B2B organizations are using content marketing funnels as an important strategy to create brand awareness. Cold calling, emailing, and messaging are not popular methods anymore. Instead, content is taking over as a crucial part of the marketing world.
The challenge lies in creating the right content that can create awareness and improve brand recall. The content should be optimized for all three levels of marketing: the top, the middle and the bottom of the sales funnel. A content marketing funnel can adapt to any kind of business and service.
1. The Top of the Funnel (ToFu): Creating Awareness
The basic task of B2B content marketing during the top funnel is to create awareness amongst target customers and to drive traffic to the website. Your content should be all about your company’s vision and mission.
SEO plays a crucial role in optimizing your content and acquiring organic traffic on your website. Blog posts, guest posts, articles, and videos should explain the complex processes of your business and create customer engagement.
You will also need to create a network through events and public speeches. This will create customer awareness and trust in your brand.
2. The Middle of the Funnel (MoFu): Brand Evaluation
After the top of the funnel, the content has created awareness, it’s time for consumers to evaluate your business. Once your target customers know about your business, you need to deepen engagement.
The best way to do that is through webinars, books, and executive guides. You need to create information that can be easily accessed. During this stage, the basic task of the content should be to create authenticity and trustworthiness.
Social media plays an important role in one-on-one customer interactions. Users will immediately react to social media content which makes evaluation easier. The likes, comments, and shares from your target audience are your best source of brand evaluation insights.
3. The Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu): Generating Sales
The last stage in the B2B content marketing funnel is the one where conversions take place. This stage is crucial to generating sales. This content should help convince consumers that your products/services are the best choice for them.
Product demos, phone consultations, and testimonials will give a further push to the consumers to purchase your products/services. These types of content will also improve consumer trust.
Now you know the various stages of a B2B content marketing funnel and the relevance of content in each stage. Though content marketing is an effective method, it takes time before you get the desired results. You need to be patient and monitor your progress.
Many companies give up on content marketing if they don’t get the desired results quickly. But it could be that the content is not right or not reaching the target audience. You need to keep checking your performance and improving your campaigns.
If you want to understand more about B2B content marketing funnels, check out this infographic from UTM.io.
