Where Does Content Fit Into My B2B Marketing Funnel?

A successful content marketing campaign requires an investment in copywriting, research, editing, and often design and marketing distribution. However, this investment is well worth it. DemandMetric found that content marketing produces more than three times the amount of leads as outbound marketing efforts, and it costs 62% less. It's no wonder more companies are adding content into their B2B marketing funnel.

B2B companies continue to invest in marketing efforts.

One of B2B companies' most significant mistakes is creating content without understanding a sales funnel goal. Without fully understanding your buyer and their journey in the sales funnel, it's nearly impossible to create a content plan properly. A B2B marketing agency will want to take a deep dive into Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) so that they can develop robust content marketing strategies. If you are working with an internal marketing team, here are some considerations for positioning content within the B2B marketing funnel.

Each Content Offer Has a Goal

A piece of content can serve many different functions -- for example:

• Publish blog posts around a topic of authority to help your website rank in Google search and earn visibility with new leads.
  

• Invest in a research report that appeals to industry leaders and proves your company is a trusted, knowledgeable partner.

• Create sales content to show off a feature of your software or solution and highlight some major takeaways.

We have found that the most successful content offers are targeted to one particular place in the funnel -- awareness, consideration, or decision.

You can use a content offer in various ways, such as email nurturing, paid campaigns, and sales outreach. Make sure you have a stated goal for each content piece: to drive brand awareness, to convert website visitors into leads, or to nurture qualified leads into customers. It will help focus your writing and implementation strategy if you keep this goal top of mind.

Furthermore, it would help if you considered a lead's perspective when you write. For example, if you're tackling a blog post, remember that your reader likely found your article through search, so they probably don't know much about your company. 

With that in mind, that it will be confusing if your blog post tries to take on the job of a sales call. Instead, your blog posts' goal should be to educate leads, gain new brand exposure, and earn keyword traction so that you can bring new visitors in who will hopefully convert.

Repurposing Content for other Objectives

You spend a lot of time creating quality content. So while you certainly don't want to "cut corners," you should repurpose your content to achieve other goals without reinventing the wheel.

Some ideas for repurposing content may include:

• Take a series of blog posts and repurpose them into a branded eBook, then gate the eBook on a landing page and set a conversion goal.
• Take a lengthy research report that you use to attract new leads, and recycle some statistics into a 1-2 page sales sheet about your company's differentiating factors. Then use this report for lead nurturing in the sales funnel.

"Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales leads at 33% lower cost per lead." –DemandGen

Repurpose content for other audiences. For example, a generic case study can quickly be rebranded for a specific industry or advertised with personalized ads for an account-based marketing campaign, such as "What can [company name] learn about improving their processes 250% from this case study?"

Giving your content a new look, format, and platform can help you achieve completely new KPIs from existing work.

Audit Your Funnel for B2B Marketing Content Ideas

Review actions taken in your sales funnel for more ideas on content offers. Are you unsuccessful at bringing in new leads at the top? Then consider investing more in blogging and awareness-stage pieces built for a new audience. Are you generating leads but not closing new deals? The answer here is building an arsenal of sales content like demo videos, case studies, and testimonials to help nurture leads further in the funnel.

Take inspiration from the metrics in your sales funnel, and pay attention to the impact of each content offer on your results.

Conclusion

Content marketing is important for your entire B2B funnel, but you will see the best results if you create content with a goal in mind, repurpose and rebrand to get more mileage from your work, and take inspiration from your funnel pain points.

Sources

DemandMetric, Content Marketing Infographic.