What Should Be in Your B2B Content Marketing Funnel?

Fact: Buyers want to consume content before they talk to a sales person. Marketing content is what is taking them 85% or more of the way through the buying journey.?

Since marketing is doing most of the work in the selling cycle, are you investing in the right kind of content and ENOUGH content to get people into a sales conversation?

Prospects Need to Consume Your Content Before They Buy

In Daniel Priestley’s book “Oversubscribed ”, he shares the 7-11-4 rule. Basically, he suggests that you need 7 hours of binge worthy content spread across 4 platforms with 11 touch points to turn someone into a believer (someone who is ready to have a conversation and potentially buy. I tend to agree.?

• Maybe that seems like a LOT of content to build out. Where should you start??
• Maybe you have tons of content but it doesn’t seem to be delivering results. What should you change?

Let’s dive in.

Content Must Have A ROLE AND A GOAL

There are 4 main roles and goals for content in your marketing funnel

1. Awareness content (prompts awareness of their problem and your ability to solve it)
2. Trust building content (helps people trust that you specialize in them)
3. Closing content (builds confidence in the buyer and removes fear in their decisions)
4. Referral content (helps you stay top of mind, delivers aha moments, is consistent)

What Types of Content Work Well in B2B Funnels?

Advertising Campaigns - Advertising works for a reason. It’s attention grabbing. Top of funnel (awareness) is the hardest and most expensive to get. Be bold and do something different from your competition. Ads are still content. It’s just extremely concise.

Short Form Content - Few people have an interest in white papers any more. Look at short written content, short brand videos, mini demos, SHORT case studies - focus on before/after stats and how the client FELT about the experience.

Visual Content - Infographics make it far easier to communicate your value proposition and things like timelines for results. Never just deliver content in writing when you could communicate graphically.

Polls and UGC - People in your marketing want to hear themselves talk. That’s a good thing! Crowdsourcing (user generated content) and polls are good ways to generate highly engaging content that you can repurpose across platforms and touch points.

Proprietary Market or Industry Research - This is ultra high value and well worth investing in. This does NOT have to be content that you pay a market research company to create. You may well have existing data that you can turn into insights.

Educational Content - Only use this if it helps the prospect make progress toward their goals. Don’t churn this stuff out just because YOU want them to ingest it. Courses that help your prospects advance professionally can be high value.

Email - It isn’t dead. It is a highly valuable nurture tool if you use it to deliver value and continue helping your prospect make progress.

Assessments - Tools that help prospects learn more about their problem and what it will take to fix it are content funnel gold. ROI calculators are one of the most compelling tools you can offer.

Thought Leadership - This only counts if you think DIFFERENTLY than everyone else in your industry. If you have a strong prediction or a contrarian opinion, this is a good starting place for thought leadership content.

Speaking & Authorship - Presentations and even a full length book are types of content that allow you to deliver a lot of value while boosting your brand authority and professional status.??

Want to know what to fix in your marketing funnel? Watch this.

Video - It makes everything work better. That's why we do so much of it at Blender! Put video on your website, landing pages, emails, social media, etc. EVERYWHERE.

Here are some quick stats to prove the point:?

• Video increases organic search traffic on a website by 157%. (Conversion XL )
• Websites with video are 53X more likely to rank on the first page of search (Insivia )
• Adding a video to your landing page can boost conversion up to 80%. (Unbounce )
• Adding video to emails can increase click rates by 300%. (HubSpot )
• Pages with video get more than 2x the dwell time compared to those without. (Wistia )

Final Tips for Your B2B Content Marketing Funnel:

1. Use content that invites signaling so you can gauge the interest level of your audience.
2. Include a clear next step in each piece of content so people don't drift away.
3. Make sure content leads people back to the channels that are your primary lead sources.

Want to explore what Blender can do to build a B2B content marketing strategy for your business? Book a time with our CEO, Dacia Coffey here .?

#ContentMarketing #B2BMarketing #MarketingStrategy