What is Content Marketing?

It’d be nice if every person that visited your website converted, right? Unfortunately, it’s more complicated than ever to convince someone to take action. The average customer engages with 3-5 pieces of content before making a decision! Offering quality content during the first stage of the buying journey (the top of the funnel) is essential because it attracts qualified leads that trickle down into your search/social/email strategies. Is your content marketing strategy ultimately designed to drive traffic through content and social media?

Keep reading for some examples of top-funnel content in action.

But First, What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing involves planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing content at each stage of the buying journey to reach your target audience and hopefully drive profitable customer action. On a basic level, content marketing is educational, not promotional. However, very few people will see or benefit from all of your brand’s great content if it’s not promoted on owned media properties utilizing a blend of supporting strategies—more on that in future blog posts.

The Importance of Top Funnel Content

Top funnel content serves as a lead generation tool. Blog posts (like this one!) are among the most common types of top-funnel content. Other examples include:

  • Social Media Posts
  • Infographics
  • E-Books
  • Podcasts
  • Landing Pages

Content at the top of the marketing funnel has less to do with your brand, product, or service and more to do with your prospective customer’s interests and needs on a high-level. Top funnel content needs to be easily consumable, attention-grabbing, and, above all, useful. You’re trying to get your target audience’s attention and convince them that your brand provides value. Once your brand is considered a thought leader—a resource for interesting, useful information on topics your audience cares about—they’ll be more willing to opt into communications with your brand to access your insights.

Ultimately, you want your business to interact with people at every stage of the buying journey. As these leads continue to engage, you’ll need relevant content to persuade them to move into the next stage of the funnel.

Stay tuned for more blog posts on the content marketing funnel! Want to learn more about content marketing and how it can help your brand? Give us a call at 781-247-0730 or send an email to info@mittcom.com.