Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to market your brand or products. In fact, 95% of B2B product buyers consider content trustworthy when they are evaluating a company.

This powerful statistic establishes the importance of content marketing. However, to make sure that content marketing helps you get conversions, you need to have a content conversion funnel in place. This can help you plan the journey of potential buyers better.

Before we get into the advantages of a content conversion funnel and how you can create one, let's take a close look at what it actually is.

Content Conversion Funnel

The content conversion funnel is the process through which you take your visitors that leads to converting them. You create the content flow to convert visitors into actual customers who will pay for your products.

When a website visitor arrives at your site, you'll want to grab those eyeballs with catchy headlines, useful information, and existing content that serves to support your legitimacy. According to the Content Marketing Institute, you'll also want to make your content source format accessible to all.

There are four stages to the content conversion funnel:

• Awareness
• Evaluation
• Purchase
• Delight

Most people don't move through this process along the defined path. That is why you need to have a content conversion funnel in place. The funnel will not only help you drive the visitors to make a purchase but will also help you plan and create content.

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Before we dive in any further, let's take a close look at each stage of the funnel.

Awareness Stage

The awareness stage is the first stage of the funnel and is meant to attract and educate your audience.

This content should add value. It should answer questions or solve the problems of your audience. It should essentially help generate brand awareness in the long run.

One way of figuring out if your digital content is working is to check the number of views and shares it gets. At the same time, you should also see if the people viewing and sharing it are a part of your target audience.

Evaluation Stage

This is the stage at which the leads that you've attracted during the awareness stage will start evaluating your brand.

They will look for content to determine the legitimacy of your brand and develop trust. Based on this stage, visitors will decide if they want to purchase your product or services.

This type of content should generate leads and also influence them. If visitors are converting from this content, then it is successful.

Nestle, for instance, released their Toll House Chocolate Chip recipes. These recipes included chocolate chips as the main ingredients. This helped build the brand's image in the minds of consumers. It validated the brand.

Purchase Stage

This stage involves convincing your leads to make a purchase from you.

The content should result in a conversion. It should influence the purchase decisions of your leads. It should also influence the content pipeline.

To analyze if this content is successful, you can conduct reviews or surveys. The survey responses and self-assessments can give you a fair idea of your success.

Delight Stage

Many companies overlook this stage. However, it is especially important for companies with a subscription model.

The delight stage will help you build a loyal audience that will help you grow your business going forward.

Customers abandoned as soon as they make a purchase will likely be only one-time customers. However, if you can delight them with your response and special offers, they may become repeat customers.

Why Should You Create a Content Conversion Funnel?

According to Kapost, content marketing produces three times more leads than paid search for every dollar spent. It also offers six times higher conversion rates than other methods.

The primary reason for this is that content marketing helps you improve your website's search engine optimization (SEO).

It can help you get more pages indexed and even get more backlinks. This can not only help improve your website's authority but can also help you create brand awareness.

Content marketing not only reduces your costs but also helps increase your conversion rates.

But if you don't plan your strategy well, your content marketing campaign can fail. Which is one of the main reasons you should have a content conversion funnel.

How to Create a Content Conversion Funnel

The first step in creating a content conversion funnel is to figure out who your target customer is.

You create a funnel for the purpose of selling your products. For this reason, it is important to know who your target audience is because you must tailor content to the requirements of your target audience.

You will need to figure out the challenges that they face so that you can solve them through your content. Is your product able to solve their problems? At that point, you will have sparked their interest in making a purchase. Then you tailor content according to each section of the funnel.

1. Awareness Stage

At this step, focus the content on expanding your reach to spread brand awareness. The goal is to get the attention of people who have an interest in your products. It's on you to create great content that would be of interest to a potential customer. You may need to create a buyer persona and conduct AB testing as you develop your digital marketing campaign.

The content marketing efforts of today's digital marketer will include some combination of Google Analytics, keyword research, email marketing, social media, and marketing automation. Social media channels, in particular, can help facilitate rapid distribution. Some of the best types of content that you can create for this stage fall into one of three categories.

Curated

This sort of content creation revolves around posts that are easily shared on social media. They are very easy to create and share easily. However, these sorts of posts can become spammy all too easily. You must also ensure that you add your own views to the content to give it a personal touch.

Infographics

Infographics are images with bundles of information. They show a variety of statistics and data that is very easy to interpret. Infographics can generate high engagement and views as well.

Blog Posts

A blog post is a great type of content when done correctly. Blog content can help improve your website's SEO and can also be highly informative to your audience. Your website traffic can increase dramatically if your blog posts are well-written. And when you can create and share blog posts, the overall reach will increase as well.

Other great types of content for this stage include videos and podcasts. These can dramatically increase your conversion rates and boost your lead generation as well.

2. Evaluation Stage

The content that works the best in the middle of the funnel should be educational in nature. Relevant content provides the key to the conversion process. Authentic interest and compelling content converts mere readers into customers. You'll want to make sure that your contact info is readily accessible at this stage of the average buyers journey.

The awareness stage concentrates on getting the attention of people. The evaluation stage should show them why they should purchase a product or service from you. The content should show why your products or services are useful for them. It is only then that they will continue through the funnel to make a purchase from you.

Ideally, you should get the contact information of consumers during this stage to convert them into leads. The main purpose of the content is to ensure that consumers who see this content will continue to the bottom of the funnel.

The most popular forms of content for this step include:

Case Studies

Data is the primary driver behind case studies. They showcase statistics and other data gathered during a test.

White Papers

White papers provide statistical data and academic style reports as well. They help convince your audience that the product or service you offer can solve their problems.

Ebooks and Free Guides

This form of content revolves around "How-to" get things done. Target these at providing solutions to the problems faced by your audience. This content should describe and show consumers how your product can solve their problems.

You can also include worksheets as a part of this stage. They can also help you with lead generation.

You should also take the time to build attractive landing pages and optimize them for conversions. Similarly, if you're an eCommerce business, a visually-appealing website is even more important for you.

You can leverage WordPress to build your eCommerce website or landing page. This platform provides the foundation for over 30% of the world's websites, many of which also sell goods.

3. Bottom of the Funnel (Purchase and Delight Stage)

These stages should be extremely personal. The content that you create for the bottom of the funnel should show your leads the added value that your paid product offers. This should be in contrast to the free value that you've already been offering them.

One of the best ways of distributing this content is through an email autoresponder sequence. These emails can be sent to people who have provided their email addresses to you. The sequences will build up gradually and bring the user to the point where you can ask for the sale. You can do this with a great call to action.

You can offer demos and trials of your products or services to your leads to give them a hands-on experience. Other popular forms of content for the purchase stage include discount codes, webinars, and testimonials.

For the delight stage, you need to ensure that your customers are happy with your products or services.

The best types of content for this stage include special offers, member-exclusive giveaways, and product guides. You then aim this content at making the customer experience better so that their renewal rates and product usage increase.

Final Thoughts

Having a well-charted content marketing strategy is essential for success. And that includes a well-planned content conversion funnel. You need to think up content ideas tailored to your target audience for maximum effect.

At each stage of the conversion funnel, your content marketing world should be based on the primary goal or target of that stage. This will ensure that you can succeed in your goals for that stage and, in turn, increase conversions. If your company does not have a content marketer on staff, you may find success reaching out to a sales conversion service or other digital PR agency.

If you would like to set up a time to speak to a Relevance strategist about content conversion, schedule an appointment.

The post How to Create a Successful Content Conversion Funnel appeared first on RELEVANCE.

A few years ago, website owners could get away with black-hat SEO techniques such as keyword stuffing and paid links to increase their search rankings. However, with search engines constantly upgrading their algorithms, this kind of unethical manipulation has become increasingly difficult. For instance, Google introduced the Penguin update to identify such malpractices and penalize the websites.

So, it has become crucial for you to develop other strategies to drive organic search engine traffic to your website. This is where influencer marketing can be of immense help to you. In very simple terms, influencers are people with a very large, loyal, and engaged social media following. They are usually perceived as experts or authority figures in their niches.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Unlike the elusive celebrities of yesteryears, influencers engage personally with their fans and share a friendly rapport with them. Their followers perceive these influencers as role models and swear by their recommendations.

[bctt tweet="Working with influencers adds credibility to your marketing campaigns and boosts brand trust. " username="relevance"]

Today, consumers are often skeptical about choosing brands that blow their own trumpet. They’d rather rely on reviews and recommendations from a trusted expert. According to a study by Collective Bias, 30% of consumers prefer products that are endorsed by non-celebrity bloggers. As opposed to this, only 3% of consumers would rely on celebrity endorsements.

In addition, when collaborating with influencers, you don’t have to go through the excruciating task of identifying your target audience. You just have to collaborate with the right influencer from the right niche. The task of engaging with your target audience is taken care of by these influencers.

As is evident, influencer marketing offers immense potential in terms of boosting brand visibility and generating leads. In addition, it also has a huge impact on your search engine rankings. This is something marketers often fail to recognize and leverage. Let’s take a look at exactly how influencer marketing can improve your SEO.

Also Read: How To Use Influencer Marketing To Promote Your Business

1) Helps You Build a Power-Packed Link Profile

“Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first.” – Wendy Piersall

This quote by the famous artist and designer holds true for all search engines. Search engine bots determine your position in the SERPs based on what others are saying about you. This means the quality of your link profile (backlinks and internal links) is an important factor in deciding your search engine rankings.

[bctt tweet="It is crucial to earn links from high-authority domains that are relevant to your niche. This is easier said than done." username="relevance"]

In the absence of other means, website owners often resort to buying backlinks. However, if and when such practices are recognized by the search engines, your website will be penalized.

Influencer marketing allows you to build a strong link profile with organic and high-quality backlinks. When influencers with their own websites create content that links to you, they generate a high-quality backlink for you. And when an influencer shares your link, it is likely to be further shared by their followers, thus strengthening your link profile further.

Most influencers also have access to high-authority websites in their niche. With the right kind of content, you can grab the attention of such websites. This, in turn, gives you the chance to earn backlinks from such high-authority domains.

This is exactly how WordStream earned a coveted backlink from The New York Times. The online advertising platform published an article on a trending and controversial topic. They shared the link on Twitter, tagging several influential journalists in the tweet. These journalists retweeted it further, helping the post go viral within a short span of time.

Eventually, the post reached the editors of the The New York Times, earning WordStream an editorial link on their website. In addition, WordStream also scored an editorial link on Politico. The website earned a total of 236 links, many of which were from high-authority domains. They also experienced a four-fold surge in referral traffic.

2) Adds Fresh and Unique Content

Even the best marketing professionals find it difficult to churn out new content day in and out. However, to maintain steady search engine rankings, you need to upload unique and high-quality content regularly. You also need to ensure that the content offers some value to the readers or viewers. Only then will it be considered useful by the search engines.

[bctt tweet="What better way to generate intriguing content than by collaborating with influencers from a relevant niche?" username="relevance"]

After all, they earn their livelihood by creating valuable content for their followers. In fact, according to a study, 96% of people prefer content with input from industry thought leaders.

You can collaborate with influencers to create sponsored posts or content for your website. It can be in the form of guest posts, product reviews, or a complete social media takeover.

For instance, Sony Alpha invited photographers and Instagrammers to take over their Instagram page. All they had to do was upload pictures taken using a Sony Alpha camera. Coming from trusted influencers, such posts also doubled as testimonials from real-life users.

Image via Instagram

In addition, influencers can use their friendly rapport with their followers to urge them to create their own content using your brand’s hashtag. This acts as an inexhaustible source of user-generated content, creating further awareness about your brand.

Also Read: These Campaigns Will Teach You a Thing or Two about Successful Influencer Marketing

3) Boosts Content Reach and Engagement

Creating high-quality content is of no use unless it reaches the right people. This is especially difficult when your audience is flooded with content from different channels. Influencers help you cut through this noise and take your content to the right audiences.

[bctt tweet="Collaborating with influencers adds credibility to your content and strengthens your brand’s message." username="relevance"]

This is especially important when you want to target millennials. In fact, 60% of millennial subscribers rely on recommendations from YouTube influencers over endorsements from traditional celebrities. Such followers have a better chance of engaging with your content, increasing your website traffic, and improving your search engine rankings.

Owing to their massive following, influencers can increase the reach of your content when they share it on their social media pages. If your content hits the right chord, it might be further shared on social media by their fan community. This will generate buzz about your brand online, which, in turn, will have a positive impact on your search rankings.

Image via cognitiveseo.com

Final Thoughts

The rules of SEO are ever-changing. Search engines are constantly developing new algorithms to combat unethical practices. In such a competitive scenario, it is imperative that you devise innovative strategies to improve your search engine rankings.

[bctt tweet="Influencer marketing gives you the right opportunity to engage with your target audience and create brand awareness." username="relevance"]

Partnering with influencers also lets you create unique and engaging content and earn high-quality backlinks. All of these factors have a positive impact on your website’s search engine rankings.

It is high time that marketers get creative and utilize the potential of influencer marketing to improve SEO. What are your thoughts on this? Share them with us in the comments section below.

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