A Beginner's Guide to Content and the Sales Funnel

If you are not familiar with the traditional sales funnel, this marketing concept
can help you better get to know your target customers and what they need
from you during each step of their buyer’s journey. Though content marketing
is often thought of as a top funnel strategy, different types of content can help
you reach people during each stage of this process. Knowing what the sales
funnel is and understanding where content fits into each stage can help you
better provide targeted content that draws new leads and customers to your
business.

Sales Funnel 101: The Basics
Imagine a funnel. It’s wider at the top and narrows considerably at the bottom.
In many ways, this resembles your sales process. You begin with a large batch
of leads, some who are right for your company and others who are not. As
these consumers do their research and interact with your brand, the number of
leads slowly decreases until those who are a good fit become customers and
you work to retain them.

This is the sales funnel, which has four basic stages:
● Awareness – At this stage, individuals are in the very beginning of their
buyer’s journey. They are seeking out education and new information to
help them better understand the available solutions to their problems.
● Consideration – During the consideration
stage, consumers are looking for a
demonstration of solutions or expertise.
They are comparing solutions to find which
may be a good fit for their particular need.
● Decision – This is when the consumer is
finally ready to buy and needs to make a
final decision. At this stage, consumers
want to experience some sort of
confirmation that they are making the right
choice.
● Retention – After consumers become
customers, they will continue to look to your brand for helpful information
and insight as well as new products and services that continue to make
their lives easier.

These stages each represent a process that your leads go through on their
journey to becoming customers. At each stage in the journey, these consumers
need information from your brand to better understand if you provide a viable
solution to their problems.

Why the Customer Journey is Important
When a customer buys your product or service, this is just one step in a long
journey that is made up of all the moments that have led to this purchase. By
understanding what your customer needs each step of the way, you can
improve their experience by making the buyer’s journey simple, clear, and
efficient. Ultimately, this will not only help empower the customer to make a
smart purchasing decision, but it will help you move them through the sales
funnel faster, which improves your bottom line.

Once you understand the buyer’s journey, you can get to know what your
target customers want and need during each stage. This allows you to create
more useful and targeted content that helps answer important questions and
demonstrate expertise early on and throughout the buyer’s journey.

How to Use Content at Each Stage
You might be used to creating brand blogs or social media content, but when it
comes to the sales funnel, different types of content are needed at different
stages throughout the buyer’s journey. For instance, when shopping for fuel-
efficient cars, you are probably going to do more research on the different
types of vehicles and brands that offer these vehicles before you compare
prices or apply for a car loan. Similarly, consumers at the top of the sales
funnel are needing different types of information than those who are ready to
make a purchase. Using Excel to track leads? The xlookup helps to know more
short keys and functions for both vertical and horizontal ranges.

Here is a simple guide on the types of content that are useful at each stage in
the sales funnel:

Awareness Stage – During this stage, you want to provide content that offers
broad overviews of the problem or topic. Rather than delving specifically into
your product or service, provide informational resources that address the
problems that your product or service solves.

Examples: Whitepapers, Guides, eBooks, Tip Sheets, Blog and Social Media
Content, Checklists, Infographics, Videos

Consideration Stage – During the consideration stage, individuals are looking
for examples of how solutions work and other demonstrations of expertise. This
is where you can start focusing on your specific product or solution and how it
works to solve their problem.

Examples: Webinars, Case Studies, Reviews and Testimonials, Product and
Specification Sheets, Videos, Buyer’s Guides

Decision Stage – Once the consumer is at this stage, they are ready to make
a purchasing decision. They just want to make sure that they are making the
right decision before they hand over their credit card. This is where you need to
provide content that validates their decision.

Examples: Free Trials, Product Demonstrations, Free Consultations, Price
Estimates or Quotes

Retention Stage – At this point, you have already made the sale. But if you
want to encourage repeat sales or have the opportunity to upsell later on, you
need to continue to nurture these client relationships.

Examples: Free Trials, Product Demonstrations, Blogs and Social Media
Content, Emails, Customer Retention Programs

How to Publish Content During the Buyer’s Journey
Once you have created content that is geared toward each stage of the sales
funnel, it is important that you publish this content in places that allow you to
get the most out of your content creation efforts. There are many outlets that
you can use to reach potential customers, but let’s talk about a few important
strategies.

One of the best ways to get the most out of your content is by creating gated
content. Gated content is free, quality content such as e-books and
whitepapers that you offer to visitors in exchange for their contact information.
You can create a lead form that asks for information such as name,
occupation, and email address, and then automatically add this data into your
customer relationship management (CRM) system for later follow up.

In addition to gated content, you can also create SEO-focused content that will
help you increase your visibility in the search engines and reach more potential
customers. Publishing content on edocr is just one of the many ways that you
can help improve your search engine rankings and expand your reach. The
document viewer on edocr extracts text from your document so that they can
be crawled and indexed by search engines. This helps improve your SEO and
put your content in front of a greater number of interested leads.

Want to take advantage of the opportunities that edocr offers to help you reach
your target customers? Register for an account today and start publishing your
content.