What Is The Content Marketing Conversion Funnel For More Leads?

A content marketing funnel is basically a visualization that shows you your customer’s journey from the stage where they were attracted to your website all the way through to where they became a customer and potentially an evangelist for your brand.

Its purpose is to illustrate "the journey" of the customers from the moment they don't know anything about a company to the moment they become customers. Basically, it is designed to turn leads into customers, through a series of interactions people will have with the company, to switch from being a total stranger to a loyal customer. 

The basic marketing funnel steps are: 

- Awareness: when someone notices the business or service 

- Interest: now they want to discover more about you 

- Evaluation: they want to decide if you're credible 

- Trial: you looked trustworthy and they decided to do business with you

-  Adoption: when they finally choose to become a customer

What is a content conversion funnel?

A good funnel will take people from reading a piece of content to converting and being a customer, and then even to becoming a repeat customer and/or referring people back to you. 

This system is called a content conversion funnel or content marketing funnel and aims to get as many leads as possible through a step-by-step content flow and convert them into actual customers who pay for your products or services.

At every stage, the content you’re producing is key. Creating content is time-consuming so you have to make sure you’re optimizing your resources by creating fantastic high-value content that will engage an already overly-solicited audience.

A conversion funnel is an analogy, or visualization, used to depict how users move through your website, towards acquiring your company’s product or service. It is also known as a sales or marketing funnel. The image of a funnel is used because it depicts that user numbers dwindle the further down each stage of the conversion funnel. Although many website visitors may come in through the top of the funnel, much fewer come out the bottom. 

The goal in Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is to effectively widen the funnel to turn more website browsers into buyers.

Let’s say you have an online store selling clothes.

Your customers find you through searching, social media, and word of mouth. As a customer visits your website, browses around to see what he wants to buy, and makes a purchase — that is your conversion funnel. It’s all the steps your customers make from point of contact until purchase. What you want to do is keep all the steps involved in the conversion funnel clear, simple, and as short as possible. 

That means: 

- Fast loading website 

- Easy to navigate Clear and easy to find information 

- Short forms

Seemingly with every stage of a funnel, you need to make the user experience easy & smooth. Try to reduce your bounce rate and increase your conversion rate just by being there for you throughout every stage of the funnel. 

Here's the most widely used and very successful content conversion funnel - Where you can turn a stranger into a customer through your content marketing strategy. 

No expensive ways of making more conversions - Just you and your content that represent the authenticity of your brand. 

This infographic is the best representation of how your content should flow among your audience. The first stage will always be about creating awareness among new audiences. 

Every time you create content for the "Awareness stage in your funnel" - Consider reaching out to a new audience by creating content according to your buyer persona. When you create content especially for a new audience, it triggers only the new audience. 

The real aim is to create content for your first stage of the conversion funnel:- 

- Follow back

- Profile visit

- Like, save, comment and reshare

Once you get this goal on daily basis, you will reach out to more and more people. That's the number one thing that every new business needs to focus on - Reaching out to more and more people. 

Here's what you need to do in order to create awareness among new people:-

- know exactly who they are

- Where they congregate

- What type of content do they consume 

- What are their pain point

- What is their need and desire

- Why do they invest their time in you & your brand

Now create content for every bullet point I mentioned here. Hook more potential customers in your conversion funnel by creating content that they wish to have. 

The next big thing in your sales funnel is the second stage "Engagement". In this stage, your entire content demands action from your audience. The content in this stage should be in their best interest. 

Like Case studies about your product or brand, testimonial, FAQs, polls, Behind the scenes, etc. Content that lets your audience get curious about your business more. 

Content that makes them take action such as - Going through your feeds, profile, links, and your website.

The proper execution of your second stage will let your visitor get into the third stage and that is "CTA/SALE".  CTA is the call to action. Give them something in order to take instant action. Most businesses give away something very valuable to their audience in exchange for their email sign-ups. 

When you give away something very valuable to your new & very potential audience, it builds the impression of your business in your audience mind and as they say "The first impression is the last impression" 

That one single bait will decide your fate. 

If they get impressed with your giveaway - they will come back to do the real business with you. So in the CTA stage, you must focus on creating urgency that requires instant action.

The last stage and I call is the post funnel stage and that is "Retention" - where you re-target your old customer with the new and complementary products to their previous purchase. 

As "Once a liar is always a liar", the same goes to "once a buyer is always a buyer" {Pardon me for so many poetic gestures in the article, maybe today I am in a lit mood}.

If your business is capable enough to win the trust of a stranger to turn into a customer then your business has the potential to turn your old customer into a new customer all over again. 

If you sell the "Yoga Mat" for the first time, Next you re-target that customer with "Perfect yoga guide" - And 75% of the time it actually works. 

That's how your content plays such an active and important role in your customer's journey. 

If you create content according to this sales conversion funnel - There is no going back. 

Conclusion 

Content marketing is arguably the most effective type of marketing at your disposal today. However, you need to make sure that you are using content not to just generate traffic but to convert that traffic into sales. You need to make sure your content is relevant if you want to generate sales.

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All the very best. 
Be resourceful.