What are your thoughts about modern buyers in the B2B and B2C landscape? Most are content savvy particularly because they check multiple content pieces across several online platforms before proceeding from one stage of the marketing funnel to the next. Finding the right content to answer buyers’ queries is difficult but possible. Ultimately, though, converting leads into paying customers through the implementation of effective content marketing strategies is usually harder.

If your buyers are browsing your content, do you know if they are moving forward in the funnel as well, and is your content doing an effective job at pushing buyers across numerous funnel stages? If your answers are no to these questions, this article is the right starting point for you!

A Course of Action For Each Marketing Funnel Stage

The marketing funnel is categorized into three distinct stages, and every stage requires a specific set of actions. Keep reading to determine what must be done to maximize conversions at each stage.

1. Top of the Funnel (TOFU): In this awareness or discovery stage, it’s important to take the following actions: 

• Evaluate ad impressions, clicks, search volumes, brand mentions, domain authority, and engagement metrics
• Generate a high-quality landing page to minimize CPC and maximize outreach
• Focus on increasing the share of voice (SOV) to determine  what your buyers are talking about in regards to your brand and/or competitors

2. Middle of the Funnel (MOFU): In this stage, you should take the following steps:

• Share dynamic content with buyers to gain their confidence and trust
• Make buyers aware of your company’s solutions and explain how those solutions  will be helpful and suitable for them
• Measure website traffic, email open rates, bounce rates, referral traffic, email sharing rates, and growth rates
• Closely monitor the rate of new and returning visitors. Returning visitors is a sign that they might be curious to learn  more about your products or services

3. Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU): In this final conversion stage, buyers are about to complete their purchase decision, and it’s crucial to do the following: 

• Make the onboarding process seamless and convenient
• Calculate the number of buyers who are ready to subscribe to your company’s content assets or offers and those who provide their contact details
• Determine whether buyers contact customer service teams or not with the intention to learn more about your solutions
• Measure renewals, reorders, cancellations, and return rates to better understand the major setbacks of your campaign efforts
• Analyze the buyer behavior of existing and past clients in order to predict the probability of new purchases

Content Marketing Strategies For Your B2B Marketing Funnel 

After learning about the course of action in each stage of the marketing funnel, it’s time to design effective content strategies. The goal of a company’s content should be to attract, engage, and delight their buyers. A one-time purchase isn’t the primary motive here, but in order to build post-sales relationships so that  buyers end up buying again, it’s important to focus on expanding the customer lifetime value (CLV) and regularly engaging with different buyers.

What comes next is to activate buyers’ progression in the marketing funnel, which can be done by implementing  the following content strategies:

1. Create Funnel-Specific Content

There are several types of content that can be used to engage with buyers. However, it’s typically  more effective and beneficial to curate content according to each funnel stage. In addition, TOFU requires the sharing of different content types in order to attract audiences. It’s important to use relevant content in display ads, landing pages, infographics, videos, and checklists. 

Whereas, MOFU requires content for engagement purposes. In this stage, it’s essential to create different blog posts, how-to guides, white papers, case studies, ebooks, webinars, social media posts, and email messages. 

Then there’s BOFU, which requires the creation of strategic content that motivates  buyers to make purchase decisions. A few examples of resources worth creating include surveys, reviews, special offers, giveaways, social media messages, and email campaigns. 

2. Plan Content Distribution Across Platforms 

Furthermore, keep in mind that curating creative and relevant content unfortunately isn’t enough. Instead, what needs to happen is to distribute the same content across various platforms in order to drive buyer engagement. 

A special cocktail consisting of earned media and paid media is essential for a strong content marketing strategy. Thus, try to design an integrated omnichannel content experience for enhancing brand positioning among your target audience segments. Remember to align your brand messaging across several channels to provide your buyers with a clear picture about what you do and what you offer. Also, it’s vital to direct your content resources to specific channels where your buyers spend most of their time thus increasing the chances of your content being seen.

Then, the next step is to determine the particular channels to focus on in order to engage with your audience based on their demographics as well as social media analytic findings. Here’s one example to think about: To engage with different B2B buyers, it’s necessary to be active on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter. Whereas, when it comes to the B2C space, platforms like Instagram, Tik Tok, and Pinterest can be used.  

3. Analyze Content Performance 

Last but not least is the need to measure how content is performing, which channel is the most effective, which channel isn’t effective, when buyers are the most engaged. Fortunately, content performance analysis will offer specific insights regarding the types of content to generate next and how to properly distribute them. This can be done by dividing the content metrics into four primary categories, which consist of buyer behavior, buyer engagement, SEO results, and return on investment (ROI) from content marketing efforts. 

Then, there’s behavioral analytics, which enable organizations to see how many users are interacting with their site, which pages show a maximum number of engagements, the number of recent visitors, and the number of returning visitors. Also, it’s important to focus on content that attracts new and returning visitors to a specific website followed by evaluating content marketing ROI to gauge if a company’s efforts are paying off. 

Overall, designing content marketing strategies with the intention of reaching long-term and short-term goals is not a straightforward task. There are thousands of companies that are  trying to reach users with their products or services. In order to stand out, companies should ensure that they’re not adding to the noise and instead, think of themselves as a storyteller by sharing their brand’s story to touch audiences’ hearts. Fortunately for you, Anteriad’s content syndication strategy can help you get your content in front of  important in-market B2B buyers who are actively looking to make  their next purchase!

Related Blogs:
4 Ways B2B Brands Use AI and Content Marketing