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The middle of the funnel (MoFu) is an essential component of a sales process often overlooked by marketers. While the top of the funnel (ToFu) brings in leads, the middle of the funnel content helps nurture those leads into lifelong customers and build brand affinity.
In this blog, I will discuss the middle of the funnel, different content types you can use for it, and how to use marketing automation for nurturing leads. By understanding the various aspects of the middle of the funnel, you can target the audience with better content and create a good buyers’ journey experience.
What is Middle of the Funnel?
There are two paths through which prospects can get into your middle of the funnel stage.
The first path is if prospects interact with your ToFu content, and that’s how you captured their email address.
The second path is when prospects directly interact with the middle of the funnel content using specific channels like google ads.
We will cover both these paths, but before that, let’s establish the aim of the middle of the funnel marketing.
In the middle of the funnel, the objective is to build trust, authority and persuade prospects to take the next step of either booking a demo or consultation.
In the middle of the funnel stage, your content should have the theme of how YOU can solve your prospect’s problem and position your brand as the solution to your prospects needs.
- Your Middle of the Funnel content should be
- Educational
- Problem-solving & relieving
- Differentiating
- Persuasive
- Personalised
How Does MoFu Works In Practice?
Let’s take an example, say we want to sell insurance for freelancers. In the ToFu stage, prospects would be searching for information. Like
- What insurance do freelancers need?
- Types of insurance?
- Various Covers?
- Things I need to consider when buying freelancers’ insurance
Now, there are two paths through which prospects can get into your middle of the funnel stage.
The first path is if prospects interact with your ToFu content, and that’s how you captured their email address.
The second path is when prospects directly interact with the middle of the funnel content using specific channels like google ads.
Let’s comprehensively discuss both scenarios.
- The first scenario is when a prospect interacts with your brand by downloading a pdf which could be a – guide to insurance for freelancers; in exchange, they give out their name and email.
- In the middle of the funnel stage, the brand nurtures the IQL (information qualified lead) by clever marketing automation. Using a tool like ActiveCampaign, brands can send targeted nurture emails and score prospects based on their level of interaction.
If the prospect interacts with various content items, they get a high score, and if they don’t, they are marked as disengaged. So that’s the first scenario.
In the second scenario, a prospect skips the top of the funnel, interacts with the brand, and becomes a marketing qualified lead.
It happens when a prospect is looking for a solution provider. e.g. in our freelance insurance example. The prospect could type in keywords like:
The freelancer insurance company or freelancer insurance provider.
These keywords show higher intent.
To convert prospects into marketing qualified leads, you can use high intent keyword campaigns in Google and send qualified traffic to your landing pages.
Here is an example from Bequest, where prospects interested in life-term insurance convert directly into marketing qualified leads by skipping the ToFu stage.
So you might be thinking, why not just skip the top of the funnel stage and directly engage with the middle of the funnel prospects. That’s a good question, and it all comes back to the cost.
When running Google ads, high intent keywords have a high cost per click which means you need higher ad budgets to compete against the big players. It’s crazy, but sometimes high intent keywords can go up to $100 per click.
So by targeting the low-cost top-of-the-funnel keywords, you can effectively reduce your cost per lead or cost per acquisition.
Middle of the Funnel Content
For any successful marketing campaign, you need collateral to complement your marketing activities.
Here are some examples of the middle-of-the-funnel content that you can use as part of your nurture sequences.
For B2B Consulting companies, I would recommend:
- Advanced eBooks
- Case studies
- White papers
- Webinars
- FAQs
- Pillar Pages
- Landing Pages
- Reviews and Testimonials
For B2B SaaS companies, my recommendation would be to use:
- Case studies
- Comparison sheets
- Evaluation guides
- Demo Videos
- Success Kits
Marketing Middle of the Funnel Content
Now you have your content ready, let’s start promoting it. If you already have your prospect’s email address, you can easily email your information-qualified leads and send them more valuable content.
If you want to send direct traffic to your middle of the funnel stage, you can run social media ads from Facebook and send traffic to your landing pages.
Speaking of landing pages, You can also run high intent Google ad campaigns, targeted keywords like
<your service> supplier
<your service> agency
<your service> consultant
<your service> developer
How To Nurture Your Leads?
Below I have discussed the two most significant ways of effectively nurturing your leads.
1. Through Email marketing automation
Marketing Automation is at the crux of converting IQLs into MQLs.
We talked about what content types should use share but now let’s talk about what emails you should send?
- You can send them industry-specific case studies and use their jargon if you know their industry.
- Showcase your process or behind-the-scenes methodology.
- Share information on what proven systems or steps you take to produce results.
- Always include a call to action to the next stage.
- Plan a Form Abandonment Campaign. This campaign kicks in when your lead doesn’t click-through or book a demo call. Like in e-commerce, visitors do not complete checkout and abandon the site. Such methods can help you re-engage these audiences.
2. Through Scoring and Enrichment
As part of lead nurture, you can do things along the way to qualify prospects.
Lead Enrichment:
Using progressive fields, you can enrich your lead data with more info. e.g. in the tofu stage, if you capture name and email now when offering MoFu content, you can replace the name field with the Job Title. By capturing more info about your lead, you can create a start to segment and personalise their experience.
Lead Scoring:
Use software to track user activities, e.g. using ActiveCampaign will allow you to collect data through email workflows, and page tracking will allow you to build unique email workflows. You can develop your scoring system based on:
- Click-through rate of emails
- Number of links clicked
- Pages viewed on your website
- Pages viewed on your website
- Forms filled out
Bonus tips
a. Always include a call to action
The next step is to end your Middle of the Funnel marketing content with a call to action that tells prospects what to do next.
b. Segment your Marketing Qualified Leads
Group MQLs into buckets. Match each bucket with a target audience or persona group. When matched, you can create marketing messages that resonate with that particular persona group.
c. Breakdown Your MoFu Funnel
With the help of segmented lists, you can share relevant information that talks about the leads’ pain points and how your services can be a solution to them. Break down the middle of the funnel content into smaller funnels and organise them according to prospect behaviour that you can get with lead scoring.
Conclusion
Great stuff! You now know how to generate marketing qualified leads at the middle of your funnel. When focusing your marketing efforts on the prospects that have already shown interest in your services, middle-of-the-funnel marketing assists you.
It decreases your client acquisition cost and drives sales by bringing focus to quality leads with the help of nurturing methods like lead scoring and lead segmentation.
Before you go, check out this sales funnel mindmap. It shows various examples of content you can use at each stage of your selling process that can help you in building a compelling sales funnel content strategy.
I hope you found this blog helpful.
Also Check:
5 Steps To Win Back Lost Leads With Lead Nurturing
What are Unqualified Leads: Identification and Management
B2B Startup Marketing Guide: Key Elements and Strategies
