The marketing funnel is an essential framework showing the buyer journey from initial contact with your brand (awareness) to the point of purchase (conversion). While it's often overshadowed by the more important stages, the Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) is also an important stage that shouldn't be overlooked when creating content for the sales funnel. In this article, we guide you on creating a mid-funnel content marketing tactic that works.

What is Middle of the Funnel Marketing?

Also known as the consideration stage, MOFU is the period when customers first hear about your brand and when they make a purchase. It is an important stage of capturing the audience’s attention and convincing them to choose your brand over the competitor. At this stage, the prospect understands their problems and is seeking an active solution.

Instead of just browsing, they are evaluating available options and features, and researching how different products and services work to resolve their pain points. Creating general content at this stage may not be sufficient. Instead, you need to provide prospects with informative, personalized, and detailed guides that match their unique needs and situations. Doing that can help you grow their trust, show value to your audience, and help them see your business as the go-to solution.

In this stage of the buying journey, your aim should be to provide the answer to the query, “Why do I need to choose your brand over the competitors?” You need to have an outstanding approach that focuses on MOFU marketing and personalizing the engagement.

Benefits of MOFU

The middle of the funnel can be beneficial in different ways, such as:

• Shorter sales cycle. When you provide valuable content that addresses customers' concerns, you can accelerate decision-making.
• Increased loyalty. When you engage with your potential customers in the middle of the funnel, it becomes easier to build trust and position your brand as a more reliable source.
• Higher conversion. When you create highly educational content that addresses the customer’s pain point, you can increase sales, especially when combined with interactive content to drive conversion rate.
• Optimizing your ROI. When you nurture leads at MOFU, you can get better results from your marketing efforts and achieve a higher ROI.

Why Marketers Overlook MOFU Marketing

There are several reasons why marketers often overlook MOFU. These are:

• Difficult to measure. When considering their options in the middle of the marketing funnel, it can be hard to track customers’ options. This is because the buying journey isn't often linear; therefore, it can be hard to pinpoint the one marketing method that had the greatest impact.
• Differences in the customer’s journey. There are different touchpoints in the middle of the funnel, with each journey unique as the customer conducts research and makes a decision. This can result in a messy production and tracking.
• Faster results from other stages. Tactics at the bottom of the sales funnel, such as discounts and coupon codes, are easily attributed to conversions and can drive sales. On the other hand, an MOFU strategy and tactics can be a bit slower.

The Role of MOFU Marketing

While it can be a bit tricky, MOFU can be an important part of the sales funnel. During this stage of the sales journey, you need to inform customers about your brand's benefits and features to help them make an informed decision. As consumers move through the sales journey, they are always looking for the best solution. The aim of the middle of the marketing funnel should be to offer your audience:

• Educational content. In MOFU marketing, you need to understand your customers' needs, the options available, and why your brand is better than the alternatives.
• Show value. Even as you create educational content, you want to show them how your product can benefit them.
• Trust building. Content at this stage should foster deeper connections by offering important resources and showing audiences you care about their needs.

Best Content For the Middle of the Funnel

When considering content for the middle of the funnel, there are several options. These include:

Livestream and Webinars

These can be great tools for engaging audiences in the different stages of the sales funnel. This is because the format allows users to interact in real-time, enabling them to ask questions, seek clarifications where they have doubts, and get detailed product or service insights.

You can use webinars to showcase how your product works, share expert opinions, and identify topics that resonate with your target audience. Because of the live angle, you can add a new layer of connection and authenticity that other types of content cannot.

Case Studies

This refers to practical illustrations of how your brand has helped customers solve their problems. Case studies can be tangible proof of the effectiveness of your solution. When used to highlight the specific strategies, challenges, results, and customer testimonies, case studies can be a powerful tool for increasing credibility and helping users understand how your products solve their pain points.

Product Demos

Product demos usually serve as graphical guides that help users understand your product's benefits and features. They provide insights into how your brand works, enabling prospects to understand how it operates and how it can improve their lives. Therefore, instead of just telling, you get an opportunity to showcase through product demos. However, it's important to ensure your product demos are detailed and clear, illustrating the most relevant parts of your customers' pain points.

Steps in Creating Mid-Funnel Content

To create middle funnel content that will guide users to the conversion stage, you should use the following steps:

Research Your Audience

Unless you know who your target audience is, it can be hard to create content that resonates with them. Remember that in the MOFU stage, customers already know what they need, so generic content won't help. Therefore, go ahead and understand your audience by researching their demographics, needs, challenges, and psychographics data.

You can use interviews, data insights, and customer surveys to better understand what motivates your customers. You can then use this knowledge to better understand the content that addresses their desires and pain points.

Content Personalizations

Once you understand the audience's needs, challenges, and pain points, it's time to start creating content that addresses them. You need to create content tailored to their needs. For instance, you can include their names in your email marketing, create recommendations for them, and provide content aligned with their interests and past behavior.

You can use data to ensure you have relevant MOFU content that your target audience can connect with, resulting in a closer relationship and encouraging users to draw closer to the purchase decision.

Add a Call to Action

To move leads down the sales funnel, include a call to action that prompts users to engage rather than an immediate action. For instance, you can encourage users to sign up for your webinars, request a free trial, or download a white paper. Where you place the CTAs is also important. You need to position them well to guide your readers to the next step in the buying journey, without making them feel you are pushing or being intrusive.

Tracking Your Mid-Funnel Content

Performance tracking and analysis of your content strategy for this stage is important for understanding which content resonates with your target audience and which doesn't. You can leverage tools like Google Analytics to track metrics like page views, conversion rates, and time on page.

Track the performance of different content and analyze users' journeys on the site. You can use the insights to refine your strategy, optimize your content, and ensure you have a more effective middle-of-the-funnel approach.

In Conclusion

Mid-funnel marketing is an important stage that acts as a bridge between the top of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel stages. When you understand the unique needs of customers at this stage and create a targeted strategy, it becomes easier to connect deeply with your target audience, build trust, and guide customers to conversion. You can read our guide on case studies of brands that nailed meme marketing.