Have you ever given some thought to your Content Marketing Strategy? If you have, then you should leverage the Content Marketing funnel to grow your business. The Content Marketing Funnel helps to put into perspective your customer’s journey during the buying decision process. Ideally, the content you put out there should support your customer’s buying journey and if your content is great, your prospects are closer to buying your goods or services.
The 4 steps in the Content Marketing funnel are Awareness, Consideration, Evaluation, and Purchase. Every step has a specific objective and this should always guide the content dished out across these 4 steps.
Step 1:
The first stage focuses on educating your audience who you can safely assume, do not know you, your company, or the solutions you provide. It is solely up to you to educate them and make them aware. Consider using Podcasts, Videos, Sharable blog posts (If you have a blog), Your other SM posts, E-books, or Infographics.
Whichever you decide to adopt, just be sure that it resonates with your target so you don’t lose them even before gaining them. Also to note is that you don’t need to use them all. Just select the few you are comfortable with and your audience appreciates it.
With each piece of content you put out there, be sure to track and note:
- If your audience is engaging with your content
- Any follow up conversations after the engagement
- Is your audience viewing and or sharing your content?
Your bounce rate for an instance on your blog or website goes a long way in accessing if your content is being viewed and if it is not, feel free to pivot, you mustn’t remain stuck on just one path. If it ain’t working, review, change but don’t remain stuck!
Consideration:
This is the second stage where your prospects mull over your products or services viz-a-viz the content you have put out there. Yes, they are now aware that there is a problem whose solution maybe your product or service. They are seriously talking about getting rid of the problem but are yet to make a commitment to take action. They are still very apprehensive.
Your content at this stage
- Should allay their fears,
- Answer their questions
- Urge them to take action!
Evaluation:
At this stage, your prospects are analyzing the various options they have viz-a-viz your own service,at the middle of the funnel, they begin to determine if your product offers the best solution and if it is really needed to solve that identified need. At this stage, they need reassurances, a relationship needs to be built, trust needs to be built to ease your prospect into the actual purchase stage. The need to know what makes your product or service unique, what makes it different from the others. Consider leveraging on content tied around:
- Free resources or tools to help
- PDF downloads
- Case studies
- Emails
Tick off the following at this stage
- Is this content geared towards achieving the end goal( Hopefully, you have set out your goals from the beginning)
- Any leads from this content
- Any conversions from the leads
Great content helps in moving a potential customer toward purchase. It is no magic and do not think one stage can do all the heavy lifting or one type of content will bring a million customers to your doorstep. You must be consistent and persistent in putting out valuable content
Conversion:
This is the ultimate goal of every businessman. If you have persistently and consistently given your prospects clear reasons why your product or service is the best thing that can ever happen to them, then a purchase is soon inevitable.
Give them a smart reason to buy. Offer a money-back guarantee, A free trial period, as is being said, the taste of the pudding is in the eating. Titillate their taste buds and get them longing for more….Comparison to similar products and showcasing how yours is superior help you in influencing a purchase
For this stage, it is key to address the following,
- Ensure your purchase process is made very simple. Do not get us to click a million times before purchase because at that point, you may just lose a hard sale. Your online purchase process should not be more than 2 or at most 3 clicks pending what else you need in addition to your customer’s purchase.
- Ensure your content has a clear call to action. Be bold about what you need from your prospect
Generally, a detailed content marketing strategy provides answers to these questions
- Taking your business industry into consideration. What type of content is to be created?
- What are the steps to measuring how successful my content is/was
- After the measurement, what can be improved, what can be done better?
Should you need help with your content strategy, you can reach us here.
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