You must already know that every new customer acquisition has an elaborate process behind it. This elaborate process is the journey of identifying a potential customer and then making them one.
This elaborate process happens in what we call a sales-to-funnel. Of course, a sales funnel has many parts, one even post-sales but for the sake of this topic, let’s discuss the main three parts that lead to a sale.
These three parts in the sales funnel are TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU.
What is TOFU, MOFU, & BOFU?
TOFU stands for the top of the funnel, MOFU means the middle of the sales funnel, while BOFU is the precious narrow part of the sales funnel.
TOFU consists of a large audience that could possibly have your target audience. People in this stage do not know anything about your business and are thus farthest away from making a purchase. Your goal in this stage is to increase their awareness regarding your products and services; hence TOFU is also known as the awareness stage.
MOFU consists of people who fit the description of your buyer personas. They know about your products but are considering whether to purchase products and services from you since this stage is also known as the consideration stage.
BOFU is the last and the narrowest stage in the sales funnel, also known as the decision stage. These are the leads that have to decide if they should go ahead with the purchase of your production services or not. By this stage, the leads know a lot about your business and are keen on purchasing a particular product or service.
Importance of content strategy in accordance with the stages in the sales funnel
Strategizing what type of content to create and target along different stages of the sales funnel is of imperative importance to quicken your customers’ journey across the funnel.
In this blog, we will help you proactively design such a content strategy and tell you which types of content you need to create for people in all three stages of the sales funnel.
TOFU
What are the people in TOFU like?
- They are a group of all the people who can be your prospective customers.
- Widest audience in all the three funnel stages.
- The audience is unaware of your business and what it sells.
- Only very few people will be interested in your products and services.
- They are not necessarily looking for the type of products and services you are selling.
What is required to target the audience in TOFU?
- Insight on how to identify the largest potential audience.
- Knowledge on which media platform they are on, their time spent, level of engagement for each of these platforms, their interests.
- Know what gets your prospects’ attention: consider the themes as well as the topics, such as humour, emotional investment, interesting facts, inspiration, and more.
- Your prospects’ demographic information for targeting: Consumers in different age groups, income brackets, urban or rural areas, lifestyles, and other demographics are likely to be interested in different things.
Best Tips
SEO is essential
You need to have your SEO game to be strong in order for people to find you first. Find the best keywords and create blogs around them. For example, if you have a SaaS company and want to rank your company’s blog/website, find the high-ranking keywords or target alternative keywords from other SaaS companies and write blogs using them. These blogs will help you rank better on SERPs. They will be the gateway for people to come to your website and know your business in the first place.
Enlighten your prospects
As this is known as an awareness stage, people are not aware of your products and services. All your content, like ads, blogs, and videos, should focus on informing people about what you are selling, why you are selling it, and how it would help them.
Repeat Your Message
You want to make an imprint in the people’s minds, and for that, you will have to show up often. Well, isn’t that the entire goal of advertisement? To make people in tofu move ahead in the funnel, they will have to take note of your business; for this to happen, you will have to make several appearances in terms of social media ads and other PPC ads.
Target the pain points
Since prospects do not know if they need your customers, you need to primarily show your products and services’ problems. For instance, if you are selling accounting software, you can target prospects with the benefits of accounting software and how it is better than manual ways of accounting. Or, if you are selling construction scheduling software, focus on highlighting the common challenges faced in construction project management and how your scheduling software can efficiently address these issues.
Best Types Of Content To Use In TOFU
Blogs
Blogs are a great way to educate a wide audience and gain the trust of information-seekers in your field. Content on your blogs should be SEO friendly, conversational, and well translated if you have a multilingual website. By proving your expertise in a certain subject, you put yourself in a great position to get your audience to come to you the next time they have questions.
Influencer partnership or endorsement
Another way to reach out and gain the trust of a wider segment of the audience is by investing in influencer marketing. Find influencers pertaining to your particular industry and collaborate with them to promote your products and services. You can find micro-influencers for big celebrities according to your budget. The content that can be created would be in the form of social media posts or video content. Influencer-generated content very effectively pushes the people in TOFU further in the funnel.
Video Content
Video content is easy to consume. People prefer to watch videos rather than read blogs any day. Having more video content can help you get a massive audience both over Instagram and YouTube. You can bring this audience directly to your website through links in descriptions and bios.
Product description and capturing real customers’ reactions to your products are the biggest drivers of acquiring customers.
The other advantage of video is that it improves your SEO score, so you can reach an even wider audience and maximize valuable views.
Targeted PPC Ads
This is one of the most powerful forms of content for people in TOFU.
You can target specific words and phrases that people might type in searches to show your business ads.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have some pretty great tools for audience targeting. From keyword targeting to lookalike audiences, with time, you can generate some potential leads.
Moreover, repeated ads can help you stick in people’s minds. Try out different ad creatives to see what works better and optimize PPC campaigns following a PPC audit guide.
MOFU
What are the people in MOFU like?
- They fit your buyer persona
- They know your business
- They may have already reached out to your business
- They need your products and services, but they are confused between you and your competitors
- Their concerns would be your pricing, product quality, and customer service.
What is required to target the audience in MOFU?
- A small existing relationship with your customer (ie; social media follower, previous website visitor, newsletter sign-up)
- A platform for producing educational content (blog on your website, a blogging platform, video blog, etc.)
- Call-to-action (CTA) to move to the next stage
- Communication with sales team to gain trust
Best Tips
Make truthful promises
The content for this stage should explain solutions, acknowledge objections, and present benefits clearly. Having said that, you don’t want to be all talk and no action. Ensure all your promises are real and realistic. And this should reflect across all the content that you make for this funnel stage.
Show why you are better than your competitors
Leads are not making a purchase because they are considering other competitors as well. Therefore, the content that you create in this stage should clearly explain that you are better than your competitors. Showcase all the values that your products and services will offer that others do not. You can do this by creating content like product comparison infographics, detailed feature lists, feature comparison posts (for instance, a dessert store can say that all their desserts use palm jaggery as sweetener, not refined white sugar like others), and more.
Include social proof on your website
Since it is imperative to gain your leads’ trust and show why you are better than other competitors, you need to include social proof on your website in the form of customer reviews and testimonials in either text or video format.
You can also showcase good ratings on Google Reviews and other platforms on your website.
Have excellent customer support in place
People in MOFU have concerns about the quality of your products and the quality of your after-sales support. Customers love businesses that are available round-the-clock to answer their queries and solve their complaints.
Have an elaborate knowledge base library in place. These libraries could have a host of how-to articles, use cases, and explanatory videos.
Having an FAQ section on the website is also essential.
Best Types Of Content To Use In MOFU
Detailed blogs and articles
Again using keyword research as well as audience demographic research, curate in-depth content to solve a problem. If you can’t get hard numbers on long-tail keywords, see what your customers are talking about in related social groups or on. Example: 35 cyclist problems and hassle-free solutions.
FAQs
List out all the possible general questions any new visitor or existing customer could have. Create an FAQ section on your website and have all these questions answered in an easy-to-understand format. This content will help you move the people in MOFU ahead in the sales funnel quite easily.
How-to-articles
Lend your industry expertise and show the best way to solve a problem, including detailed step-by-step instructions. Bicycle buyer’s guide: all the bicycle accessories you will ever need.
Templates
Free templates are the best type of accountant to keep engaging with potential customers. Innova the side free goods that you are offering.
Newsletters
Newsletters are a great way to redistribute content like blogs, all the while reaching out to your potential customers. Newsletters are also helpful to deliver news and updates about your business and also offer discounts and coupons.
Product comparisons
Product comparison can be in terms of social media ads, blogs, YouTube videos, or infographics. Subtly tell your prospects and leads why your products are better than your competitors’. Make sure you do not entrap yourself in any legalities like defamation, copyright infringement, etc.
BOFU
What are the people in BOFU like?
- They are either marketing qualified leads or sales qualified leads
- They are interested in a particular product
- They have a strong intention to buy
- It could mostly be the price point that would be stopping them from making a purchase.
What is required to target the audience in BOFU?
- User-generated content
- Referral programs
- Live demos
- Discounts and coupons
Best Tips
Show the value you have created for your customers.
Now you just need to push your leads once for them to become your customers. And, the best way to do this is by showing them the results your products and services yield. You need user-generated content for the same. One effective way to gather a lot of user-generated content quickly is by rewarding your customers.
Showcase demos
A live demo is one quick thing you can show to your prospective customer to give them all the information they require before they purchase. Demos often help leads make purchases quickly as demos give real-time and in-depth information on how a product or service would be like. Certainly, demos don’t work for all types of businesses.
Boomerang them back with discounts and offers
One of the major and the only reasons that stop a person for a long time in BOFU is price. Discount coupons and offering special prices are some of the easiest ways to make a lead. You can send this discount true discount code over and by email.
Best Types Of Content To Use In BOFU
Giveaway
Many leads who have learned about your product but might not be yet ready to purchase can be motivated by a giveaway. You might present this through a newsletter or an in-app notification.
Coupon
It is a type of giveaway; a discount is the most direct motivation a lead needs to give your product or service a try. Try presenting your discount as an invitation for first-time buyers or to the ones who abandon the shopping cart.
User-Generated Content
This content can be in the form of social media posts, reviews, comments, and even videos posted by your customers. User-generated content makes it super easy for the BOFU to know that they will be getting what is worth their money.
Conclusion
Now that you know how you can optimize your content strategy to efficiently move leads across the sales funnel, we hope you can boost your sales quickly and effectively.
Author Bio
Narayani Pandya is an enthusiastic digital marketing professional, having work experience in sales and customer experience in the past. She enjoys having a cup of tea and walking on the grass when not working.