When sharing content – are you thinking about how and when your target buyers are consuming it? When planning a content strategy – you will be basing it on the type of content you think your target audience will enjoy. This makes sense and does tend to come naturally when writing for a similar audience type throughout a marketing campaign. But, are you considering which stage they are currently at in the marketing funnel?
What we recommend doing is consciously making decisions around on your content based on different stages of the buyer journey. As with most digital marketing channels – you will be creating content with a purpose. Usually, this is to lead consumers further down the digital marketing funnel until they become a customer. In a nutshell, prospects become leads, then qualified leads and then finally sales.
Different stages of the marketing funnel
The kind of content that will lead you towards your objectives must be created for the TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU stages – meaning Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel, and Bottom of Funnel.
Creating a buyer-centric content strategy
The success of your content marketing strategy will highly depend on whether you are providing solutions for your consumers. The only way you will engage an audience is by providing consistently helpful content that is going to benefit your audience,
That is why it is essential that you adopt a strategic and buyer-centric approach towards your content. Avoid creating content for the sake of it. Although this might have some immediate value – i.e. clicks, it is less likely to lead to long-term results such as sales.
So, we are going to discuss all the funnels from a content perspective. We will go through the various types of content that should be aimed towards a TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU audience. Let’s start at the top:
Top of the Funnel Content
This is the brand awareness stage – meaning it is the time when your target personas are not yet familiar with your brand or product. They are at the research phase where they are browsing their options online.
Usually, they are facing a specific problem and searching for a solution to that problem online. Or, they may just be searching for information on a particular topic. This is an important part to get right – because they are not yet committed to any brand. They are probably browsing through a lot of information online and waiting until something appeals the most to them. A chunk of this information will be provided by your competitors – which is why your content needs to stand out.
So, what are the types of assets you could use to drive awareness to your site? This could be anything from on-site blogs, to guest blogs, infographics, videos or images. We highly recommend tying your content creation in with your search engine optimisation (SEO) and other digital marketing efforts. We would say at this point, the best thing to do is create and publish regular content. This is achievable through blogs in particular.
According to HubSpot, sites that include regular blogs attract 55% more than those that don’t. This makes a huge difference when it comes to driving that initial brand awareness. Think of it this way – the more blogs you have, the more topics you will cover. The more topics you cover, the more search queries you will match. This is essentially the way to ensure you are sharing buyer-centric content.
Another point to consider is that your customer will want to become more familiar with your brand just as much as you want them to. As long as you create content that is relevant to them – they will be more likely to consider moving further down the funnel.
Middle of the Funnel Content
The MOFO or middle of funnel is the consideration stage of the buyer journey. At this stage, your awareness assets have already started to work. This means that you’ve driven traffic to your site – and now the focus should shift to converting those visitors into leads.
A conversion or purchase will only take place if a visitor can see that your product or service is going to provide a solution for their problem, or appeal to their interests. To put it simply, now is the time where you want to tell consumers that you’ve got a solution to their search.
Content types for middle of the funnel:
- Case studies: These can offer proof of what your content explains.
- Reviews: Show how other customers have benefited from your brand, service or product.
- Product guides: Thoroughly explain different product features and functionality.
These are just a few examples of how you can show why a consumer should choose your business. To summarise, the things you should be covering are:
- What your product/service is for.
- What is your unique selling point or proposition (USP)?
- How do users know they can trust your content?
- How have you previously helped customers?
Bottom of the Funnel Content
Finally, we have the bottom of the funnel content or BOFO. All previous content leads to this stage. This is when your leads are ready to become a buying customer. So, at this point a site visitor has decided they do want to buy the products/services from you. But that doesn’t mean you should stop optimising content for conversions.
At this point, you should be creating buyer-centric content that will convince users they are making a good decision. You need to really capture your potential customer’s attention to make sure they don’t change their mind and head back to search. From a digital marketing point of view – we would suggest providing some sort of incentive, for example:
- Added features
- Special discounts
- A free trial
- Free delivery
- Limited edition
Also think about client or customer testimonials. How have people who used your product noticed the benefits? Essentially, anything that is going to encourage people click the buy or CTA button!
What Next?
Hopefully this has helped you segment your content into different stages. The main message here is to consider which point of the buyer cycle your target audience will be when reading your content.
Once you know where they fall into the marketing funnel, you’ll be able to produce content that really works to boost your content marketing results.
If you have any questions, just get in touch!