How a Fractional CMO Builds a Content Marketing Funnel to Drive Sales
Content marketing is a strategic approach to creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and consistent content—such as blog posts, videos, emails, or social media updates—to attract and engage your target audience. It’s become increasingly important in your marketing ecosystem because it touches so many other pieces of your marketing.
For many of my clients and online businesses, it is the bedrock of their marketing as it often serves to drive brand awareness, build trust, and ultimately guide their target market toward purchasing, without overtly selling.
But like with everything in marketing, it’s not a direct line from awareness to purchase so I like to align content with my client’s target market’s buyer’s journey (how they make their decision and the type of information they’re searching for) to hit each stage of the marketing funnel and provide the information their target market is searching for.
And that’s exactly why I think about content marketing as a funnel instead of siloed distribution channels. Content often serves a different purpose depending on the channel it’s being posted to so knowing where that particular channel falls in your funnel can help create a well-oiled marketing machine that does the heavy lifting for you.
Here’s a little of what that might look like:
Driving brand awareness: SEO, discoverability on socials, etc.
Validation: People often will binge your content (blogs, podcast episodes, etc.) while they are searching for a solution to their need to help them validate their decision
Sales system: Website content strategically moves people to inquire/purchase, email marketing directly selling, etc.
But it doesn’t stop there. I also always teach and encourage my clients to think about their content pillars as a funnel too. That way you also make sure you’re always sharing different types of content that hit different parts of the marketing funnel and address the information that your target market is looking for along their decision-making process. This is specifically really helpful for social media.
So instead of thinking about your content pillars in silos, think about it as it’s own funnel.
This helps clients think about their content more strategically because:
👉 You can’t funnel them into your offer if they don’t know about you.
👉 You can’t funnel them into your offer if they don’t like and trust you.
👉 You can’t funnel them into your offer if you’re never selling your offer.
This all aligns with building the Know Like Trust Factor to nurture those relationships. Click here to learn more about creating a content pillar funnel.
But again, it’s critical to determine which marketing channel falls into each stage of your funnel (top, middle, or bottom) and to know your buyer’s journey so you can strategically align your content to their needs and funnel them into purchasing.
Using one of my clients as an example, here’s what that may look like:
Using their market research and buyer’s journey, we not only know where their customer looks for their product but we also know that once they reach their website, they look at the sizing guide, reviews, numerous images and video to see if the product fits their needs and the shipping and return policy,
Because of this, we know the types of content we need to develop (written and visual) and we know information that needs to be included in some of that content to help build connection and trust with potential customers.
When we look at their intended marketing ecosystem, we can identify the best places to highlight the different types of content and information their customers are looking for before they head to the website, while they’re on the website, and even after visiting.
This leads to building trust with their customers to help them feel more comfortable with purchasing from their brand.
And that is how I think about content marketing, how it fits into the bigger marketing picture, and how to make it effective AF for each and every client I work with.
When you shift your perspective and start treating content marketing as a funnel—one that aligns each channel and each piece of content with your buyer’s journey—you create a marketing machine that works for you around the clock. Whether it's driving brand awareness, validating your offers, or directly selling to your audience, every piece of content has a place and a purpose.
Ready to make your content marketing strategy work harder for you? As a Fractional CMO, I specialize in developing marketing ecosystems to drive real, tangible results. If you want to transform your content marketing into a well-oiled machine that fuels your growth, let’s chat. Learn more about how we can work together.
