Marketing is the key to attracting and retaining customers. In the current market scenario, marketers must continuously strive to improve their marketing strategies for better brand positioning. 

As stated below by Search Engine Journal, around 73% and 70% of B2B and B2C marketers have integrated content marketing for customer attraction. 

Source: Search Engine Journal

However, engaging customers through content without integrating a proper marketing funnel is difficult. 

Let us understand the theoretical and practical aspects of the content marketing funnel. 

What is a Content Marketing Funnel?

Customers do not directly purchase any product or service without any research. Within a marketing context, this journey of research and evaluation is known as the buyer’s journey. 

With the ever-evolving marketing strategies, understanding the essence of the buyer’s journey has become essential. A content marketing funnel is a model for assessing a buyer’s journey concerning the purchase of a particular product or service. 

3 Stages of a Content Marketing Funnel 

With the help of the following three stages of the content-marketing funnel, marketers can develop a customer journey map for decoding their target buyers’ intent.

  1. Top of Funnel (TOFU): Marketers aim to attract traffic based on customer needs and requirements.  
  2. Middle of Funnel (MOFU): At this stage, marketers provide in-depth, informative content associated with the product or service. 
  3. Bottom of Funnel (BOFU): BoFu content aims at assisting customers in finalising their decision regarding the purchase of your products or services.

Now, let us understand each of the above stages in detail.

Top of Funnel Content (TOFU) 

Goal of ToFu Marketing: Attracting Traffic

Portrayed as the initial point of the customer journey, the primary goal of the ToFu content is to promote your brand subtly. Strategies for successfully executing ToFu marketing are: 

  1. While framing the ToFu content, your goal as a marketer must be to answer the initial queries of the customers. 
  2. There should be no direct usage of call to action tone, which implies that ToFu content should not be sales-centric. 
  3. While developing ToFu content, it is important to focus on improving customer experience. This will help your brand convert these customers into future profitable leads. 
  4. Tofu content utilised in the first stage are blogs, audio and video podcasts, print magazines, digital magazines, microsite, primary research, photographs, etc. 
  5. Efficient channels for traffic attraction are organic search, social media marketing, email marketing, paid advertising, influencer marketing, etc. 

Metrics for measuring the outcomes of ToFu marketing are: 

  • Number of Visitors 
  • Conversion Rate 
  • Bounce Rate 
  • Number of Leads 
  • Time Spent on Page 

Middle of Funnel Content (MOFU) 

Goal of MoFu Marketing: Generation of Leads

Given the condensation of readers concerning a particular niche, MoFu content helps generate leads. Here are some strategies that a marketer should integrate during Mofu marketing: 

  1. Increase brand engagement by providing product-centric information for retaining customers and interactive tools for a better experience. 
  2. Differentiate your brand from the competitors by highlighting your Unique Selling Points (USP).
  3. Generate organic leads by providing content like guides, landing pages, article writing, webinars, educational resources, success stories, customer reviews, testimonials, etc.
  4. Optimisation of lead generation through efficient channels like organic search, email marketing, social media marketing, PPC 
  5. Utilise email and social media marketing channels to nurture leads and keep them engaged. 

Metrics for measuring the success rate of MoFu marketing are:

  • Conversion Rate
  • Time on Page
  • Number of Customer Leads 
  • Return on Investment (ROI)
  • Shares on Social Media

Thus, MoFu marketing plays a major role in transitioning your customers to the last stage of the content marketing funnel. 

Bottom of Funnel Content (BOFU) 

Goal of BoFu Marketing: Positioning Brand Name

BoFu marketing acts as a catalyst in finalising your customer’s purchase decision. Marketers should integrate the following strategies for positioning their respective brands:

  1. BoFu Content must be very specific as it would be beneficial in answering the queries of your customers 
  2. Focus on building customer trust that would influence them to make their purchase 
  3. Support your customers with reviews that would enhance their experience, thereby leading to word-of-mouth marketing and repeat purchases
  4. Marketers should include top-performing content, which includes product overviews, customer reviews, and success stories 
  5. Efficient channels for BoFu marketing include email marketing, organic search, and paid advertising 

Metrics for assessing BoFu content’s success rate are: 

  • Conversion Rate 
  • Number of Payments 
  • Return on Investment 

Benefits of Content Marketing Funnel

Content marketing funnel assists marketers in building customer relationships with respect to each stage of the buyer’s journey. Here are a few benefits of a content marketing funnel that you must know: 

  1. Visual Blueprint of the Customer Journey: The content marketing funnel plays an important role in curating a path for developing web-based content. 
  2. Aligning the Content with the Target Customers: The funnel assists in categorising the suitability of the content concerning the advancement of the buyer through their journey. 
  3. Improved Customer Lifetime Value:  The funnel is beneficial in developing content that would lead to larger conversion rates of customers. This ultimately increases the amount of money being spent by customers for buying products and services from the business. 
  4. Turning Customers into Loyal Brand Ambassadors: Content generation through the funnel results in finding loyal customers that involve themselves in repeat purchases. These customers are known as brand ambassadors of the business. 
  1. Improvement in Marketing Strategy: Assessment of the leads generated through the funnel will help the business understand the existing loophole in the current content marketing strategy and bring in improvement.

Therefore, as a marketer, once you are well aware of the customer needs and requirements, your content will strengthen the position of your brand.

Tips to Create an Effective Content Marketing Funnel 

Your content must have the ability to nurture your relationships with the targeted customers. Here are some tips for creating a winning content marketing funnel: 

  • Tip 1: Focus on creating a blueprint of your content with respect to your customer’s journey from the initial stage of brand awareness to the last stage of the purchase decision 
  • Tip 2: Content has to be industry-specific which implies that as a marketer, you must have detailed knowledge of customer needs and requirements 
  • Tip 3: Ensure that the ToFu content is educative but engaging 
  • Tip 4: While developing the MoFu content, you should lure customers using discounts 
  • Tip 5: Focus on creating creative ways like providing product and service demonstrations to persuade customers until the end of the BoFu content 

Conclusion

A content marketing funnel is becoming more relevant in the marketing world. Customers have become a lot more tech-savvy, and owing to the growing relevance of digitisation, extensive information on different businesses and their services is available. 

Therefore, if you are looking forward to attaining a sustainable competitive edge, understand the customer journey using the funnel. This will ultimately enable you to improve customer experience with the help of a robust content marketing strategy.