The first step to gaining paying clients or customers is making people aware of your brand. That’s the top of the content marketing funnel. But then what? To turn prospects into clients, it’s essential that you also spend time focusing on middle-of-the-funnel content.
Middle-of-the-funnel content provides more in-depth information about your company, its qualifications, and its products and services. It also helps prospects come up with solutions to their problems.
“Education” is the name of the newsletter game. Middle of the funnel content is intended for those who are seeking out solutions or comparing various options. Prospects in the middle of the funnel already know your brand exists, but they might not have enough information about your company and what you offer to make a final decision.
You can use many different formats to create middle-of-the-funnel content, including whitepapers, e-books and blog posts. One of the best and simplest formats to try, though, is newsletters. When done properly, a newsletter serves as very useful and effective marketing tool.
Newsletters give you an opportunity to reach prospects more directly, and touch the parts of your audience that need contact. Newsletters give you the opportunity to link to in-depth content of high value. And newsletters provide the perfect platform to gently inform subscribers about your products or services.
Use these four strategies to create valuable content for every newsletter you send:
Point out a problem and provide a solution
Your subscribers might have a problem they aren’t even aware of yet. That will change once they read your newsletter. Before your readers have time to panic and try to come up with a solution, you can do so for them. Here’s the kicker: Offer up your insights and secrets for solving the problem on their own. That’s good content. And it builds trust. Other newsletter content can explain how your product or service can help them fix the issue, if they choose not to tackle it alone.
Answer a question
The easiest way to find out what information your prospects want to know is to look at the questions your current customers are already asking. Go through your FAQ page and use a question to create an article for each newsletter. Make this topic a “column” within each newsletter you send. Prospects will appreciate having their answers questioned without having to ask them directly.
Feature a product
What makes your product or service stand out from the rest? Give a detailed description to help readers make an informed decision. Go as in-depth as possible, even if that means featuring just one product or service per newsletter. Don’t do a hard sell here. But do offer the facts.
Provide a case study
Linking up to a case study is a great way to let prospects digest some content that is about someone else’s challenge, and consider how your product or service helped solve their similar problem. It’s soft sales, and that’s just the approach that middle of the funnel content needs.
Remember: When working in the middle of the funnel, you are trying to turn prospects into clients. By creating great content that provides solutions and answers questions, you are increasing your chances for successfully moving these folks to the next stage of the customer journey.
And with each newsletter, include a Call to Action. If readers are ready to reach out to learn more or even make a purchase after reading your content, they should be able to do it easily by clicking on a link or dialing the number you have listed.
