What is a content marketing funnel?

A content marketing funnel’s idea is rather straightforward. It describes the process of guiding potential consumers through various phases of the buying process in order to convert them using a relatively straightforward formula, starting with brand recognition, moving on to education, and concluding with a purchase.

Similar to a physical funnel, a content marketing funnel begins with a large number of prospective leads before narrowing down to only a few SQLs (sales-qualified-leads). It is normal for only a small percentage of potential leads to convert into paying customers, even with effective marketing funnel work.

Your content marketing funnel’s length and intricacy, however, will vary based on your sector and the kinds of goods and services you provide. If you offer basic t-shirts, for instance, your prospects’ journey from the top to the bottom of the funnel can be rather brief. In other words, it might not take much convincing for potential customers to decide to become paying clients. In reality, they might simply buy on a whim.
The path from the top of the funnel to the bottom will probably be longer and more difficult if, on the other hand, you run a B2B company that sells software that costs more than a million pounds. On the other hand, the path from the top to the bottom of the funnel will probably be longer and more complicated if you run a B2B company that sells software that costs more than a million pounds. This is due to the possibility of having to appeal to several decision-makers. In that situation, your content’s marketing messaging will be more diverse because you’ll be addressing prospects at various stages of the sales funnel.

When developing conversion-driving campaigns for our B2B clients at Revenco Agency, we frequently discover that a multichannel marketing strategy is necessary to achieve success. For instance, we frequently publish a ton of instructive content in the beginning to pique audiences’ curiosity, increase brand awareness, and attract customers. It’s possible for this information to take the shape of a single lengthy blog post (or several shorter, pertinent blog posts), a how-to video or guide on your primary website or YouTube channel, or even an educational landing page.

Our research has shown that these content ideas are more successful for lead generation at the top of the funnel, as highly sales-focussed funnel content had the potential to scare off new leads if used too soon or too frequently.

You must be prepared to analyze the patterns of your current consumers, carry out extensive audience and keyword research, and employ SEO tools for optimal results if you want to produce content that your prospects will enjoy. Although the top level of the majority of marketing funnel phases will require a comparable formula, it is still true that no two strategies are same. Your marketing team will need to develop a fresh funnel for every new campaign in order to meet the specific requirements of both your current and potential clients.

How do content marketing funnels work?

Using pertinent information like blog posts, niche landing pages, and instructional resources, a content funnel works by attracting new leads and nurturing them through a customer journey. In a nutshell, there are three main processes that funnel material is produced through:

• Awareness
• Education
• Decision

These three phases essentially make up the core of any effective complete funnel content marketing plan, despite the fact that every funnel is different and will depend on your brand, your business goals, and the demands of your prospects. Let’s examine what each funnel cycle entails and how producing content tailored to each stage of the customer experience will benefit your company.

• The awareness stage (top of the funnel)

This is your first actual chance to produce and share user-generated content that will help your company. Smart content marketers will concentrate on creating leads at this point and assisting these new prospects in learning about your brand. At this point, relevant material will typically comprise blog articles, posts across your social media accounts that are pertinent, videos, and podcasts. At the top of the funnel, a sales team often won’t produce any content; instead, it will concentrate entirely on helping prospects learn about your goods and services rather than trying to sell them.

• The education or consideration stage (middle of the funnel)

Here, you should concentrate on attracting leads who are interested in learning more about your company, what you have to offer, and how you differ from your rivals. At this point, leads aren’t prepared to make a purchase and are probably looking at similar products from your key rivals to see which one best meets their demands. At this point, it’s crucial to avoid using a forceful, sales-y tone and instead create material that creates trust. In the middle of the funnel, your main goal is to convince your target consumer to choose your company over a rival.

• The decision stage (bottom of the funnel)

Your leads are now prepared to decide who they will buy from. In contrast to the middle of the funnel, you can be quite sure you have their attention at this point; all that is left to do is seal the deal. Unfortunately, if you miss this opportunity, all of your prior work in the top and middle of the funnel would have been for naught. The hard sell may be attractive, but it’s best to wait before making a decision. To encourage a confident buying decision, consider employing a CTA for a “Free Consultation” or a free trial.

In a subsequent section of this piece, we will go into greater detail regarding the types of content that are required at each point of the funnel. Let’s focus on the customer’s journey for the time being. We provide content that leads users on a “journey” from awareness to purchase, but why do we do it? How does a blog post influence sales? How can creating a thorough price and contact page create leads?

The importance of the customer’s journey

The importance of the buyer’s journey cannot be overstated. It is crucial to comprehend it and utilize it if you want to improve lead creation. No matter how excellent your product or service is, you will lose out on organic traffic and the great majority of your conversions if you don’t give your potential customers a seamless user experience and a path that meets their specific demands.

Imagine yourself going to a showroom to buy a new car. When you see the identical model shining in the front window, you know it’s the car for you. However, the sales assistant ignores your attempts to engage with them and moves away. Your experience, or customer journey, has been spoiled by lack of attention and poor salesmanship, and buying that car now doesn’t appear as enticing.

This is analogous to when potential customers look for your services and goods. It’s not enough to simply post some listings on your website and hope consumers buy something right away. You must entice prospects and nurture them with product information and relevant content before they would commit to a purchase in order to obtain qualified traffic and eventually conversions. The great majority of potential customers won’t know exactly what they want or why they want it right away. To change that, content must be mapped into a carefully considered buyer’s journey.

For instance, your potential customers might require your goods or services to address a problem, and it’s likely that your rivals have a solution that is comparable to yours or at least as effective. In that instance, it is your responsibility to persuade potential customers to choose you rather than a competitor.

To do this takes a deep understanding of your target audience and knowing:

• Who they are
• The problem they are looking to solve
• What their motivations are
• What their online habits are

Consider developing marketing personas, which are essentially fictional profiles of people who are interested in buying from you, to gain a deeper understanding of your potential clients and offer a first-rate buyer’s journey (we typically recommend having between 2 and 4 different personas).

You may nurture your prospects from the top of the funnel to the bottom by using personas to determine how you will develop your strategy across different marketing platforms. You will also gain important insights on the kind of content that customers are most likely to find engaging.

What you need at the awareness stage

In the awareness stage, the content you create should be geared on increasing interest in your business. Consider the awareness stage as your storefront; the objective is to display oneself attractively enough to draw customers in. It’s crucial to keep in mind that your prospective customers may not yet be aware of your business or the services it provides; in this situation, you should concentrate mostly on establishing your brand, your USPs, and your credentials.

To achieve this, take into account the primary reasons why your potential customers are seeking out your goods or services. They most likely have an issue that they’re trying to address, so you should concentrate on producing material (like topical, question-based blogs or specialized service landing pages) that explains exactly what you offer and how it may benefit them. In order to establish trust, your middle funnel material should also showcase your sector knowledge.

At this point, blogging that focuses on providing an answer to a question is one of the finest ways to win over a possible consumer. If you sell pianos, for instance, you could start a blog with the heading “How to pick the best piano for beginners.” This not only helps them find the solution to their inquiry, but it also probably fits the purpose of their search.

Utilizing additional marketing avenues, such as social media advertising, is another efficient strategy to generate new leads in this situation. Up to 3.81 billion individuals use social media actively worldwide, according to studies, and a significant fraction of those users utilize it to discover goods or services they are interested in.

In practically any content marketing funnel, including B2B, eCommerce, fintech, SaaS, and healthcare, you can leverage social media because your prospects are almost certainly active on at least one platform. This is the beauty of social media.

Bonus Tip: Up to 70% of new leads may enter your marketing funnel organically; therefore, if your awareness-stage content is developed in accordance with keyword research and planned alongside a larger SEO strategy, you’ll have a much better chance of keeping those leads from the middle of the funnel and onto the next stage.

What you need at the education / consideration stage

The amount of leads you started with will probably be substantially lower by this point in your content marketing funnel. The leads who have progressed to this point, though, will have been pleasantly warmed up by your prior content efforts and are prepared to learn a little bit more about your company before they make a final purchase. This gives you some special chances to instruct and encourage these prospective prospects to convert.

Your leads are now aware that they have a problem that has to be fixed and are looking into potential solutions. The successful content at this point would therefore concentrate on instructing the target audience and creating assets like how-to manuals, case studies, and product overviews. When your prospects make a decision later on, the detail you offer with this content will be quite helpful. For instance, you might influence your prospects’ choice if you can demonstrate quantitatively how your solution might help them save money while also resolving their issue.

You should concentrate on engaging your audience and keeping their interest in addition to educating them with how-to guides and other current items. Creating email marketing campaigns that offer prospects original information and enable you to send follow-up messages is a tried-and-true method of accomplishing this.

You can personalize your emails using email marketing as well, which will help you win the trust and cooperation of your prospects. It’s crucial to keep in mind that your customers want to feel appreciated. By taking the time to develop relationships through relevant and, ideally, effective content, you place yourself in a better position to make the sale.

What you need at the decision stage

Leads who have progressed to this step of the content marketing funnel have gathered all the data they need and are considering which vendor to work with. Your content marketing funnel has been building up to this point, so everything you publish at this point must be totally focused on achieving that last convert. You can start outlining pricing and contact choices at this level of the marketing funnel since these details will probably be a major deciding factor for your leads.

You can now afford to be more particular, going into much greater depth about your product or service and why it should be the first and only choice for your potential leads as your leads already have a ton of information about what they’re looking for!

Create a series of case studies that show how you’ve assisted customers in the past. If you already have a few examples, it helps to categorize your case studies by industry so that your prospects can identify the ones that are most pertinent to their area.

One of the key benefits of case studies is that you may illustrate the advantages of your product or service by integrating a variety of content pieces, such as infographics, analytics, and graphs. This not only increases the value of your case studies but also helps the user understand them better.

To support your case studies and demonstrate how you can benefit your clients, you can also offer client endorsements. As an alternative, use direct feedback from important company stakeholders to offer a human touch.

Last but not least, you now have the chance to contact your potential leads directly at this point in the funnel in order to respond to any queries they may have. It’s common for marketers and business owners to worry that this strategy is overly aggressive, but a lot will rely on your industry and the kind of services you provide. Direct contact might help you close the deal if you use the appropriate strategy.

Developing a marketing funnel for your target audience: Revenco Agency way

Our content marketing team at The Revenco.Agency has been collaborating with our SEO, PPC, and automation professionals to assist our clients build highly targeted content marketing funnels. With a comprehensive, funnel-based approach to content marketing, we have helped B2B, B2C, fintech, SaaS, and healthcare firms significantly boost their website traffic, generate countless high-quality leads, and maximize conversions over the past several years.

We first analyze the current customer base and target market of our clients before we begin creating a marketing funnel (if applicable). With the help of this preliminary study, we can identify the content kinds that have the best chance of guiding potential leads through the content marketing funnel and ultimately leading to a conversion. We’ll also examine the online behaviors of your target audience to determine the most effective channels and platforms to use to reach them.

Being a full-service digital marketing agency, we frequently use multichannel marketing tactics to assist our customers in achieving their company objectives because we are channel-agnostic. It is via early audience research and website audits that we establish a clear image of where will allow your organization to see the best outcomes. We have seen the most lucrative advantages from multichannel methods.
We are dedicated to maximizing your budget and producing the best ROI possible, whether it be through SEO, PPC, social media advertising, email marketing, or any other digital marketing solution we offer.

Hire a specialist content marketing agency to produce and manage your content funnel

We can assist you if you’re trying to develop a marketing funnel that will unquestionably draw in high-quality leads, increase conversions, and boost your revenue. We’ve worked with hundreds of clients from a wide range of sectors over the past few years to develop laser-focused content marketing funnels that have delivered incomparable ROI.

We consistently maintain open communication with all of our clients to ensure that we have common objectives, KPIs, and metrics. We also give regular reports so that our clients are always aware of the progress of their campaigns. We can assist with the analysis of your target audience and their needs, the creation of tailored content in a range of content formats, and the integration with other channels that will enhance your overall marketing plan.

What are you still holding out for? Book a free consultation with one of our content marketing specialists now if you’d like to learn more about the variety of digital marketing services we provide or if you’re curious about how we might enhance your current content marketing strategy. We’ll give you advice on what we believe will work best for you and assist you in starting the process.