Content and the Marketing Funnel

The real value of content for search is in a brand’s ability to deliver information for web searchers at various stages of what’s called the marketing journey.

That is, it enables your brand to deliver and create content for users at each step along the way as they learn about your products and services online. For example, visitors could be in the awareness stage, where they are becoming familiar with your brand; the discovery phase, where they are learning more about your brand; or the consideration phase, where they are considering doing business with you.

Brands hoping to use organic SEO to show up for that search query would need to put themselves in the shoes of the searcher and create content that answers questions (and ranks for keywords) like:

• Are they looking for adult or children's boots?

• Would they prefer actual skiing boots, hiking shoes suitable for snow, etc.?

• Do they have a brand preference?

• If they're a skier, are they a beginner, intermediate, or novice?

• Will they be purchasing shoes, or are they just browsing?

The elements listed above are just some of the things a brand has to consider, but we can still see that the various pieces of content to be created would need to answer all of these questions if we’re to have the best chance of being rewarded with a click.

To help marketers think of the content web searchers need at each step of the journey, they typically use a funnel to visualize the path a web searcher might take, the likely thought process of the searcher, and the content the brand needs to create.

Let's take a look at the marketing funnel (inspired by the magical elixir that fuels marketing efforts around the globe — coffee):

It’s important to realize there is no hard and fast delineation between the stages. A searcher could be in the awareness phase, then learn enough that they feel comfortable making a purchase, meaning they’ve jumped to the conversion stage.

The funnel itself is generally made up of four main stages:

• Discovery: The top of the funnel — typically viewed as the first step in the conversion process — represents awareness: people becoming familiar with your brand.

• Consideration: The middle of the funnel refers to where people seriously consider paying you for your products or services.

• Conversion: The middle-bottom of the funnel is where the rubber meets the road, in that it depicts customers deciding to do business with your brand.

• Retention: The bottom represents the area of the funnel where brands are working to retain customers.

You should also know there is no consensus on labeling for the funnel, but most brands tend to think of the funnel as having three core stages. That is, it’s instructive to see the funnel not as having hyper-specific, clearly defined areas, but as continuum that dynamically overlaps from one stage to the next:

• Top of the funnel (TOFU)

• Middle of the funnel (MOFU)

• Bottom of the funnel (BOFU)

As brands, the better we understand the questions or concerns prospects have as they interact with our content, the better able we are to create content for each step along their journey.

Separating fact from fiction

As SEOs, we often hear that “content marketing is a top-of-the-funnel” affair. That is, it’s only used by folks to encounter and maybe learn a little bit about our brands. Therefore, why should we worry about content for, say, conversions or retention?

When you hear this, it might help to ask that person a question:

“So we’re relying on people to convert right after they open our webpage or read a blog?”

As you’ll read in successive pages, content and content marketing can reach people at every stage of the conversion path. In fact, the more time prospects spend learning about and interacting with your brand, the more the narrow part of the funnel widens and lengthens, highlighting the potential for visitors to move from prospects to repeat customers and brand advocates.

Business goals: Indirect customer acquisition; brand awareness, improved search visibility

Tactic: Educational content, evergreen content

At this stage, your brand is attempting to generate awareness of your brand among potential customers. In some instances, when the use case for your product isn't immediately obvious, you may also be tasked with educating the market that there's even a problem to be solved.

It's not enough for people to simply hear your brand’s name. The content your brand offers at this stage should also stimulate visitors’ interest in learning more about your organization. Our goals at this stage might include nudging potential customers toward conversion, but the way we go about that is not by talking about ourselves. Instead, it's about figuring out what the audience wants and needs to learn about.

We use our content to educate them.

If you're doing that well, you're associating feelings of gratitude and respect with your brand — not to mention authority.

All the while, you're raising the competence of your readers to a point where the products or services you have to offer are more useful to them.

Types of content that work well during the awareness phase include:

• Blog posts

• Quizzes

• Videos

• Webinars

• Big content (games, tools, long-form content, parallax scrollers)

• Comprehensive guides

• Videos

• Email newsletters

• Checklists

• Tips/advice

• Infographic

• Numbered lists

As an SEO, you play a big role all of these areas, whether it’s in determining which keywords are likely to bring the most qualified traffic to your blog for a given topic, what format works best according to competitor research, or in helping to attain links to help bump up a specific piece of content in the search results.

And in turn, the content you create can have a substantial impact on your site’s search visibility as a whole.

Business goal: Customer acquisition or educating potential customers

Tactic: Solutions to use-case challenges

In this stage, prospects have often started associating your brand and the solution it offers with their needs.

It’s now time to start sharing with visitors the content that helps them evaluate whether your brand and its products are a good fit for their needs. The content we create and share is typically speaking directly to the people we think our business can help and making sure they’re aware of how we can assist them. Consideration content is the ideal vehicle for making certain it's as frictionless as possible for visitors to learn all the information they need to help them differentiate your brand from the competition.

At this stage people are likely to be looking for the following:

• Case studies

• How-to content that showcases your specific solution strategy or products

• Product descriptions and data sheets

• Testimonials

• Reviews

• Case studies

• Comprehensive guides

• Comparison content

• FAQs

• Statistics

Use cases illustrating how your brand solves customers' problems are ideal content for prospects at this stage in the funnel.

Think back to Blue Bottle Coffee. The brand’s how-to videos are short, punchy, and feature information prospects find relevant as they make decisions about purchasing, brewing and storing coffee. This well-thought-out content further reinforces the notion that Blue Bottle is a trustworthy brand deserving of their business.

Keep in mind, though, that middle-of-the-funnel content usually doesn't focus directly on what you're selling. The content is designed to help them learn more about an area (e.g., a coffee aficionado viewing Blue Bottle’s video blogs) relevant to your business or brand that’ll make it more likely that they do business with you.

Because prospects at this stage are aware of what your brand offers, the content produced for them should aim at being educational, fostering a greater connection between the prospect and the brand. Great examples of middle-of-the-funnel content include webinars or videos aimed at alleviating a struggle the prospect is likely to be facing.

Business goal: Sales

Tactic: Product information

The bottom of the funnel is the point of transaction (or conversion.) In this stage, it’s a safe bet people desire what you market and sell. The job for our content is straightforward: convince them to push the “buy” button. It helps if you can deliver a wow-level content experience that makes the decision that much easier:

• Interactive assets

• Demos

• Pricing pages

• Calculators

• Success stories

This type of content is more straightforward. While it comes in many forms, it’s helpful to think of bottom-of-the-funnel content as the sales material of content marketing. It can involve things like clear descriptions of your products that outline the unique value they provide to customers, or it could include charts that compare your various products to one another or to those of other companies. You can also consider using existing, say, sales copy, which could be adapted for the website.

Business goal: Retention of existing customers; advocacy

Tactic: Help, support, and onboarding

Once you have happy customers, your goal isn’t simply to keep them satisfied; it’s to convert them to brand evangelists and retain them long-term. At this stage, your brand is focused on turning one-time buyers into repeat customers (or, for companies with a subscription model, making sure customers continue their subscriptions instead of canceling) while also continuing to serve them at such a high level that they cannot help but spread the word about our brand. This evangelism by your customers often leads new prospects to enter the funnel.

How are retention and evangelism valuable to SEO?

Since happy customers often spread the word about your brand/products, you stand to gain increased traffic and links to your site without much effort. For these customers, the content you should be creating and sharing specifically for them include, but are not limited to the following:

• Exclusive how-to content

• In-depth product or service advice

• Insider tips and tactics

As you can see, each stage of the funnel requires a different approach. Nonetheless, at every stage, SEO is informing the process. For example, the SEO team is supporting content ideation and making certain the blogs, videos, and other top-of-funnel content is optimized with the right title tags and descriptions, so that they're more easily found by folks at that stage. The team is doing similar work for the other areas of the funnel.

The key is to discern which stage of the funnel you're creating content for, then figure out in advance who you're talking to and what they might need from your brand by way of content.

From defining your content strategy and audience to setting goals and auditing your content, our next chapter is a doozy (in the very best way, of course!) Settle in and head over to Chapter 3: Content Strategy.

Written by the Moz staff and our good friends at Seer Interactive.