Content marketing is a powerful tool to gain your audience’s attention, and turn them into customers. With the right content, you can show your potential customers the quality of your business, services, and products, while also helping them solve a problem. For this strategy to be effective, it’s important to organize your content in a way that makes sense with your customers’ needs and expectations. This is the content marketing funnel. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at strategies to optimize your content marketing funnel, and help turn your viewers and readers into customers.
What is a Content Marketing Funnel?
Content marketing aims to deliver informative, helpful, or otherwise enjoyable material to your target audience, while also placing your products or services as solutions. A content marketing funnel describes the organization of the text, images, videos, and other material you use to get your audience’s attention and eventually inspire a purchase or other conversion. When you optimize your content marketing funnel, you not only create better content that will resonate with your audience, but you also help customers find the solution they’re looking for more easily.
The content marketing funnel describes a particular shape and function of your content. We start with the top of the funnel (TOFU), move to the middle of the funnel (MOFU) and then to the bottom of the funnel (BOFU). After, additional content might focus on keeping a customer and turning them into a fan or brand evangelist. Each of these types of content has their own attributes and functions.
Before we discuss how to optimize the content marketing funnel, let’s discuss each section of the funnel. Keep in mind that these different sections may be longer or shorter, depending on the level of research or information-gathering your customers might conduct before making a purchase or contacting you. For example, small purchases might focus most on getting a customers’ attention, so the TOFU section might be most important. Larger purchases with more research might focus more on informing customers and building their trust, so MOFU content may be more important.
Top of the Funnel: TOFU
The top of the funnel or TOFU section is focused on capturing the attention of your target audience. Previously, your audience might never have seen or heard of your business. Tofu content is introductory. It might touch on a problem, concern, or need the customer has, while also introducing your business, products, or services. Since the customer is new to your business and might be newly exploring a need or concern, this content should not be too heavy or too focused on making a sale. Instead, it should be helpful and informative, usually aimed towards someone with little to no experience with the field you’re working in.
Middle of the Funnel: MOFU
Middle of the funnel or MOFU content is designed to further explore the need, concern, or problem a customer has. If the product or service is focused on luxury or comfort rather than solving a problem, MOFU content might emphasize the experience a customer will have or feelings they will get, such as relaxation, status, or ease.
If the product or service is designed to solve a problem, MOFU content should focus on explaining different aspects of the problem and its solutions. This might sometimes include describing competitors’ solutions as well, which can be a scary proposal. However, this can show your potential customers that you are helpful, confident, and well-informed. We’ll discuss this strategy in more detail later in the post.
Bottom of the Funnel: BOFU
Bottom of the funnel of BOFU content is more focused on your products, services, or business. As the potential customer moves down the funnel, the information they’re looking for changes. At this stage, they are looking for a specific product or service to fill a need, resolve a concern, or solve a problem. Therefore, BOFU content is generally focused on comparing or describing specific products or services. This type of content might compare and contrast different products, explain the advantages and disadvantages of different services, or explain what a customer might expect from different options.
How to Optimize Your Content Marketing Funnel
Now that we’ve established the content marketing funnel and the different stages, let’s take a look at a few strategies to optimize your content marketing funnel. Maybe you already have a detailed content marketing funnel established, and you want to optimize conversion rates. Or, maybe you have valuable content created, but you haven’t previously considered how that content might be organized. Wherever you fall on this continuum, these strategies can help optimize your content marketing process and your content overall.
Assess Your Funnel
One of the first strategies to help you optimize your content marketing funnel is to make an assessment. A content audit can be helpful here. What parts of your funnel are strong? Which are weak? How do you know? This will help you focus your resources where they will be most helpful.
Consider what metrics you might use to assess the value of your content at each stage. For example, TOFU content might be measured by clicks. Successful TOFU content will attract your audience’s attention, and cause them to click on a link or advertisement. If your TOFU content isn’t getting many clicks, the rest of your content won’t be able to work effectively. You might measure the efficacy of your MOFU content by conversion rates–are customers reading or viewing your MOFU content and then deciding to engage with your business further? Or are they going elsewhere?
Find Your Audience’s Needs
Though you can put yourself in your audience’s shoes and guess what they might be looking for or how they might shop, it’s better to ask them. What concerns do they actually have? What do they understand about the problem they’re having, and what information do they still need? What are they actually looking for most in your product or services? What aspects of your product or service are important to them, and which are inconsequential?
Asking your customers these and other questions can show what messages are likely to be impactful, and which will be ignored. Answers to these questions can also show what your competitors are not successfully showing or explaining, and how you might fill that need.
Focus on Helpfulness First
Many businesses hesitate to write blog posts, make videos, or create other types of content that are not directly focused on their products or services. However, this sales-first approach is off-putting to many potential customers. Focusing on solving the customer’s problem or providing an experience will be more impactful than selling them a particular product or service.
As previously mentioned, this might sometimes mean describing or including your competitors in your content. This proposition can be alarming, but consider the research your customer is doing; most likely, they will explore your competitors’ options anyway. Wouldn’t you prefer to present your competitors using content that you control? Honesty is essential and you don’t want to misrepresent your competitors, but you can highlight the benefits of your products or services compared to theirs.
Create a Seamless Process
Your content marketing funnel should allow customers to move easily and seamlessly from one stage to the next, whenever they are ready to do so. Calls-to-action or CTAs help them do it. For example, if a potential customer clicks on a social media post and goes to your website, they may have moved from the top to the middle of the funnel. If they then read a blog post and decide your products are best, they should be able to move easily to the products that are most relevant for them. If they have to hunt for the products they want and they’re frustrated by the experience, they’re likely to click away and shop elsewhere.
With the right content and the right content marketing strategy, you can capture your audience’s attention, engage them, and move them towards a purchase. Optimizing your content marketing funnel will help you improve your content overall, and increase conversions.