How to Build a Content Marketing Funnel (+ Expert Tips & Checklist)

A B2B content marketing funnel is a tool for driving more qualified leads. Learn the stages of the funnel and how to build one. Checklist included.

Want to grow your B2B website’s organic traffic? One of the best ways is to build a B2B content marketing funnel. A content marketing funnel is a funnel-shaped marketing strategy that pulls people in and walks them through the customer journey.

Creating content that seamlessly guides potential customers down through each stage of the funnel (which you’ll learn about in this article) can increase leads and conversions.

Read through our ultimate guide below to create your first (or next) B2B content marketing funnel.

What is a B2B content marketing funnel?

The B2B content marketing funnel is a marketing strategy that helps bring people in your target audience from being completely unaware of your product down to fully informed customers.

It gets its name from the funnel shape the strategy takes. It happens naturally because people will fall off at different stages, and not everyone who discovers your business will become a customer (though we all wish that were the case).

Get an idea of what the B2B content marketing funnel looks like below:

The top of the funnel is the largest, as that’s where people are just becoming aware of your brand and the purpose of your business. As people continue shopping for a product or service like yours, they’ll move to the middle of the funnel. Then, those who make it to the bottom are making the decision to become a paying customer.

But while that’s the gist of how it works, understanding that isn’t enough — you also need to create content for each stage and know your audience well enough to create the right content.

How to build a B2B content marketing funnel

Ready to build your B2B content marketing funnel? Let’s walk you through four basic steps to get started:

Get a clear understanding of your audience
Set goals for your B2B marketing funnel
Create content for each stage of the funnel
Analyze your performance

1. Get a clear understanding of your audience

The first step is knowing who your ideal customer is and what type of messaging will resonate with them. What pain points or problems does your product solve? Speak to those issues to attract the type of customer who’d most benefit from your product.

Rambod Yadegar, President at HawkSEM, explains, “Knowing your target audience like the back of your hand is essential when creating a strategy for a B2B content funnel. Otherwise, you can’t create valuable content for the reader, adversely affecting the performance of your content marketing campaigns and funnel.”

To get a clear understanding of your audience, you can do three things:

Conduct market research to discover insights about your industry and buyers
Interview people in your target audience to gain a better understanding of their needs
Do a competitive analysis to see who’s buying from others in your industry

After you have all of that information, build a buyer persona, or a profile depicting exactly who your target customer is.

Ryan Zomorodi, COO & Co-Founder at Real Estate Skills, explains how his team tailored their content strategy to resonate with decision-makers within target organizations.

“We focus on creating content that addresses their specific industry challenges, offering insights and solutions,” shares Zomorodi. “This targeted approach ensures our content is relevant and valuable, especially during the consideration and decision phases of the buying process.”

John Hughes, CEO at PlumberShield agrees. He says, “We had to adapt our content marketing funnel to better align with the evolving needs of our B2B audience. This shift was prompted by feedback and market analysis, leading us to focus more on educational content that addressed specific industry challenges.”

By doing so, Hughes’ team created a more effective funnel, increasing engagement and conversions.

2. Set goals for your B2B marketing funnel

Setting goals ensures the content you create in your funnel adds to your business’s bottom line.

Ryan Hammill, Executive Director at Ancient Language Institute, provides a great example.

“Our approach to aligning content marketing with sales involves creating content that directly supports our sales objectives,” says Hammill. “We focus on developing materials that educate and inform, while also addressing common questions and objections that arise during the sales process.”

Check with different departments in your business to see what goals they’ve set and if your content marketing funnel can support those goals. Otherwise, look to your business and sales goals.

For example, your product team might want to increase the number of customers who sign up for a specific package or product. By creating content that focuses on this new product, you can help reach that specific goal.

3. Create content for each stage of the funnel

Then, you need to create content for each stage of the funnel — top, middle, and bottom. We’ve already covered the different types of content that work well for each stage. Now is the time to create it.

Your content team should work closely with your sales team to ensure the proper messaging aligns and resonates well with your target audience.

Sturgeon Christie, CEO at Second Skin Audio, says, “In our experience, the key to driving B2B conversions lies in the synergy between content marketing and sales enablement. We create content that not only educates but also supports the sales process, providing our team with valuable tools to engage and convert prospects.”

Consistently create, publish, and promote content that fits each stage of the sales funnel to seamlessly guide your target audience from stranger to customer.

4. Analyze your performance

Finally, analyze your performance each month or so. Ensure your funnel is hitting people at the right stages and that you’re generating even more leads and conversions than you previously were.

Rosie Langello, Founder of Book Vibe, says, “At Book Vibe, we measure the effectiveness of our B2B content marketing at each funnel stage by tracking engagement metrics, such as click-through rates, time spent on content, and conversion rates. We also pay close attention to feedback and interaction levels, as these provide invaluable insights into how our content resonates with our audience.”

Marketing consultant Chad Sultana shares a few other metrics to track. Sultana says, “We focus on key performance indicators like lead generation rates, engagement levels, and conversion rates. Tracking these metrics at each stage of the funnel helps us understand the impact of our content and where improvements can be made.”

Tools you can use to analyze your performance include Google Analytics, social media insights tools, and other marketing reporting tools.

Plus, take advantage of tools like ConversionIQ, HawkSEM’s proprietary tool. Our experts use ConversionIQ in every campaign we run or strategy we create for our clients — even sales and marketing funnels.

Once we have your content strategy/funnel in place and are pumping out content, we use ConversionIQ (CIQ) to granularly track each step of the buyer’s journey to understand what aspects of a campaign are working and where we should trim the fat. This allows us to optimize the funnel and improve our overall conversion rate and ROI.

Why is a B2B content marketing funnel important?

Creating a content marketing funnel can take some time — but is so worth it. Here are four major benefits your business can reap from putting together an effective content funnel.

1. Make organic traffic more accessible

A content marketing funnel is heavily reliant on content. You’ll create several different types of content to fit every stage of the sales funnel, giving you more opportunities to generate organic traffic.

Not only can this improve your overall SEO efforts, but it can also save money on PPC campaigns. Get your content to show up in search engine results pages (SERPs) for free, rather than having to put your ad budget behind them.

2. Increase brand awareness

Your content funnel can also boost brand awareness. The top-of-the-funnel stage (as you’ll discover more about soon) is dedicated to helping potential customers become aware of your brand. If you’re successful, you’ll reach a much wider audience, improving your overall brand awareness.

Jason Boyd, Director at Evolve SEO Agency, agrees that this is a major perk in any content funnel.

“From a brand awareness standpoint, a great content marketing funnel makes an excellent tracker in the B2B industry,” shares Boyd.

“We discovered its value in creating content that generates leads and converts, and we continue to explore ways to set consumer expectations on informative, educational resource materials to help with their purchase decisions,” Boyd continues. “Once we found the sweet spot for brand awareness to grow, the results trickled down to driving revenue and retaining customers.”

3. Become an authority in your industry

A successful content marketing funnel can also position your brand as an industry authority. The more high-quality content you create, the more people will trust your brand and what it has to say.

“Thought leadership is a key component of our content marketing funne,” explains Ryan Zomorodi, COO & Co-Founder at Real Estate Skills. “By providing in-depth analyses and expert opinions on real estate trends, we position Real Estate Skills as a trusted source of industry knowledge. This approach not only attracts leads but also establishes our credibility and authority, crucial for long-term relationships.”

4. Generate more quality leads

A solid B2B content marketing funnel can also help you get your business in front of even more qualified leads and B2B buyers. When you’re targeting the right people with the right content, they come in ready to buy.

“The importance of B2B content marketing became evident to us when we saw a significant increase in qualified leads correlating with our focused content efforts,” says Phil Strazzulla, Founder of SelectSoftware Reviews.

To double down on that point, Shawn Plummer, CEO at The Annuity Expert, says, “Our realization of the importance of B2B content marketing came when we noticed how effectively it generated leads and nurtured prospects. By focusing on creating content that educates and informs our audience about financial planning and annuities, we’ve been able to establish a strong connection with our prospects.”

Stages of the B2B content marketing funnel

There are three main stages or phases of the B2B content marketing funnel, and they follow the standard buyer’s journey.

The three stages are:

Top-of-the-funnel (ToFu): The awareness stage, where people search for B2B companies that offer the same products and services as yours.
Middle-of-the-funnel (MoFu): The consideration stage, where potential customers learn more about your specific business’s offerings.
Bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFu): The decision stage, where your lead makes the decision to work with your business.

Learn more about what each stage should look like — and, more importantly, what types of content you should create for each.

Top-of-the-funnel (ToFu)

At the top of the funnel, your target customer is just starting to discover their pain point. They’re researching solutions — and hopefully will discover your business in the process, thanks to your content marketing strategy.

To increase search traffic and reach, start with top-of-the-funnel keywords. These will vary from business to business.

For example, if your target customer has discovered they’re losing website traffic and your B2B business is an SEO tool, you may start with content touching on keywords like “search engine optimization guide” or “free SEO tools.”

At this stage of the marketing funnel, the goal is to use your messaging to help your target customer understand their problem and how your business is an easy solution.

ToFu content types:

Blog content
Social media posts
Landing pages
Podcast episodes
Video content
Ebooks
White papers

Middle-of-the-funnel (MoFu)

In the middle of the funnel, the B2B customer is aware of their problem and is now searching for solutions. Now they’re in the midst of it, trying to figure out which company will offer the best options for their needs.

This is where you’ll want to start promoting comparison guides, share thought leadership content, and make sure your marketing team is positioning your offerings as the best amongst competitors. Social proof like reviews and testimonials can also come in handy here.

Keywords to use at this stage include “best SEO tools” or “company A vs. company B.” Touchpoints here center around why your business is the best option out there and sharing even more information about your specific offerings.

MoFu content types:

Webinars
Reports
Email marketing content
Testimonials
Product videos

Bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFu)

And finally, the bottom of the funnel focuses on generating as many conversions as possible. Your customer is making their final purchasing decisions — and fingers crossed, your business is the one they choose.

Your content here should reinforce why your business is the best solution for the job. Your B2B sales team can help by offering demos of your product (especially for SaaS companies), walking potential customers through the user experience.

With that in mind, your content and overall digital marketing strategy at this stage should focus on getting your target customers to fill out forms requesting demos.

Create BoFu blog content, like guides that walk readers through how to use your product to do certain tasks, share case studies, or showcase templates that can be used in your products. Alongside each of these BoFu content formats, include a call-to-action for requesting a demo and learning more about your product.

Remember that once you get a lead to convert into a paying customer, your last step (almost like a fourth funnel stage) is about retention. After landing your customer, focus on keeping that customer.

BoFu content types:

Case studies/success stories
Demos
Templates
Pricing pages

Checklist for building a B2B content marketing funnel

Know your audience
- Conduct market research
- Interview your target customer
- Do competitive analytics
- Build a buyer persona
Set goals for your marketing funnel
- Check in with different departments in your business
- Look to your business and sales goals
Create content for each stage of the funnel
- Create content for the top of the funnel
- Create content for the middle of the funnel
- Create content for the bottom of the funnel
Analyze your performance
- Use Google Analytics
- Create a dashboard with your KPIs
- Monitor performance and adapt your strategy accordingly

The takeaway

Ready to drive more qualified leads to your business? Then it’s time to create a better B2B content marketing funnel for better lead generation. As your content continues to answer visitors’ questions and concerns, you’ll see more visitors turn into paying customers.

However, if you don’t have the time to conduct the research, build a funnel and personas, and execute your content strategy, consider hiring a B2B content marketing agency.

To get help from a team of experts, and get access our CIQ tool, schedule a free consultation with our team today.

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