If you’re trying to grow your business through content but are struggling to establish a funnel, especially a clear content marketing funnel, here’s what not to do…
What is a Content Marketing Funnel?
The content marketing funnel visualizes the journey of prospects as they consider a purchase, and it is part of an overall content marketing strategy. A successful content marketing funnels leads from your product to a satisfied customer of your business.
It is a simple multi-step process:
- Awareness ;
- Evaluation;
- purchase or conversion;
- happiness.
Each stage responds to a specific objective in the customer journey. But a comprehensive content marketing strategy answers these questions:
- What type of content should I create?
- How will I measure the success of my content?
- Where can I improve my content strategy?
Awareness
This is the first stage of the content marketing funnel where you want to attract and educate your audience about your topic, increase their awareness, and show them how you can solve their problems and their pain. Points can be eliminated. You can use a variety of materials such as:
- posting on social networks;
- blog post;
- e-book;
- podcast.
- article information;
- Movies.
With each content you create, ask yourself:
- Are prospects viewing, interacting with, and sharing the content?
- Is there any follow-up after the conversation?
Evaluation
At this stage, you are building a relationship, building trust, and getting your audience interested in your products. Now is not the time to sell “aggressively,” but once your audience gets to know your brand you want them to consider buying. Still, you don’t want your content to read like an advertisement. This is equivalent to making:
- blog posts.
- a white paper;
- Study the matter;
- a webinar.
At this stage, ask yourself if your content serves its purpose:
- Are people converting from this content?
- Am I generating new sales or leads from this content?
- Does this material help or hinder my end goal?
Recovery
This is the step where you want to convert contacts who have shown interest in your product. Your goal is to create content that will lead to the conclusion of the deal. The most effective formats at this stage are:
- notes ;
- questionnaire;
- self-assessment;
- product sheet.
At this stage, ask yourself the right questions:
- Do my content have a clear call to action?
- Am I making the buying process as easy as possible?
happiness
This is an important step to retain your customers for a long time. Here, you continue to nurture customer relationships to not only retain customers, but also to increase their lifetime value to your business. The different types of content that work at this level include:
- guide;
- Content exclusively reserved for members;
- forums;
- Gifts and special offers.
Finally, in this last step ask yourself these questions:
- Does the content give readers a reason to refer their friends?
- Does this content encourage customers to leave reviews?
What not to add to your content marketing funnel?
An effective content marketing funnel gets a potential customer to know about your brand quickly and make a purchase decision from you accordingly. When using a content marketing funnel, the primary goal is not to promote the product or service, but Give your target the value the product will bring them, You have to understand the pain points of your audience and work on those pain points in your post.
Without further ado, here are 5 mistakes that are often made in a content strategy
- You don’t understand your audience well, They don’t really know their expectations or their motivations. So they have no idea whether your product is what they really need and can it really help them;
- you don’t know your competitorsand not knowing how they differ from you;
- You are not flexible. You think of the content funnel as a plan to follow it to the letter without modifying it. Because of this, you don’t adjust it to different real-time events, audience needs and context.
- You only create content for new customersNew prospects, completely forgetting about your current customers. This is a common mistake and yet it should be avoided. In marketing, retaining an old customer is a much more expensive and complicated task than attracting a new one. So, never forget to connect with your old audience;
- You post the same content all the time. Of course, your content should be about your product or something that you can use to add to your product. Still, try to make your content different, even if it touches on the same thing.
Now is the time for you to invest in a content marketing funnel because today, more than ever, it is the most effective way to reach potential customers and make valuable sales!
Source: Lucidchart