4 Stages Of A Successful Content Marketing Funnel

Not every customer comes to us with a purchase in mind. Many of our prospects require guidance as well as information. Your target audience must believe that you will fix their issues and provide value if they give you their money.

The content marketing funnel is precisely the method your company requires to communicate that value. Thus, we prepared four successful content marketing funnel stages for your company!

What Precisely is a Content Marketing Funnel?

The content marketing funnel represents a customer's stages from first exposure to conversion. This conversion includes submitting an email, signing up for a free trial, or making a purchase.
The content marketing funnel, like the sales funnel, follows the buyer's journey from acknowledgment to making a choice to buy a product or a service.

Four Content Marketing Funnel Stages

1. Awareness

When prospective buyers first join the content marketing funnel, you can assume they are unfamiliar with your business, and that it is now your duty to make them aware. Content in the top-of-funnel phase is to keep your audience educated and informed. You can utilize different types of content for your content marketing campaign, such as:

Shareable blog posts and e-books
Social media posts
Infographics
Videos and podcasts

Don't worry, you aren't required to try every single type of content. Track the success of a few that strike a chord with your target audience.

Use metrics such as time on page, review volume, and bounce rate, and dig deeper into Google Analytics to learn more. It might take several iterations to build a content marketing funnel that works best for your brand.

If your content falls short or fails to reach the intended audience, pivot. You can change your strategy regardless of the fact that you have already started down one path.

2. Evaluation

Potential customers decide whether or not they need your product or service in the middle of the funnel (MOFU). During the evaluation stage, you must establish trust with your customer.
Nobody buys from or does business with a business they don't trust and value, so look for ways to strengthen that bond. Good content creation gradually moves a prospect forward toward a purchase. It doesn't actually occur all at once.
Your key asset in strengthening your odds in this stage is monitoring and SEO analysis. Perform a website audit to understand your weak points and how to improve them. Optimizing your pages and blogs is a never-ending process of developing a stronger sales funnel.
Don't rush the process; more importantly, don't expect one content piece to do everything. That is why it is critical to use various content marketing types and have a thorough content strategy in place.

3. Conversion

Everyone wants to have peace of mind about a purchase. Give your potential customers specific reasons why purchasing your goods or investing in your service is a wise decision.
At this stage, the content funnel has focused on piquing customers' curiosity about what you sell. Give them a compelling reason to buy your product or service at the bottom of the content marketing funnel (BOFU). Providing side-by-side comparisons of similar items and emphasizing how your item or service is advantageous can easily influence a purchase.
As long as you aren't giving away the entire product, providing a free trial of your service can lead to a purchase. An initial trial gives future clients a taste of what you offer but should leave them seeking more because your goal is to transform them into a sale.

4. Delight

Even though it is not a component of the conventional content marketing funnel, numerous businesses add an extra step to maintain or improve customer satisfaction.
Your ultimate content strategy should aim to attract an audience and keep them engaged. This effort goes further than the purchase stage. Customers should be able to interact easily with the material and provide feedback to your company. Give your audience rewards in the form of special offers or early access to some of your new products.

Top-of-funnel Content Tips

Conduct keyword research. Because users are unfamiliar with your brand, SEO is essential for TOF content. Conduct thorough keyword research and cover all of your on-page SEO bases to enhance your website presence and get discovered.
Uphold a low level of self-promotion. Your main goal here should be to educate and build trust. Non-stop promotion of your products/services in your content could undermine your credibility. In terms of resources and scalability, blogging is the most cost-effective option.

Middle-of-funnel Content Tips

Now is the time to include calls to action and promote your product/service.

Repurpose content from the top of the funnel. You can create a more powerful checklist by combining blog posts and checklists. These types of content require more effort than a blog, but the results are worth it.

You can use different resources to guide prospects through your funnel and subsequently turn them into paying customers, including:

ROI calculators
Website audit tools
Maturity assessments

Aside from these resources, don't overlook blogs and promoting content as part of your funnel strategy.

Bottom-of-funnel Content Tips

Hyper-target. You should tailor all your content to your target audience, but you should also tailor it to quite specific customer personas, and even the prospect, at this phase.
Keep in mind that copywriting is essential in this phase. Any word or phrase you place in front of your audience needs to sell something.
Test out various call-to-action phrases, information design, and page structure. Ensure that these sections are free of pop-ups or other elements that may interfere with or interrupt the experience of your potential customers.

Wrapping Up

Now that you understand all of the aspects of a content marketing funnel, brainstorm all the ways your company can use content to attract clients.

When developing your content marketing strategy, ensure that these components sync up. Doing so makes your prospect's route to completing a purchase straightforward and simple to understand.