Best Types of Content for your Sales Funnel

Hi! I'm Steve Houston. Here's a quick overview of the best types of digital content you can use to market your company's products or services to new prospects, depending upon which stage of your sales funnel they're in...

In this simplified view of a basic sales funnel, prospects in the top of the funnel (TOFU) are in the Awareness or Discovery phase.  They have a need for what you're offering and they're just getting started learning about your company and what it offers.

Types of content that work well in this TOFU stage include:

1. social media posts
2. shareable blog posts
3. RSS feeds
4. welcome videos introducing prospects to your company
5. how-to guides
6. newsletters - either printed and mailed or electronic newsletters sent by email
7. infographics that explain a topic using simple, concise data in a graphic format.

As your prospects move down further into the middle of the funnel (MOFU), they're beginning to evaluate your products and services, and they're asking themselves the question "Why should they choose YOU to do business with?"

In the MOFU stage, content types that encourage further evaluation of your offerings include:

1. automated email sequences
2. whitepapers
3. case studies
4. free downloads of valuable content
5. training or sales webinars
6. popular, high-engagement devices like quizzes and surveys.

Prospects that reach the bottom stage of the sales funnel - the BOFU - are in the conversion stage, ideally ready to commit to making a purchase from you.

Content types that can help nudge them closer to that purchase decision in the BOFU stage include:

1. special offers
2. free product or service trials
3. product descriptions and side-by-side comparisons
4. showing your pricing options.

You're giving them reasons to buy and your content at this stage should include a clear call-to-action (CTA).

Companies that use the right types of marketing content at the right funnel stages will help move new prospects through their "buyer's journey" and will end up converting more of them into new paying customers, clients or patients. 

Thanks for watching!