According to a recent survey, about 97% of businesses confirmed generating positive results from content marketing, a 6% increase from a similar study conducted 12 months prior.
However, businesses must have a well-crafted content marketing funnel to help them attract, nurture, and convert potential clients.
But what is a content marketing funnel?
It is a framework for creating content that caters to various stages of the buyer journey. By providing ‘useful’ content to help potential customers address their pain points, you establish a relationship with them that you can leverage to win them over.
In this article, you’ll learn how to create a B2B content marketing funnel that keeps your target audience engaged throughout the buyer journey.
Implementing a content marketing strategy is time-intensive, which may reduce your focus on core business functions. As such, we recommend outsourcing the function.
At Crackerjack Marketing, we have 14+ years of experience providing B2B content marketing services to businesses across various niches. We follow a thorough six-step process to customize B2B content to your business needs and increase the quality of the generated leads.
Book a free consultation to learn how we can help you develop a winning content marketing strategy!
Why is Content Marketing Important for B2B?
Content Marketing entails creating and sharing content, such as videos, infographics, podcasts, and articles, to stimulate interest in your products.
Here’s why B2B content marketing is worth it:
- High-Quality Leads: Content marketing helps you filter clients interested in your product. For example, suppose your content includes a call-to-action (CTA) statement encouraging your audience to sign up for free. Most sign-ups will comprise high-quality leads who could become paying clients with the right nurturing.
- Community Building: Publishing content on your social media profiles stimulates engagement from your target audiences. Those who find the content relevant will likely follow your profile, growing your social media following.
- Cost-Effective: Content marketing offers a low-cost, high-reward strategy for promoting your brand and products. You are only likely to incur costs when creating the content, as most sharing platforms are free.
- Organic SERP Rank: Sharing SEO-focused content helps your website rank in organic searches across various search engines. This helps generate traffic to your website, where you can introduce visitors to your conversion funnel.
- Thought Leadership: Sharing expert insight on industry trends helps establish your brand as an authority in your niche. This encourages clients to trust your brand, giving you business.
- Brand Loyalty: You can leverage content marketing to educate clients about your products. For example, you can share content explaining how to set up a system or troubleshoot issues. This helps increase customer satisfaction, creating brand loyalty.
B2B vs. B2C Content Marketing
“Are B2B and B2C content marketing the same?”
No. While both content strategies aim to generate leads, they are different in several ways:
- Target Audience: B2C content marketing targets anyone with purchasing power, while B2B focuses on other businesses as their primary clients.
- Distribution Channels: B2B content is mainly shared through email marketing, blogs, and webinars but can be promoted on social media. In contrast, B2C content is shared primarily on social media platforms.
- Content Style: B2C content marketing seeks to connect emotionally and personally with potential buyers, while B2B focuses on offering actionable solutions.
Stages of the B2B Content Marketing Funnel
When B2B clients identify a pain point, they seek to address it to mitigate the implications on their operating efficiency and profitability. The process they go through, from searching online to ordering the solution (product), can be turned into a conversion funnel.
A marketing funnel aims to provide engaging content at all stages of the buyer journey.
Let’s discuss the main phases of a B2B content marketing funnel:
Attract: Building Awareness and Interest
When looking to attract potential leads, your content should focus on creating organic awareness about your brand. You want to get noticed by clients (businesses) that could use your products to address their pain points.
However, the content should not promote your products directly. Instead, aim to generate leads by educating the target audience about your industry, including current and forecasted trends.
Examples of content in the attraction stage include:
- Webinars discussing new technologies
- White papers providing research-based insight on current industry trends
- Infographics highlighting common business challenges and how they hurt profitability
Nurture: Guiding Potential Clients Toward Solutions
At this point, businesses are aware of underlying pain points and are actively seeking solutions. Additionally, they know about your offerings but are also considering solutions from your competitors.
When looking to nurture potential leads into paying customers, prioritize content that helps you build relationships with potential clients.
Examples of suitable content for this phase include:
- Product alternative and comparison sheets
- Case studies on successful client stories
- Webinars discussing your product features
Convert: Encouraging Action and Commitment
Clients in the conversion phase of your content marketing funnel are seriously considering committing to your business.
However, they need a final nudge to take the target action, such as scheduling a one-on-one consultation with your business.
As such, your content should be conversion-focused and aim to convince customers to take action (order your product) while they’re on your website.
Leverage transactional keywords and phrases, including:
- “Request a demo.”
- “Book a free call.”
- “Schedule a one-on-one consultation.”
How to Create a B2B Content Marketing Funnel
Here’s a step-by-step guide for creating a winning content formula for your B2B marketing funnel:
1. Define Your Target Audience
Understand the type of clients you want to attract, including their interests and pain points. You can engage the prospects through surveys or analyze feedback to understand their needs and challenges.
This should help you create buyer personas for potential clients at each stage of the marketing funnel.
2. Outline Your B2B Content Goals
Identify SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) goals for your B2B content marketing funnel. Map the goals to specific funnel stages.
For example, your content goals for the conversion phase could be to increase demo sign-ups by 30% over six months. This goal meets the SMART criteria, which is essential for tracking performance.
3. Identify Customer Touchpoints
First, map out the customer journey and identify key points where your prospects interact with the content marketing funnel. Secondly, establish the type of content potential leads need to progress from one touchpoint to the next.
With this insight, you can create content that helps you nurture relationships with your target audience and convince them to proceed to the conversion phase.
Pro Tip: Identify how customers switch across channels based on the information they need and where they are in the content marketing funnel. Leverage this information to curate your content to your potential client’s needs, creating a basis for a value-based relationship.
4. Create Content for the Funnel
Tailor content for each funnel stage based on the personas you created. Utilize various content types to enhance engagement and keep the prospects in the funnel.
For example, you can publish blog posts and infographics to attract your prospects’ interest, hold webinars to help you nurture the leads, and finally offer demos and free trials for effective conversions.
5. Use Clear CTAs
Craft concise CTAs that compel prospects to take the target action. Avoid pushy or aggressive CTAs, as they could cause potential leads to disengage.
Instead, highlight the expected gains the audience will reap from completing the action.
For example, for a blog CTA, you can highlight 2-3 of your USPs and then request them to sign up for a 7-day free trial to experience the benefits first-hand.
6. Track Performance Metrics
Evaluate how the audience interacts with the content, including impressions, comments, shares, engagement rates, and the completed target actions.
Also, identify potential bottlenecks in the content marketing funnel that could cause the prospects you had attracted to drop off and find ways to address the issues.
As you can see, creating an effective B2B content funnel requires tremendous effort. But you don’t have to do it alone.
At Crackerjack Marketing, we can streamline your B2B content marketing strategy. We humanize your B2B content and magnetize your conversion funnel so it connects with your target audience.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid in B2B Funnel Strategy
You could have an air-tight content marketing funnel strategy, but one misstep could turn your efforts futile.
Below are common mistakes brands make with their B2B funnel strategies and how to avoid them:
- Overlooking SEO Fundamentals: Failing to optimize your content for search engines limits visibility and SERP ranking, reducing the funnel’s effectiveness. Conduct keyword research and include high-performing phrases to help you attract the ideal clients.
- Not Tracking Performance Metrics: Ignoring performance metrics results in missed opportunities for refining your B2B funnel strategy. Identify and track key performance indicators at each funnel stage for actionable insights into how to improve your content to attract the right prospects and keep them engaged (nurture them) within the funnel.
- Excess Salesy Content: Hard-sell content often alienates prospects, especially potential leads in the attraction and nurturing stages. Strike a balance between promotional and informative content to engage your target audience effectively.
- Posting Inconsistently: Not posting content regularly could hurt engagement rates and reduce your brand’s recall value. Download our free editorial calendar to schedule new posts, ensuring a steady flow of fresh material for your audience.
- Focusing on One Stage of the Funnel: Creating content for only one funnel stage, such as the ‘attract’ phase, means you pass up the chance to nurture the prospects and convert them to paying clients. Tailor content for each funnel stage to keep them engaged throughout the buyer journey.
- Ineffective CTAs: Unclear CTAs can result in low conversion rates. Craft compelling CTAs that guide prospects on the next step (target action).
B2B Content Marketing Best Practices
Below are proven methods for implementing an effective B2B content marketing strategy:
- Focus on Quality: Prioritize content that attracts your target prospects and delivers value to help you nurture relationships with them. This stimulates interest from potential buyers, which helps you retain them in your content marketing funnel.
- Use Backlinks: Create high-quality backlinks to enhance your website’s crawlability and indexing. This improves your content’s visibility on search engines, boosting your ranking.
- Test and Iterate: Use Google Analytics or other third-party tools to track how your target audience interacts with the content. This will help you determine what attracts your prospects at different funnel stages. Adjust your strategy to align your content with audience interest for maximum engagement.
- Optimize for SEO: Conduct keyword research to identify high-volume keywords with low competition. Such keywords are easy to rank for, enhancing your website’s visibility and ability to attract your target audience.
- Collaborate with Experts: Consider hiring B2B digital marketing services to help you create and implement a content marketing funnel strategy. This lets you focus on core business functions, helping you meet client expectations.
- Create Content for All Funnel Stages: Tailor your content to specific funnel stages for maximum audience engagement. For example, your content in the ‘attract’ phase should focus on increasing brand awareness by sharing industry insights, while your conversion-focused content should highlight your product’s unique value proposition.
- Leverage Visual Content: Incorporate dynamic content, such as infographics, videos, and charts, to grab the audience’s attention and keep them engaged.
- Implement Gated Content Strategically: Offer valuable resources like templates, guides, ebooks, and free trials as gated content requiring clients to sign up or commit to a paid plan. This helps filter high-intent clients for nurturing.
- Multi-Channel Marketing: Leverage various platforms, including email marketing, paid ads, and social media, to promote the content to a larger audience and attract more leads.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Here are some common questions about B2B content marketing funnel strategy:
How Do I Track Content Performance across Different Funnel Stages?
Tracking content performance requires identifying relevant metrics, integrating an analytics tool, and mapping the data. The metrics vary depending on the funnel stage:
- Attract: Monitor website traffic, unique visitors, and page views.
- Nurture: Track click-through rates, time on page, downloads, and webinar sign-ups.
- Convert: Monitor free trial sign-ups, demo requests, and the generated revenue.
How Do I Ensure My Content Speaks to Both Decision-Makers and Influencers?
The best way to ensure your content resonates with decision-makers and influencers is to personalize it to their interests:
- Decision-makers are interested in content that addresses risk management, business growth, and the expected ROI.
- In contrast, influencers like mid-level managers want content that helps them evaluate the available options and make informed decisions.
How Can I Leverage LinkedIn for B2B Content Marketing in the Funnel?
LinkedIn is an effective tool for sharing B2B content to generate leads and nurture potential clients. Here’s how to use LinkedIn for B2B content marketing:
- Create engaging content for all stages of the marketing funnel.
- Create posts with relevant visuals to grab readers’ attention and attract prospects to your content marketing funnel.
- Leverage polls and Q&A sessions to stimulate engagement.
- Collaborate with LinkedIn influencers to promote the content to a larger audience.
- Track LinkedIn analytics to see how your target audience engages with the content.
Conclusion
To wrap up, B2B content marketing doesn’t merely mean churning out material and hoping something sticks.
It’s about creating content that attracts your prospects’ attention and helps you nurture the relationships until they convert into paying clients. To achieve this, your content must be relevant to your target audience and address their information needs. This means brands cannot use a generic approach and hope to generate quality clients.
That’s why, at Crackerjack Marketing, we avoid templatized content at all costs. Instead, our focus is on helping you tailor the content to your buyer personas for maximum engagement and ROI.he content to your buyer personas for maximum engagement and ROI.
Contact us today, and let’s work together to revamp your brand!
According to a recent survey, about 97% of businesses confirmed generating positive results from content marketing, a 6% increase from a similar study conducted 12 months prior.
However, businesses must have a well-crafted content marketing funnel to help them attract, nurture, and convert potential clients.
But what is a content marketing funnel?
It is a framework for creating content that caters to various stages of the buyer journey. By providing ‘useful’ content to help potential customers address their pain points, you establish a relationship with them that you can leverage to win them over.
In this article, you’ll learn how to create a B2B content marketing funnel that keeps your target audience engaged throughout the buyer journey.
Implementing a content marketing strategy is time-intensive, which may reduce your focus on core business functions. As such, we recommend outsourcing the function.
At Crackerjack Marketing, we have 14+ years of experience providing B2B content marketing services to businesses across various niches. We follow a thorough six-step process to customize B2B content to your business needs and increase the quality of the generated leads.
Book a free consultation to learn how we can help you develop a winning content marketing strategy!
Why is Content Marketing Important for B2B?
Content Marketing entails creating and sharing content, such as videos, infographics, podcasts, and articles, to stimulate interest in your products.
Here’s why B2B content marketing is worth it:
- High-Quality Leads: Content marketing helps you filter clients interested in your product. For example, suppose your content includes a call-to-action (CTA) statement encouraging your audience to sign up for free. Most sign-ups will comprise high-quality leads who could become paying clients with the right nurturing.
- Community Building: Publishing content on your social media profiles stimulates engagement from your target audiences. Those who find the content relevant will likely follow your profile, growing your social media following.
- Cost-Effective: Content marketing offers a low-cost, high-reward strategy for promoting your brand and products. You are only likely to incur costs when creating the content, as most sharing platforms are free.
- Organic SERP Rank: Sharing SEO-focused content helps your website rank in organic searches across various search engines. This helps generate traffic to your website, where you can introduce visitors to your conversion funnel.
- Thought Leadership: Sharing expert insight on industry trends helps establish your brand as an authority in your niche. This encourages clients to trust your brand, giving you business.
- Brand Loyalty: You can leverage content marketing to educate clients about your products. For example, you can share content explaining how to set up a system or troubleshoot issues. This helps increase customer satisfaction, creating brand loyalty.
B2B vs. B2C Content Marketing
“Are B2B and B2C content marketing the same?”
No. While both content strategies aim to generate leads, they are different in several ways:
- Target Audience: B2C content marketing targets anyone with purchasing power, while B2B focuses on other businesses as their primary clients.
- Distribution Channels: B2B content is mainly shared through email marketing, blogs, and webinars but can be promoted on social media. In contrast, B2C content is shared primarily on social media platforms.
- Content Style: B2C content marketing seeks to connect emotionally and personally with potential buyers, while B2B focuses on offering actionable solutions.
Stages of the B2B Content Marketing Funnel
When B2B clients identify a pain point, they seek to address it to mitigate the implications on their operating efficiency and profitability. The process they go through, from searching online to ordering the solution (product), can be turned into a conversion funnel.
A marketing funnel aims to provide engaging content at all stages of the buyer journey.
Let’s discuss the main phases of a B2B content marketing funnel:
Attract: Building Awareness and Interest
When looking to attract potential leads, your content should focus on creating organic awareness about your brand. You want to get noticed by clients (businesses) that could use your products to address their pain points.
However, the content should not promote your products directly. Instead, aim to generate leads by educating the target audience about your industry, including current and forecasted trends.
Examples of content in the attraction stage include:
- Webinars discussing new technologies
- White papers providing research-based insight on current industry trends
- Infographics highlighting common business challenges and how they hurt profitability
Nurture: Guiding Potential Clients Toward Solutions
At this point, businesses are aware of underlying pain points and are actively seeking solutions. Additionally, they know about your offerings but are also considering solutions from your competitors.
When looking to nurture potential leads into paying customers, prioritize content that helps you build relationships with potential clients.
Examples of suitable content for this phase include:
- Product alternative and comparison sheets
- Case studies on successful client stories
- Webinars discussing your product features
Convert: Encouraging Action and Commitment
Clients in the conversion phase of your content marketing funnel are seriously considering committing to your business.
However, they need a final nudge to take the target action, such as scheduling a one-on-one consultation with your business.
As such, your content should be conversion-focused and aim to convince customers to take action (order your product) while they’re on your website.
Leverage transactional keywords and phrases, including:
- “Request a demo.”
- “Book a free call.”
- “Schedule a one-on-one consultation.”
How to Create a B2B Content Marketing Funnel
Here’s a step-by-step guide for creating a winning content formula for your B2B marketing funnel:
1. Define Your Target Audience
Understand the type of clients you want to attract, including their interests and pain points. You can engage the prospects through surveys or analyze feedback to understand their needs and challenges.
This should help you create buyer personas for potential clients at each stage of the marketing funnel.
2. Outline Your B2B Content Goals
Identify SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) goals for your B2B content marketing funnel. Map the goals to specific funnel stages.
For example, your content goals for the conversion phase could be to increase demo sign-ups by 30% over six months. This goal meets the SMART criteria, which is essential for tracking performance.
3. Identify Customer Touchpoints
First, map out the customer journey and identify key points where your prospects interact with the content marketing funnel. Secondly, establish the type of content potential leads need to progress from one touchpoint to the next.
With this insight, you can create content that helps you nurture relationships with your target audience and convince them to proceed to the conversion phase.
Pro Tip: Identify how customers switch across channels based on the information they need and where they are in the content marketing funnel. Leverage this information to curate your content to your potential client’s needs, creating a basis for a value-based relationship.
4. Create Content for the Funnel
Tailor content for each funnel stage based on the personas you created. Utilize various content types to enhance engagement and keep the prospects in the funnel.
For example, you can publish blog posts and infographics to attract your prospects’ interest, hold webinars to help you nurture the leads, and finally offer demos and free trials for effective conversions.
5. Use Clear CTAs
Craft concise CTAs that compel prospects to take the target action. Avoid pushy or aggressive CTAs, as they could cause potential leads to disengage.
Instead, highlight the expected gains the audience will reap from completing the action.
For example, for a blog CTA, you can highlight 2-3 of your USPs and then request them to sign up for a 7-day free trial to experience the benefits first-hand.
6. Track Performance Metrics
Evaluate how the audience interacts with the content, including impressions, comments, shares, engagement rates, and the completed target actions.
Also, identify potential bottlenecks in the content marketing funnel that could cause the prospects you had attracted to drop off and find ways to address the issues.
As you can see, creating an effective B2B content funnel requires tremendous effort. But you don’t have to do it alone.
At Crackerjack Marketing, we can streamline your B2B content marketing strategy. We humanize your B2B content and magnetize your conversion funnel so it connects with your target audience.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid in B2B Funnel Strategy
You could have an air-tight content marketing funnel strategy, but one misstep could turn your efforts futile.
Below are common mistakes brands make with their B2B funnel strategies and how to avoid them:
- Overlooking SEO Fundamentals: Failing to optimize your content for search engines limits visibility and SERP ranking, reducing the funnel’s effectiveness. Conduct keyword research and include high-performing phrases to help you attract the ideal clients.
- Not Tracking Performance Metrics: Ignoring performance metrics results in missed opportunities for refining your B2B funnel strategy. Identify and track key performance indicators at each funnel stage for actionable insights into how to improve your content to attract the right prospects and keep them engaged (nurture them) within the funnel.
- Excess Salesy Content: Hard-sell content often alienates prospects, especially potential leads in the attraction and nurturing stages. Strike a balance between promotional and informative content to engage your target audience effectively.
- Posting Inconsistently: Not posting content regularly could hurt engagement rates and reduce your brand’s recall value. Download our free editorial calendar to schedule new posts, ensuring a steady flow of fresh material for your audience.
- Focusing on One Stage of the Funnel: Creating content for only one funnel stage, such as the ‘attract’ phase, means you pass up the chance to nurture the prospects and convert them to paying clients. Tailor content for each funnel stage to keep them engaged throughout the buyer journey.
- Ineffective CTAs: Unclear CTAs can result in low conversion rates. Craft compelling CTAs that guide prospects on the next step (target action).
B2B Content Marketing Best Practices
Below are proven methods for implementing an effective B2B content marketing strategy:
- Focus on Quality: Prioritize content that attracts your target prospects and delivers value to help you nurture relationships with them. This stimulates interest from potential buyers, which helps you retain them in your content marketing funnel.
- Use Backlinks: Create high-quality backlinks to enhance your website’s crawlability and indexing. This improves your content’s visibility on search engines, boosting your ranking.
- Test and Iterate: Use Google Analytics or other third-party tools to track how your target audience interacts with the content. This will help you determine what attracts your prospects at different funnel stages. Adjust your strategy to align your content with audience interest for maximum engagement.
- Optimize for SEO: Conduct keyword research to identify high-volume keywords with low competition. Such keywords are easy to rank for, enhancing your website’s visibility and ability to attract your target audience.
- Collaborate with Experts: Consider hiring B2B digital marketing services to help you create and implement a content marketing funnel strategy. This lets you focus on core business functions, helping you meet client expectations.
- Create Content for All Funnel Stages: Tailor your content to specific funnel stages for maximum audience engagement. For example, your content in the ‘attract’ phase should focus on increasing brand awareness by sharing industry insights, while your conversion-focused content should highlight your product’s unique value proposition.
- Leverage Visual Content: Incorporate dynamic content, such as infographics, videos, and charts, to grab the audience’s attention and keep them engaged.
- Implement Gated Content Strategically: Offer valuable resources like templates, guides, ebooks, and free trials as gated content requiring clients to sign up or commit to a paid plan. This helps filter high-intent clients for nurturing.
- Multi-Channel Marketing: Leverage various platforms, including email marketing, paid ads, and social media, to promote the content to a larger audience and attract more leads.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Here are some common questions about B2B content marketing funnel strategy:
How Do I Track Content Performance across Different Funnel Stages?
Tracking content performance requires identifying relevant metrics, integrating an analytics tool, and mapping the data. The metrics vary depending on the funnel stage:
- Attract: Monitor website traffic, unique visitors, and page views.
- Nurture: Track click-through rates, time on page, downloads, and webinar sign-ups.
- Convert: Monitor free trial sign-ups, demo requests, and the generated revenue.
How Do I Ensure My Content Speaks to Both Decision-Makers and Influencers?
The best way to ensure your content resonates with decision-makers and influencers is to personalize it to their interests:
- Decision-makers are interested in content that addresses risk management, business growth, and the expected ROI.
- In contrast, influencers like mid-level managers want content that helps them evaluate the available options and make informed decisions.
How Can I Leverage LinkedIn for B2B Content Marketing in the Funnel?
LinkedIn is an effective tool for sharing B2B content to generate leads and nurture potential clients. Here’s how to use LinkedIn for B2B content marketing:
- Create engaging content for all stages of the marketing funnel.
- Create posts with relevant visuals to grab readers’ attention and attract prospects to your content marketing funnel.
- Leverage polls and Q&A sessions to stimulate engagement.
- Collaborate with LinkedIn influencers to promote the content to a larger audience.
- Track LinkedIn analytics to see how your target audience engages with the content.
Conclusion
To wrap up, B2B content marketing doesn’t merely mean churning out material and hoping something sticks.
It’s about creating content that attracts your prospects’ attention and helps you nurture the relationships until they convert into paying clients. To achieve this, your content must be relevant to your target audience and address their information needs. This means brands cannot use a generic approach and hope to generate quality clients.
That’s why, at Crackerjack Marketing, we avoid templatized content at all costs. Instead, our focus is on helping you tailor the content to your buyer personas for maximum engagement and ROI.he content to your buyer personas for maximum engagement and ROI.
Contact us today, and let’s work together to revamp your brand!
