mind when you think of a content marketing funnel? Are you a digital marketer looking for ways to scale and optimize your content marketing strategies? Or you’re new to the field of marketing and looking for means to up your content marketing skills?
A content marketing funnel is a relatively new content marketing strategy that is currently showing a possible dimensional impact on content marketing. Following a content marketing funnel can enhance the efficacy of your marketing tactics.
Findings indicate that over 82% of marketers highly invest in content marketing, but with the competitiveness of the online world, many brands still find themselves lagging behind. To enhance results, many marketers create content that focuses on a specific area of the content marketing funnel.
However, creating a strategic content marketing funnel isn’t easy. At this juncture, we would like to understand what a content marketing funnel is and also provide a complete guide to creating one.
Table of Contents
What is a Content Marketing Funnel?
A content marketing funnel generally refers to the pathway of creating content that resonates with the customer journey. Precisely, content that captures the attention of online users, stirs their interest in a brand or service, changes them into leads, converts them into buying customers, and makes them loyal to a brand.
A content funnel comprises four stages and these include; TOFU (Top of the Funnel), MOFU (Middle of the Funnel), and BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel). Content created at the TOFU stage focuses on attaining a prospect’s attention. The MOFU content focuses on creating content that turns prospects into leads and the MOFU content targets to convert leads to conversions or customers.
A digital marketer utilizes a content marketing funnel to visualize the customer journey and serves as a roadmap to creating and publishing content. Following a content marketing funnel can optimize marketing efforts and allow you to increase your sales or attract more customers. But what are the facets of a content marketing funnel?
Elements of a Content Marketing Funnel
If you’re looking for a strategic way to create content that excellently appeals and compels to each stage of the customer in your audience, a content marketing funnel presents the facets below;
1. Discovery Stage
This is also known as the TOFU (Top of the Funnel) phase. This stage requires a digital marketer to create content that can make an audience aware of a brand or a service. It requires content that can capture the attention of the target audience.
In this phase, a digital marketer must think like one who has never come across a given brand before. Therefore, you have to create content that can stir interest in the online user and lead him or her to your website or social media platform.
2. Enlightening Stage
The second stage of the content marketing funnel is known as the MOFU (Middle of the Funnel) phase. It consists of people who are highly interested in your product or services and considering doing business with you.
This is a critical phase and requires the utmost engagement tactics that can educate the audience about your brand and motivate them to proceed to the next stage. A digital marketer can consider a variety of content to increase the audience’s interest in a brand. These could be short-form video content, blogs, “how-to guides”, press releases, and customer testimonials.
3. Conversion Stage
Also known as the BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel), this phase focuses on creating content that makes your site visitors make a purchase. In this case, creating content that positions your brand as superior can help increase sales and business ROI. You can consider different content types such as user-generated content, and customer reviews, to ignite people to make a purchase.
4. Retention Stage
It is becoming more difficult to retain customers in the modern business world. That’s because there are many alternatives. Selling quality products and services is no longer the ultimate way to survive in the marketplace. Therefore, in order to retain loyal customers and build an extended customer base, it is essential to keep your customers happy. Solutions like customer service, free trials, guides, and consistent engagement can help to keep customers.
A Guide to Creating a Content Marketing Funnel
If you’re looking for a reliable guide that can help you create a content marketing funnel, you can consider the following;
- Audience Segmentation
Audience segmentation refers to the processing of dividing the target audience into subgroups. Although you may target a given group of people, it should be noted that all these people are at different stages of their customer journey.
Some may be interacting with your brand for the first time, others may have found interest in your brand, and others have made a few purchases with you before. Therefore, it is essential to create content that speaks to each potential buyer or loyal customer.
Leverage tools like Semrush, Moz, or Google Analytics to understand more about your audience in order to categorize it accordingly. Understand the demographics, behaviors, interests, and level of engagement to serve as a roadmap for your content marketing funnel.
- Create Tailored Content
The next step is tailoring your content to resonate specifically with a given segment. For example, if it’s the discovery stage, it’s essential to create content that cultivates a relationship with the potential customer. If it’s the retention phase, it’s essential to create content that builds trust in the customer base.
Tailoring content can help you create content that makes more sense to an audience. It is also better positioned to fetch more conversions. If you want your content marketing funnel to pave way for market penetration, then consider creating tailored content. Tailored content can also drive sales and lead to better revenue retention.
- Follow a Content Marketing Plan
A content marketing funnel can produce more results when a content marketing plan is in place. It’s the content plan that aligns your content with the content marketing strategy. It can also help you track your content distribution strategy.
A content marketing plan can also help a marketer create the content required for a specific campaign, customer segments, and stages. Whether you’re creating blog posts, newsletters, social media posts, or infographics, they must address the content needs as per the content marketing funnel.
Bottom Line
A content marketing funnel is a strategic way of attracting, stirring interest in visitors, converting them, and retaining them. It can strategically guide your audience through their customer journey and allow you to connect with them better. Leverage this guide to help you create an effective content marketing funnel.
Byline:
Jessica Robinson loves to write interesting and knowledgeable blogs regarding business management, education and life to satiate the curiosity of her lovely readers. Currently, she is serving as a content manager at the ‘Speaking Polymath’. Every piece of content that she writes demonstrates her immense love and passion for her profession.
