How to Optimize Your Content Funnel for More Conversions
According to a Semrush report, the top challenges faced by content marketers correlate with the content funnel stages. The content funnel is a visual representation of all your audience's steps on their journey to becoming a customer.
It's a choreography of everything that happens between them finding you, reading your content, and engaging with your brand.
It is similar to a sales funnel, but it focuses on content instead of products and services.
The purpose of a content marketing funnel is to help you convert more visitors into leads, subscribers, and customers.
This can be done through email marketing, social media, and blog posts — or any combination thereof.
It's a great way to get people to engage with your content and ultimately purchase from you.
This guide will walk you through how to create a content marketing funnel and optimize it so that it reaches the right audience at the right time.
Optimizing Your Content Funnel
1. Top of the Funnel: Leverage Behavior Data
Marketing content funnel strategy is the process of determining your next steps based on what your buyer journey and user behavior data are telling you.
If you are using an intent-based keyword strategy, optimize your content funnel by basing your decisions on the most recent buyer journey and user behavior data.
The most important thing to remember is that your content funnel should be built from the bottom up, starting with the most recent buyer journey and user behavior data.
It's all about understanding your readers.
If you're not sure what that looks like, ask yourself:
What is the most recent buyer journey I have?
Which of my customers are on it?
What are their goals?
How can I make them achieve those goals with my content?
This will help ensure that you're using the right content for each part of your audience's journey.
For example, if you have a customer who's just started using your product, they may not yet be ready to dive into in-depth features or tutorials.
Instead, they might benefit from a list of frequently asked questions or a video walkthrough.
2. Middle of the Funnel: Deliver a Better Experience to Your Readers
You have to optimize your content funnel to increase conversion.
To do this, you need to leverage the entire company's efforts to design content experiences your audience deserves.
It all starts at the top, where awareness is the goal, and it ends at the bottom, where conversions are the goal.
A well-designed content strategy requires input from all members of your team.
From writers to designers, content strategists should be involved at every stage of the process.
Today, everyone should be part of a content marketing strategy.
If you want people to engage with your brand, they need to know what it stands for and how it makes them feel.
This means creating content that resonates with them — something that will encourage them to share it and link back to you when appropriate.
And what better feedback is there than from your own team.
3. Bottom of the Funnel: Measure the Performance of Your Content
Measure the performance of your content to ensure a stable traffic flow of content that converts.
If your company is new, think about starting with a blog.
Keep in mind that a blog is a form of content marketing, so you should monitor and measure the ROI of your efforts to optimize your content funnel strategy.
Once you've established an audience through your blog, experiment with other types of content to see what works best for your audience.
You also have to be able to see the bigger picture.
For that, analyze your content and its historical performance in thematic clusters.
Group your similar posts together under common topics, gather data on blog performance, and align all your stakeholders on the insights you've gathered.
Then, stop focusing your efforts on themes or topics that don't generate business results.
So, if you see something constantly outperforming in traffic and leads, repurpose some of them into your bottom-of-the-funnel content offer.
You can use Google Search Console or Google Analytics to collect useful data about keywords or your website: what's working and what's not.
Conclusion
Marketing content funnel strategy is the key to converting more traffic into customers.
To optimize your marketing content funnel, create a robust marketing content strategy before you start creating any copy or images.
You need a plan to find out what content your prospects and customers are looking for and then deliver it in the most relevant way possible.
