Content Marketing Funnel Explained: How We Make It Work

As a marketer, you are never creating content for the sake of content, so you are bound to either plan ahead or find yourself looking to capitalize on the traffic you are already getting. Either way, your strategic content marketing funnel must guide prospects from their first click to conversion – and beyond.

In this guide, we’ll break down what an SEO marketing funnel is, discuss its stages, and provide quality examples along the way. We’ll also touch base on how to analyze funnel performance, adjust your strategy, and much more. Let’s start with the basics!

Basic Funnel Concepts

We’ll start with a brief overview, unpacking the reasons behind the marketing funnel buzz before moving onto the actual stages.

What Is a Marketing Funnel?

A model that maps out your potential customer’s journey from awareness to decision-making, the marketing funnel sets up a path for how your customers see and interact with your brand, guiding them to discover you and purchase from you.

It starts with a broad target group and enables discovery but narrows down prospects toward the bottom of the funnel, boosting buying potential through simple yet effective tactics.

What Is the Purpose of a Funnel?

Each and every marketing funnel aims to optimize the buyer journey, where businesses strategically plan how to attract new customers, engage with them, and convert them into loyal customers with products that align with their needs.

Quality content makes it tick though, allowing your messages to reach the right audience at the right time. For years, search engine ranking pages have been a battleground for marketers but clicks alone are never enough. Many landing pages among top SERP results get high bounce rates and no engagement. So, what are they doing wrong?

Sales and Marketing Funnel

Content marketing usually covers the early stages of your funnel, increasing chances for conversions drastically by raising awareness and boosting engagement. Content marketing and sales go hand in hand but a sales funnel hones in on the decision-making processes, purchasing, and follow-up care. Aligned, these two get you a seamless customer experience.

What Is the Social Media Funnel?

A traditional funnel with a social media twist, it works around the frowned-upon external linking and creates a unique user experience on the platform. Social media funnels can include organic and paid content to raise awareness, while building trust through posts and engagement. At the bottom, social proof and CTAs drive conversions from social platforms.

Content Marketing Funnel Stages

So, what are we talking about when we mention the top or the bottom of the funnel? Let’s take a look at what different content funnel stages bring to the table.

Top of the Funnel Content (TOFU)

This is the so-called Awareness Phase. Your audience does not know you yet and might not even realize they have a problem you are looking to address. Your only goal here is to generate traffic and raise awareness of the issues you are actively solving, connecting your brand with the solution you are offering.

Perfect tools here include blog posts, infographics, and videos that educate and inspire. Many companies set up podcasts with experts discussing intricacies or push social media content campaigns to establish niche authority while raising awareness.

Middle of Funnel Content (MOFU)

This takes us to the middle of the funnel, where you consider your audience aware of the problem and looking for options. Depending on your industry, you can present guides, create case studies, or set up webinars to position your brand as a trustworthy partner.

You are now already actively selling and either taking your audience to the bottom of the funnel or helping competitors. Branding, company image, and portfolio come into play as potential customers gauge whether you are the perfect fit to implement suggested solutions.

Bottom of the Funnel Content (BOFU)

This is where decision-making happens. Now we’re talking conversions! Your task is to push your audience toward product demos, free trials, and pricing pages to close the deal by eliminating doubts they may have. You want to make taking action as easy as possible with your team a click away at any time.

Building a Content Funnel: Marketing Funnel Tactics by Stage

Let’s move on to the specific tactics you should use for each stage as you build content for your funnel.

Awareness

You are casting a net here, and you want it to be as wide as possible, using every chance possible to attract attention to the problem you are solving and your brand. From SEO-optimized blog posts to social media ads and explainer videos to influencer partnerships, you can use a range of tools to get your company on the radar.

Interest and Consideration

With proper targeting, you now expect a large portion of your audience to show interest and evaluate solutions. It’s your time to shine, showing off your knowledge and offering a layer of personalization to drive engagement through interactive tools.

Conversion

Put your secret weapons into action here. Show off your expertise and testimonials, think about your customer’s ROI considerations, and convert them with personalized offers. It’s crucial to make it easy for your audience to take action in a straightforward process with few steps.

Loyalty and Renewal of Interest

Retention is critical in the medium to long term, and customer care is what keeps your audience loyal. You want to deepen the brand connection and help your customers get the best value from your product, where you can offer newsletters, exclusive offers, and loyalty programs, or turn to check-ins offering additional content.

Adjusting Your Sales Funnel Strategy

To keep up with the times, we continually evolve and you want to adapt your content marketing sales funnel based on the data you are getting back.

Analyzing Funnel Performance

You need data that tells you where prospects lose interest and which content actually drives results, with drop-off points, engagement rates, and conversion metrics being focal points. You can use Google Analytics, HubSpot, or SEMrush to get detailed KPIs across TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU to help optimize your processes.

Key Funnel Metrics to Track

• Traffic by funnel stage: See if you drive visitors at each stage.
• Engagement rates: Check the time users spend on a page, their scroll depth, and click-throughs.
• Lead conversion rate: Find the percentage of your TOFU visitors turning into MOFU leads.
• Sales conversion rate: Learn how many MOFU or BOFU leads become customers.
• Cost per lead or acquisition: Calculate the efficiency of your funnel spending.

Targeting Audience

Leverage behavioral data to define the personas you are targeting and tailor your tone, format, or offers to suit them. Avoid assumptions as you ask yourself “What does my audience want or need right now?” Refine content and the tools you are using continually based on the data for the best results.

SEO Content

Great content, great products, and great services hardly matter if no one sees them. That’s why you embed search engine optimization in your funnel at every stage, only switching focus along the way. Optimize the metadata, do your keyword research, and align the overall marketing funnel strategy with individual stages to build strong potential for ranking.

Most importantly, always consider your visitor’s search intent and actively work to respond to it. The attention span you are looking to capitalize on is usually very short, and drifting from the topic will usually see your visitors bounce. Provide value every step of the way, and you will know you are on the right path.

Personalized Experience and Retargeting

Personalization and retargeting are crucial nowadays, with most consumers expecting their needs to be known from the get-go. Based on the user behavior we’ve discussed above, you want to alter CTAs, automate action triggers, and tailor how you address your audience.

You can use tools like Meta Pixel and Google Ads to retarget existing customers or visitors who dropped off at any point of your funnel. Push MOFU and BOFU content to bounce traffic, but also personalize post-purchase content to make it a conversation instead of marketing.

The Good and the Bad: Sales Marketing Funnel Examples

A lot can impact how your marketing funnel performs, but there are things every good funnel plan has in common, and we explore these examples below.

What High Converting Sales Funnels Have In Common

Let’s first cover a few traits the best funnels have in common and the strategies they employ to work wonders. These include:

Seamless UX

Netflix is quite possibly the king of UX, which has played a major part in its rise back in the day. This starts with social media at the top and continues with a simple landing page featuring easy sign-up options, an overview of trending content, and insights into primary selling points.

Simplified UX with intuitive design, personalized recommendations, e-mails, and in-app engagement has been a trademark of the streaming platform, setting it well above traditional cable.

Clear Calls to Action

Amazon is our perfect example of how proper CTA works. Amazon’s ‘Add to Cart’ button converts you into a buyer even before you create an account, making the purchasing process intuitive and extremely quick. The company recognized cart abandonment as a potential setback and addressed it expertly.

High-Value Content at Every Stage

Help Scout has made it their mission to provide valuable content every step of the way, showcasing how to take your leads through a funnel filled with informative blog posts and detailed product guides. It’s the perfect example of how quality content impacts funnel success.

Shortcomings of the Classic Marketing Sales Funnel

The traditional funnel marketing strategy has a primary – and possibly the only – shortcoming in its linear path. The modern buyer journey is often messy, where people like to jump stages, return later, or ghost it altogether. Rigid funnels don’t account for this, while flexible models like content flywheel embrace and thrive on it.

Spree Commerce’s early versions proved to be very limited in their linear sales process, where the open-source e-commerce platform struggled to satisfy target audiences. It has since transitioned to an API-first approach and now provides more customization in an attempt to address the issue.

FAQs

We address commonly asked questions and cover the basics of setting up a content marketing funnel below.

What Is a Marketing Funnel?

A funnel in marketing visualizes the steps a visitor takes before becoming a customer. It includes three basic stages: raising awareness, addressing consideration, and conversion. However, it can be expanded to interest and retargeting – which we’ve covered in this guide.

How To Make a Marketing Funnel?

Building a funnel for marketing starts by mapping your buyer journey, where you create targeted content for each stage and set up analytics tracking. An efficient funnel brings conversion and allows you to refine it based on performance continually.

What Are the 5 Stages of the Marketing Funnel?

The five typical stages are Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Conversion, and Loyalty. We’ve discussed each stage above and covered the specific content and tactics you can employ to build a content marketing funnel that works for you.

What Is a Full Funnel Content Marketing Strategy?

A content funnel strategy ensures you have engaging, value-driven content at every funnel stage. This means you’re fully devoted to customer’s needs and initial search intent, from the point when you’re attracting new visitors to the point where you’ve turned them into loyal customers.

What Is the SEO Content Funnel?

The SEO content funnel applies keyword-targeted content to each stage, boosting top-of-funnel traffic, adding leads with mid-funnel content, and helping convert with optimized bottom-funnel assets. Aside from impacting discovery and conversion rates, sales funnel content can make all the difference in how your potential customers see your brand.

Content Marketing Funnel: Final Thoughts

Building a strong content marketing funnel isn’t about flooding your blog with random posts. It’s about crafting a strategic, stage-by-stage experience that attracts and converts the right people. ContAnt can help optimize your buyer journey and take your funnel to the next level with conversion-focused content that drives results. Let’s create something great together!