How to Maximize the Reach of Your Top-of-The-Funnel Marketing Content

What is a content marketing funnel?

A content marketing funnel is a strategy. Put simply, it is designed to attract customers, teach them more about your brand, convert them to a sale, and retain them.

You will create and deliver relevant content based on your ideal customer profile to attract them to your brand. This could be educational content, solution selling, etc.

A marketing funnel is generally divided into three stages—the top, middle, and bottom—and brands tailor their content to each stage. There isn't always a set line between stages within your content funnel, but it is a way to stay organized and reach your target audience every step of the way.

The top of the funnel is the brand awareness stage, the middle-of-funnel is where potential buyers are engaging with your company and deciding why you might be their best choice, and the bottom of the funnel is where the decision is made, and the goal is to make the sale.

In this article, I will explore the first stage—the top of the funnel—in more depth. I will discuss what elements and content characterize a brand’s top-of-funnel marketing and share some best practices for improving your content strategy to optimize this part of your marketing funnel.

What is top-of-the-funnel marketing?

As I hinted at before, the top-of-funnel is the first stage where potential customers come into contact with your brand. It is normally called the ‘brand awareness’ stage because that’s mainly what happens here. 

This is when you create content that brings in new leads—a new set of people who align with your ideal customer profile and could be a good fit to become prospective customers. 

This stage is not yet focused on decision-making, which means that the leads that come in at this stage aren’t necessarily high-intent, and there’s a chance that they won’t always convert into new customers.

Instead, this is where you introduce your brand to a wider audience, trying to raise as much brand awareness as possible via different channels (social media, paid advertising, email marketing, events, etc.). This is your chance to make a strong first impression, and your focus should be on creating content that is engaging, interesting, and makes people want to learn more about what you have to offer.

What is top-of-the-funnel marketing content?

Bringing in customers and attracting a new audience requires eye-catching and engaging content. It also requires a good amount of valuable content and problem-solving solutions to really convince someone to download your content or share their contact information with you, which is how you eventually generate leads.

For example, typical top-of-the-funnel marketing content is SEO-optimized and takes the form of blog posts, infographics, paid ads, ebooks, landing pages, checklists, or quizzes.

For example, you can show expertise, know-how, and brand voice in your blog content by sharing on social media to spread thought leadership and boost traffic to your blog at the same time. With infographics, instead, rely on stats, data, and easily digestible and impactful content that will no doubt catch the eye of your audience. Or you can show your company’s attention to detail, dedication to support, and how-to with ebooks; that way, your audience, and prospective customers will get an idea of what it’s like working with you.

Your top-of-funnel content has to be interesting and diverse enough that your customers keep exploring more of it to learn more. Clarify what you have to offer and how you can make their lives easier: showing what you can do for them will keep them coming back for more.

Top-of-funnel-marketing goals

• Boosts brand awareness. I have already talked about how important this is: this is your business card, the first impression you make on new visitors and the audience. That awareness can come back to reward you later, especially if you start a retargeting campaign. Awareness of your brand creates a sense of authority and credibility, it will make your success rate higher, and and your connection stronger.
  
  
• Generates qualified leads. The general rule is always quality over quantity. However, top-of-funnel marketing casts a wider net: at this stage of the funnel, you want to attract as many people as possible and, within those, find the qualified leads your business needs to grow. As you gather names, emails, and interest, you will see which of those leads represent the marketing-qualified leads that hold the most potential. Nurturing those leads will be the next step, but your top-of-funnel marketing is the ice-breaker that generated a lead you wouldn’t have otherwise had.
  
  
• Improves engagement rates. Your top-of-funnel marketing content will also have the side effect and goal of increasing engagement rates. As you attempt to attract qualified leads, you will create content that addresses issues and pain points, helping to increase interest not just in your offerings but also in the subject matter at hand. You will also nurture those audience members and leads that you have already registered, thus strengthening your connection with them and their engagement levels.

Amplify the reach of your top-of-the-funnel marketing content

If the goal of your top-of-the-funnel marketing content is to generate brand awareness, then you want to make sure that as many people as possible see that content and are able to interact with it.

Amplifying the reach of your content is something that you can do in different ways — with targeted ads, for example — and leveraging your employees’ network is one of them. This is called employee advocacy, and it’s a strategy that involves turning your employees into social media ambassadors, namely people that will advocate for your company on social media. On a more practical level, they will share your content and talk positively about your brand.

Employee advocacy will expand your social media reach

Employees collectively possess networks vastly more extensive than those of the brand itself — according to LinkedIn research, on average, 10 times larger than their company’s follower base. These personal networks comprise connections who trust their recommendations and personal testimonials more than corporate advertisements. 

For instance, content shared by employees is likely to generate 8 times higher engagement rates compared to content shared through official brand channels, according to a Social Media Today report​​. This expanded reach is not only wide but also deep, penetrating markets and demographics that are often beyond the reach of conventional marketing channels.

Plus, according to an IBM study, leads developed through employee advocacy are seven times more likely to convert than other leads. This higher conversion rate stems from the credibility that comes with personal endorsements, which are viewed as more authentic than traditional sales tactics. This means that the brand awareness and leads that you will create through your employees will actually have an even heavier weight on your sales funnel. Win-win.