Content Marketing 101
Types of content, their objectives in the funnel, and where to start
Hi friends - Me again 👋 Ready to share some more marketing wisdom 🪄
We’ve covered a lot in the last several weeks, so I’ll zoom out and recap quickly before we carry on.
When I created this roadmap of priorities, I balanced the average B2B company’s needs (for the stage), budget, ability, and capacity. Check out the rationale column above.
As a startup, you want to start with the marketing activities that have the highest impact and lowest cost/effort, relatively speaking.
Once you have a stronger track record, revenue, and budget, you can expand to higher-cost and higher-effort activities.
So this week, we’ll start with content at the top of the bright green box above. 👆️
Content Marketing 101
Types of content
‘Content’ can come in many formats. We can generally group them into 3 buckets: written, video, and audio.
Type
Format(s)
Written ✍️
Blogs
White papers
eBooks
Newsletter
Video 📹️
Demo Video
Instructional Video
Webinars
Audio 🔉
Podcasts
Understanding funnel stages
Each piece of content you create should serve a specific purpose for one of these three stages of your funnel -
The relationship between content type and funnel stage
So, bringing it all together…you’ll want to produce different types or formats of content for each stage of your funnel.
This means you will have some content focusing on the top of the funnel (TOFU) - helping people learn and discover your brand.
Examples:
Blog: What is a CRM?
Blog: What is Venture Debt?
Blog: How do you calculate the R&D tax credit?
And then some content focusing on the middle of funnel (MOFU) - helping people evaluate your credibility, value, and functional fit for their need.
Examples:
Blog: The Buy vs Build decision (for your software category)
Case Studies
Product Specs
And then some content focusing on the bottom of funnel (BOFU) - helping to convert your later stage prospects into paying customers.
Examples:
Competitive analysis (us vs them)
Pricing information (how do you price and what variables influence the cost)
Onboarding or integration information
Content distribution
Then, finally, once the content is created, you’ll want to distribute the content through your -
Website
Email
Social media
So we plan > produce > and then distribute.
Don’t forget the importance of proper segmentation in your distribution.
Where to start
I recommend you start with a combo of -
This list from Gartner below +
A blog for each of the most commonly asked questions by prospects during your sales process at each stage (TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU)
There are more sophisticated ways to build a content strategy as you mature, but that 👆️ is a very good place to START.
With love and gratitude -
If you want to learn more about working with me directly…
For B2B startups I serve as a Fractional GTM executive or advisor. Learn more about-
When you’re ready, let’s connect to discuss your specific growth goals and challenges.
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