Patience Hurlburt-LawtonI’ve talked a lot about knowing your audience when it comes to content marketing; but this means more than understanding who your avatar is—it’s also about where each individual prospect is in your sales funnel.Let me explain; there are three levels of commitment and interest when it comes to prospective customers who visit your website. This is represented visually as a funnel:
Top of the Funnel = Awareness
Middle of the Funnel = Evaluation
Bottom of the Funnel = Conversion
So, this means we need to create content that not only caters to your avatar, but also to each level of interest he or she may have. Today, we’ll discuss top of the funnel content.
Goals for Top of the Funnel Content
When we say “top of the funnel,” we are referring to a very cold prospect. Content marketing for the top of the funnel should:
- Increase Awareness
The prospect may not even be aware that there is a problem or that your brand can solve it.
- Grow Retargeting Lists
You know when you view a product online and suddenly their ads follow you to every other website you visit? While a bit stalker-y, these retargeting ads—driven by cookies—are effective at bringing past visitors back to your site.
- Increase Engagement
How many followers on Twitter retweet your photo? How many likes do you get on a Facebook post? Engagement is important—but remember it’s not the only metric that matters!
- Grow Website Traffic
With killer content, this should be easy enough.
Top of the Funnel Content Types
So, now that we understand the goals of top of the funnel content, let’s go over the different types of content that engages prospects at this level of interest. Here’s what top of funnel content looks like:
- Blogs
- Social media updates
- Infographics
- Photos
- Digital magazine
- Audio podcasts
- Video/video podcasts
What we ultimately want to do is create “home base” content (content that lives on your website that you own) and share it to “outposts” (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest—essentially platforms you don’t own).
Most prospects are already on social media platforms; so, posting your content to social media (where there is already a full audience) will hopefully bring them over to your home base (website).
