1. Perfect Content Marketing is Full Funnel
I know this is Marketing 101 stuff, but stick with me for just a second before I get into the more advanced content marketing concepts we’ll be covering.
For an ice-cold prospect to become a customer, they will need to travel through three stages:
The 3 stages all prospects go through on their way to becoming a customer
- Awareness – The prospect must first become aware that there is a problem and that YOU or your organization have a solution for it. (This is where your blog excels.)
- Evaluation – Those who move through the Awareness Stage must now evaluate the various choices available to them, including your
competitor’s solutions and, of course, taking no action at all to solve the problem.
- Conversion – Those that move through the Evaluation Stage are now at the moment of truth—purchase. At DigitalMarketer, our goal at this stage is to convert leads into frequent and high-ticket buyers.
A cold prospect cannot evaluate your solution until they are first aware of the problem and your solution. And conversion is impossible until the prospect has first evaluated the possible courses of action.
To move a prospect through a marketing funnel, you need to give them content specifically designed to satisfy their needs at each of the three stages.
In other words…
- They need content at the top of the funnel (TOFU) that facilitates awareness.
- They need content in the middle of the funnel (MOFU) that facilitates evaluation.
- They need content at the bottom of the funnel (BOFU) that facilitates conversion.
Make sense?
Blogs are fantastic facilitators of awareness, but they do a poor job of facilitating evaluation and conversion. And, at the risk of pointing out
the obvious, evaluation and conversion are super critical to your business.
To move prospects through the middle (MOFU) and bottom of the funnel (BOFU) you’ll need other content types.
It looks like this…
We call this The Content Lifecycle.
Let’s look at each stage of the funnel and the content needed at those stages…
Top Of The Funnel (TOFU) Content Marketing
The prospects entering the top of your funnel are completely unaware of your solution and, often, completely unaware of their problem.
As a result, you need content with a low barrier to entry—because at this stage, they have little to no motivation to put skin in the game (such as giving your contact information or money).
You need freely available content at the top of the funnel (TOFU) that…
- Entertains
- Educates
- or Inspires
… and you need to make it readily available using content types like:
- Blog posts
- Social Media Updates
- Infographics
- Photographs
- Digital Magazines/Books
- Audio/Video Podcasts
- Microsites
- Print Magazines/Newsletters (You’ll need a bigger budget here.)
- Primary Research
Do you need all of these content types at the top of the funnel? Heck no.
Most businesses will post content to a blog and to social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. Once you’ve mastered these two content types, you’ll want to add more top-of-funnel content to the mix, like a podcast or a print newsletter.
Remember, the big goal at the top of the funnel is to make prospects “problem aware” and “solution aware.”
Notice how Whole Foods, using their Whole Story blog, raises awareness for a sea scallops offer while providing valuable content (recipes and cooking instructions):
TOFU content raises awareness of your offers while providing valuable information.
At DigitalMarketer we do that by providing educational content our prospects are interested in—and using that content to raise awareness of our training products and services.
(Shhhhh… don’t tell anyone, but this VERY chapter is educating you about the strategy and tactics taught in our Content Marketing Mastery Certification.)
And the good news is it works in any industry for any type of product.
Notice how this kitchen remodeling company uses photographs of remodeled kitchens to make prospects “problem aware” and “solution aware”:
With TOFU content, you want to create awareness around problems as well as solutions.
Unfortunately, the top of the funnel is where most organizations begin and end their content marketing efforts.
Smart content marketers know that, with a bit more effort, they can move prospects from awareness to evaluation in the middle of the funnel.
Here’s how it gets done…