Effective mid-funnel marketing requires a nuanced approach and an exceptional understanding of your target audience. If you come off as too pushy, most potential customers will exit the sales funnel altogether.
However, if you don’t provide enough useful information about your products or services, your audience will get stuck in middle-of-funnel purgatory. Either way, they probably won’t be making a purchase.
Fortunately, you can adopt some tried-and-true strategies to create mid-funnel marketing content that maximizes engagement and conversions. Specifically, you need to:
Identify the “Who”
It’s imperative that you understand who your audience is and what their interests are. Begin by taking a deep dive into their interests, challenges, pain points, and needs. Then, ask yourself why they would benefit from your products or services.
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There are a variety of ways to learn more about your audience. Some popular approaches involve the use of surveys, focus groups, and data analytics.
Divide and Conquer
Next, you need to divide your audience into subgroups through audience segmentation. You can segment your audience along a wide range of criteria, including demographic factors like age and gender. Alternatively, you can use behavioral data such as browsing history and purchasing habits.
Segmenting your audience will help you engage in content personalization. You can create content for each subgroup that speaks to their unique challenges and needs. Segmentation enables you to make users feel as though your product was made for the hurdles they face. As such, it is more effective than a one-size-fits-all approach.
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Choose the Right Tone
Naturally, the tone of your mid-funnel marketing content must align with your brand voice and style. Additionally, mid-funnel marketing content must be constructed in a way that is consistent with prospects in the middle of their buying journeys. In other words, mid-funnel content should prioritize educating customers and relaying valuable information — not pushing them to make a purchase.
You can include a call-to-action at the end of mid-funnel content, but keep it brief and relaxed. Instead of something like “Place your order today,” consider CTAs such as “Explore our product page to learn more” or “See what others had to say about our latest product.”
Personalize Your Content
Did you know that 76% of consumers are more likely to purchase from brands that personalize? They are also more likely to make repeat purchases and recommend those brands to others.
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Personalized content is any marketing material that uses specific data to create curated customer experiences. For instance, you could make custom product recommendations based on a customer’s purchasing history or send them a discount code after they visit a product page but do not make a transaction.
Use an Omnichannel Approach
Using multiple channels to connect with your target audience will maximize your reach and increase your odds of moving them to the bottom of the sales funnel. Remember that the goal of mid-funnel marketing is to support the customer’s product research process and present them with relevant information about your brand.
When building your strategy, consider channels like connected TV (CTV), social media, and organic search. CTV is particularly effective at sharing information with brand-aware prospects because they are already engaged with their favorite movie or TV show.
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Build Trust
If you want to build impactful mid-funnel marketing strategies, always work to cultivate trust with your target audience. Establishing your brand as genuine and authentic will help you acquire loyal customers.
One way to build trust involves social proof. On that note, make sure to feature reviews, endorsements, and testimonials in your mid-funnel marketing content.
Evaluate and Optimize
Middle-of-funnel marketing is not static. Instead, it is a dynamic process that should always be evolving and improving. To achieve that aim, you must closely monitor the impacts of your MOF content so that you can determine what works and what doesn’t.
After each campaign, assess key metrics such as sales-qualified leads, engagement rates, and conversion rates. If a piece of content exceeds expectations, find out why. And if content underperforms, make adjustments to improve its impact on your target audience.
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Gather Actionable Insights With MNTN
Mastering mid-funnel marketing does not have to be a daunting task. With MNTN, you can tap into actionable insights about the impact of your connected TV advertising campaigns. Our platform reveals what works and what doesn’t so that you can optimize your mid-funnel marketing strategies.