Structure Your Marketing as a Funnel

The Four-Phase Marketing Funnel and The Power of Tailored Content

For any business, a well-structured marketing strategy is the cornerstone of success. Central to this strategy is the marketing funnel, a model that encapsulates the customer journey from the initial interaction with your brand to the final purchasing decision. It's an essential tool for visualizing and understanding your customer's thought process and behavior at each stage. By mapping out this journey, brands can create tailored content that aligns with each phase – Attract, Engage, Convert, and Delight – to guide prospects towards becoming paying clients.

Attract

The first phase of the marketing funnel is about generating awareness and driving traffic to your brand (usually your website). Your goal at this stage is to reach potential customers who might not even know your brand or product exists, and then to provide a simple call-to-action (CTA) that lets them transition into "Engage"

Focus on these types of content:

Blog posts and articles: High-quality, SEO-optimized blog posts or articles can be instrumental in attracting organic traffic to your website. The content should be informative, engaging, and aligned with your target audience's interests or problems. This content does not need to have especially long shelf life and can be topical in nature, talking about latest trends in your industry.

Social media posts: Eye-catching, shareable content on platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter can raise brand visibility and attract an even wider audience.

Infographics and Videos: These can simplify complex topics or illustrate processes, making them great for introducing your brand or product. They are sharable, easily consumable content that makes it great for the "Attract" stage.

Engage

Once you've attracted potential customers, the next step is to engage them. This phase involves providing value by engaging and informing your audience. This should be gated content with more detailed and specific content that resonates with your audience's pain points and needs and encourages them to interact more with your brand. There should always be a CTA to take them further down the funnel to the Convert stage. All the while, when they download your content you are collecting information about your audience that can be used for calculating their MQL score.

Focus on these types of content:

White papers and Long-form Articles: Diving deep into the best-practices in your industry can provide for excellent "Engage" content.

E-mail newsletters and drip campaigns: A well-crafted newsletter can provide valuable, personalized content directly to your audience. Regular updates keep your brand at the top of their mind.

E-books and How-to guides: These offer more comprehensive information about a topic of interest, demonstrating your expertise and providing real value to your audience.

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Convert

The conversion phase is where you persuade your engaged audience to take action. Your content should now focus on demonstrating the unique value of your product or service and how it can solve their problems or meet their needs. The objective here is to prove value and convert your reader into a client.

Case studies and testimonials: These can provide social proof, showing prospects how others have benefited from your product or service.

Product demonstrations or tutorials: These can showcase your product's functionality and benefits, helping potential customers visualize how it would work for them.

Free trials or discounts: Offering a free trial or exclusive discount can incentivize your audience to make the leap from engagement to conversion.

Delight

Even after a successful purchase, your job isn't over. The delight phase is about nurturing the relationship with your customers, turning them into loyal fans who will return for future purchases and refer others to your brand.

Follow-up emails: Personalized emails thanking the customer for their purchase or asking for feedback can show you value their business and are interested in their experience.

Tutorials and Getting started guides: Focusing on content that increase the value of your product or services is excellent for delighting your customers and keeping them happy.

Community engagement: Regular interaction on social media, forums, or community spaces can maintain the relationship with your customers and make them feel part of a community.

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Mapping your content to each phase of the marketing funnel ensures you provide value and build trust at every step of the customer's journey. By understanding and catering to your audience's needs at each phase, you can guide them smoothly from initial awareness to loyal fandom, maximizing the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

Talk to us about how you can use your existing content to start doing this NOW.