A Stepwise Approach To a Content Marketing Funnel

“Content is the atomic particle of all digital marketing.” – Rebecca Lieb

The customers in the contemporary world are not product-driven; they are driven by the content that sells that product. Therefore, content is the base on which the whole foundation of digital marketing is built to grab the customers’ attention.

In fact, as per statistics, 93% of marketers use content marketing to grow their businesses. However, only some of them were successful. The difference is that it requires the right content at the right stage to hook your audience. But how will you realize what type of content needs to be pitched to the audience at what time? This is where the content marketing funnel will enter the picture.

Before heading to the same, let’s get on the same page with the definition of the content marketing funnel.

What is a content marketing funnel?

A content marketing funnel systematically visualizes customers’ journey from landing on your business to consumers checking out after purchase. If you successfully create a well-structured content marketing strategy using the content marketing funnel, you can acquire more customers and retain existing customers. So, let us dive right into the blog and understand how you can create a successful content marketing funnel.

How do you create a content marketing funnel?

Identify Your Goals

We all understand that the ultimate goal of every business is to generate maximum profit and revenue. But before focusing on this long-term goal, we need to set some short goals that will lead to successful long-term goals.

So, in the first step, you need to identify the goals you want to attain through creating a content marketing funnel. There can be multiple goals, such as

    1. Creating awareness among the audience through content
    2. Converting your leads into loyal customers
    3. Or updating your existing customers to retain them.

But before even identifying the goals, you need to understand your audience and your position in the market. Based on a clear understanding of your audience and your position, you can set SMART goals for enhancing the efficiency of your content marketing funnel. Once you set the goals, you are ready to move on to the next step of creating a successful content marketing funnel.

Understand Every Stage of The Funnel

The whole funnel is categorized into three categories, and every stage is related to the position in which your target audience stands on the journey of purchasing from your brand. Hence, it is essential to understand every stage of the funnel to effectively understand the type of content you need to attract your target audience.

Below is a detailed elaboration on all three content marketing funnel stages.

    • TOFU – TOFU is an acronym for the top-of-the-funnel related to the awareness stage. In this stage, you write the content to make your audience aware. In this stage, the visitors from your audience land on your page to gather information about your product or information in general.
    • MOFU – This refers to the middle of the funnel, which is the evaluation stage of the purchasing journey. In this stage, the consumers interact with your content and decide whether they want to purchase your product.
    • BOFU – The BOFU stage is the last stage of the content marketing funnel. In this, your customer is convinced that they want your product, which is the conversion stage of the lead into a customer.

Create Relevant Content For Every Stage

As said above, an effective understanding of stages will clearly describe what content should be posted across all channels. We discovered 87% of marketers create content for different customer journey stages by digging deeper into the statistics. So, the next step is to create content for every stage that appeals to the audience of that particular stage and will add value to their purchase journey.

For TOFU

TOFU is the introduction stage of the business. So, the intention of content marketing in this stage is to drive traffic to the website to make people aware of the product and generate leads. Hence, in this stage, your content should be more about the information you intend to provide your audience. Hence, that being the case, You can go for the following content.

    • How-to tutorials
    • Guides
    • Infographics

In fact, as per the survey, 72% of surveyed marketers concluded that ‘how-to’ guides are the best traffic drivers. These types of content will generate curiosity among your audience and increase your brand awareness among the public. This will encourage the target audience to move to the next funnel step.

For MOFU

The second funnel stage is in the middle, where the audience is already aware of the business and wants to interact more with your brand. Moreover, this stage is about building trust, and the best way to do so is by providing proof of your product’s efficiency. Hence, the best type of content in this stage of the funnel will be

    • Product reviews
    • Case studies

For BOFU

BOFU, or the bottom of the funnel, is the final stage where your leads are converted into loyal customers of your product. In this stage, you generate the last pitch to convince your lead to purchase the product from you. So, at this stage, the content type should be

    • User-generated content
    • Use cases
    • Key performance indicators defining your conversion rate

Optimize content with keywords

As someone has correctly quoted, “The best place to hide a body is page two of Google search results.” This implies that nobody will find your website and read your well-written content if you do not rank higher.

Hence, along with creating a content funnel and writing incredible content, you must also ensure your content is optimized for search engines. Although there are many SEO practices for making content rank higher, making content keyword-oriented is one of the most effective ways.

Hence, while creating content for the content marketing funnel, you must also ensure your content is optimized for keywords. However, rather than single short-tail keywords, you can add long-tail keywords for better visibility on search engines.

To validate, a study from Smart Insights also concluded that long-tail keywords have a 3 to 5% higher click-through rate than general searches. So what are you waiting for? Create a content marketing funnel, optimize for SEO, and skyrocket your website today.

Track The Progress with KPIs

After creating the content per the generated content marketing funnel, the next and last step is to track the progress of implementing the content marketing funnel. By tracking the progress only, you will be able to measure whether the marketing funnel implementation was successful.

To measure your success, you can take assistance from various key performance indicators that can assist you in measuring the accomplishment of your business objectives. Some of the effective indicators for measuring the success of the content marketing funnel are

    • Conversion rate
    • Bounce rate
    • Return on marketing investment
    • Number of visitors

Tracking the progress will highlight your strengths and weaknesses that are assisting you in progressing or regressing your marketing efforts. Moreover, you can also take assistance from SWOT analysis for effective identification.

To encapsulate, content marketing is needed today, so instead of just doing it, we can do it correctly to avail the maximum benefits. To accomplish that, following the right steps and creating a unique marketing funnel is essential. Besides, the above-given description will give you a clear idea of creating a great content marketing funnel to get the most out of your content marketing strategy.


Jessica Robinson
Jessica Robinson

Jessica Robinson loves to write interesting and knowledgeable blogs regarding business management, education, and life to satiate the curiosity of her lovely readers. Currently, she is a content manager at the ‘Speaking Polymath.’ Every content she writes demonstrates her immense love and passion for her profession.

A Stepwise Approach To a Content Marketing Funnel

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