How To Create Bottom of the Funnel Content That Converts

You’ve done your job well so far. You’ve found qualified leads and nurtured them through the buying process until they are at the bottom of the funnel. Now, it’s time to close the deal.

In this article, we will show you how to identify and create bottom of the funnel content that converts.

What Is Bottom of the Funnel Content?

Bottom of the funnel content is the last stage in the buyer’s journey where prospective customers are consuming information to make purchase decisions. By the time someone arrives at this stage, they will already be aware of your brand and be qualified leads; they are buyers actively thinking about buying products or solutions.

So what is lower funnel marketing?

As prospective customers work their way through the marketing funnel, bottom of the funnel content delivers personalized content to this narrow, highly-qualified target audience to increase conversion rates and turn prospects into customers.

Stages of Sales and Marketing Funnels

Content is designed to drive prospects into the sales funnel, nurturing them from awareness to consideration to decision. A different content marketing strategy is applied to each stage, designed to move prospective customers through the funnel.

There’s a big difference between upper funnel vs lower funnel contact. By creating the right content for prospects at their perspective stage of the buyer journey, you foster awareness, gain trust, and build relationships to create a strong customer experience.

Top of the Funnel (ToFU) Or "The Awareness Stage"

Top of funnel content is designed to expose potential customers to your brand. This is where prospects may first learn about your company and what you offer. They will also discover that you might have solutions to their problems.

ToFU content should be focused on education and information without any hard sell — at this stage, potential customers are just searching for information.

ToFU content formats include:

• Blog posts
• Social Media posts
• Infographics
• E-books

Top of funnel content builds brand awareness and is often used in the sales funnel to drive organic traffic to websites from search engine queries.

Middle of the Funnel (MoFU) Or "The Consideration Stage"

In the middle of the funnel, potential customers have reached the research phase. They may look at what you have to offer and your competitors to start to narrow their choices.

MoFU content strategies generally include:

• Webinars
• Educational resources
• Downloadable content
• White papers and articles

Bottom of the Funnel (BoFU) Or "The Decision Stage"

Bottom of the funnel content is all about action and conversions. While continuing to add value, you also need to provide tangible reasons why buyers should choose your product or solution over another. You may also want to provide specific offers to encourage sales.

Lower funnel marketing tactics include content ideas including:

• Product demos
• Customer stories
• Case studies
• Comparisons

The best bottom of funnel content will generate sales.

Creating Bottom Funnel Content That Generates More Conversions

Well-designed and executed BoFU content generates conversions.

What is funnel conversion? When someone converts, they are making a purchase decision and buying from you. While the top of the funnel builds awareness and the middle of the funnel content builds trust, the bottom of the funnel content is designed to convert and generate sales.

Comparison Content (Product Comparisons)

Product comparisons are a staple for the BoFU stage of the content marketing funnel. Comparisons provide a way for potential customers to evaluate different products and solutions to help see which suits their needs best.

When buyers are in the decision stage, they will often search for reviews or comparisons of your product or services vs. others they are considering. For example, if you are selling customer relationship management (CRM) software, you might want to consider creating a product comparison page for how your product stacks up against another.

To create an effective product comparison, you will want to:

• Choose a specific product that you compete with
• Identify the key features/benefits that your ideal customer needs.
• Provide a fair and honest review, comparing products side-by-side
• Explain the benefits and features of your product and how they are the best solution.

Most companies will create multiple comparisons to capture online searches looking to compare your product to competitors.

Alternatives Product Roundups

Alternate product roundups highlight your solutions as well as your competitors. While that may seem counterintuitive, this type of content helps capture potential customers in the decision stage. It also works extremely well for search engine optimization (SEO).

If someone is searching for alternatives to the current product, this helps direct organic traffic to your site. For example, if someone is searching online for “QuickBooks alternatives” and you’re selling accounting software, ensure that your product is a part of the discussion. Such searchers are already going to be researching alternatives, so it’s better if you can frame the conversation.

Keep in mind, however, that you need to deliver on the promise. If you promise a reader that they will get a list of alternatives, you need to make sure you are providing a fair comparison. You can certainly provide specific examples of the features or benefits you provide that your competitors do not, but the information needs to be an honest assessment, or you risk losing trust.

To create an alternate product roundup, follow these steps:

• Identify popular competitor products, including those that might not be a perfect fit for your ideal customers.
• Gather use cases and features for each
• Create product reviews for each product, making fair comparisons
• Highlight your strengths and position your solution as the best alternative on the list.

Pricing Pages

One of the most common searches is for how much products or services cost. Pricing is always a factor in someone’s decision among other factors, but if they want to find out how much your solution costs, it’s best they get accurate information from you rather than somewhere else.

In today’s environment, where people comparison shop online, providing transparent pricing information is almost always the right strategy — especially if you are selling a popular product or one with a large number of competitors.

If you are selling single products, it’s pretty straightforward, although you may also want to highlight additional upsell or cross-sell opportunities. For products with multiple sizes or levels, you may want to create a side-by-side comparison of price points and features.

When creating a pricing page, you will want to:

• Highlight products and benefits.
• Clearly show your pricing options.
• Make it straightforward and easy to understand.
• Show which option is best for different types of customers.
• Include a clear call to action, directing them to the next steps in the conversion process.

Case Studies

While case studies can be used in the middle of the funnel, they can be especially effective at the lower end of the funnel. By developing case studies, you can demonstrate the challenges other customers had, the solution you provided, and the benefits they received.

Steps for creating strong case studies include:

• Identify ideal customers that had strong results.
• Identifying the use case that is similar to your prospects.
• Interviewing the customer to tell the success story in their words.
• Crafting the content.

In each case, you will want to detail the problem or challenge they faced, the impact of these challenges, the solutions you delivered, and the benefits that resulted. The best case studies show tangible results.

Case studies can help prospective customers empathize with challenges and see value in your products or services. They also provide proof that your solutions work and can deliver the results you promise.

E-Books

E-books can also be used at various stages in the buyer’s journey, but they can be effective at the bottom of the funnel when they highlight research and data-driven insights that make the case for your products or solutions.

As buyers are in the final stage of making purchase decisions, E-books can help inspire confidence in your products or services and give buyers the peace of mind they need to convert. E-books at this stage are often targeted at overcoming specific objections from buyers or hyper-focused on specific features or challenges.

When crafting E-books, content marketers should:

• Understand their target audience.
• Develop content that answers the specific questions buyers have in the final decision stage.
• Build authority and trust in your solutions.
• Make a data-driven case for why your solution is the best.

Customer Reviews

Customer reviews and testimonials are also effective tools in your sales and content marketing toolkit. When potential buyers see that others saw positive results with your product, it can inspire confidence and trust.

These reviews provide an endorsement of your products or services from a third party, which often carries more weight with prospects. Buyers today are very aware of puffery and marketing-speak. When they hear from an actual customer that validates what you’re saying, it can be a powerful motivator.

Reviews can be turned into sales collateral for email marketing or as part of bottom of the funnel content.

To create customer reviews, you will want to:

• Identify your best customers
• Ask your customers for a review or testimonial
• Aggregate customer reviews into a BoFU piece of content
• Sprinkle customer reviews throughout your content and website

You may also want to solicit your best customers to provide honest reviews for third-party review sites as well. This can ensure your products and services are shown in the best light and help inspire trust in your solutions.

In-Depth Product Webinars

Many companies use webinars throughout the sales funnel, but at the bottom of the funnel, you’ll want to focus them a little differently. Effective BoFU webinars include product demos and walkthroughs, after-purchase timelines, or best practices for using your product.

By the time prospects reach the bottom of the funnel, they have considerable interest in your products and a relationship between you and them has formed. As such, your content should be highly targeted and personalized. Whereas a top of funnel webinar might be offered to anyone interested in a topic, bottom of the funnel webinars are usually one-on-one or exclusive to buying teams. This offers a greater opportunity for interaction and answering questions.

When launching BoFU in-depth product webinars, you will want to:

• Customize content for specific customers.
• Demonstrate use cases that align with customer needs.
• Make presentations interactive.
• Discuss the next steps.

Best Practices When Creating BoFU Content

When prospects are in the final stages of the sales cycle, you don’t need to be subtle about your content. While you don’t want overt sales messages in your top of the funnel content, in the decision stage, it’s time to get them to convert.

Still, you want to make sure that you are providing value at every stage. Even interested buyers don’t want to sit through an extended sales pitch. So make sure you leave them with valuable information that answers their questions at every step.

Best practices for creating BoFU content that converts include:

• Hyper-targeting your ideal customers.
• Customizing and personalizing content to specific buyers whenever possible.
• A clear call to action, including what you want the customer to do next.
• Measure what’s working and what’s not to continually optimize your content.

By now, prospects know you want them to buy, so don’t be shy about selling and asking for the sale.

Be Genuine with Your Target Audience (& Potential Customers)

Authenticity is key to developing trust. Trust is fundamental to sales.

Being genuine and authentic is harder than just being honest. It means staying true to who you are, what your products and solutions can do (and not), and who you serve.

You should have a genuine interest in helping others achieve their goals and provide solid solutions to get the job done. In some cases, that may mean letting prospects know your product isn’t the right fit for them.

Being genuine and authentic can set you apart from your competitors. It’s another way to inspire confidence in your brand and influence conversions in an honest, transparent manner.

BoFU content is most effective when it’s specific and direct. For example, if someone wants to know what your product costs, they want specifics. Trying to tease them or trick them into buying will only undermine trust.

Create Engaging Visuals

Don’t ignore the power of visuals when creating bottom of the funnel content. You can communicate a lot of information clearly and quickly by providing engaging visual elements such as infographics, charts, images, visual comparisons, and videos.

Visuals can grab people’s attention, simplify complex messages, and help with recall. For example, a well-design graphic that breaks down a side-by-side comparison of your product and your top competitor can be more effective than a long-form narrative review.

Be Up to Date (Product Updates)

Because bottom of the funnel content relies on data, real-world examples, and accurate information, it will require you to provide information that is updated and refreshed regularly. There’s nothing worse than leading a customer up to the point of purchase only to have them find that prices or options have changed.

This is especially important when you are providing a comparison to competitors. Even if your feature set or prices remain static, it doesn’t mean your competitor will do the same. For example, if they are offering a discount and your price comparison doesn’t reflect it, that can undermine trust in the information you are providing.

Stick to PDF Format for Downloadables

Downloadables are a great way to generate leads but they also provide an easy-to-digest and share resource. Especially in B2B sales, there are often buying teams involved in the sales process, so content that can be shared easily is a plus.

Using PDFs as a content format is usually your best bet since they work on different operating systems and platforms without needing to install additional software. If people don’t have access to software or need to install something to look at your content, they may leave your site.

When you use downloadables, marketing and sales teams can actively track who is accessing what information. This is important information for follow-ups and designing the next steps in driving customers to convert.

Create Content for Every Stage of the Funnel

Effective content marketing requires you to create content for every stage of the marketing funnel. This allows you to educate and inform your prospective customers, answer their questions, and demonstrate why your products or services are the best solutions to their problems.

Compose.ly has teams of professional content marketers and writers that can help you develop the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel content to drive prospects through the buyer’s journey.

Whether you need to augment your in-house marketing time, scale up your content development, or outsource content creation, Compose.ly is here to help provide quality content that converts.

Get in touch with Compose.ly's blog writing service today to get started.