Why Middle-of-Funnel Content Matters

The top of the sales funnel offers a clear objective for marketers: make prospects aware of the brand, and convince them they should learn more about it. The bottom of the funnel is equally clear-cut: close the deal with an interested lead.

But what about the middle of the funnel (MOFU)? For many sales and marketing teams, the middle-of-the-funnel stage is a nebulous "gray area" where the division of responsibilities between the two departments becomes murky. As a result, leads get stuck in no-man's-land. In fact, of all three of the core stages in the sales funnel, the middle may be the most challenging to navigate.

The good news is, with some careful planning and good communication, the middle of the funnel can be a powerful driver of sales, instead of a frustrating bottleneck. And at the end of the day, a lot of MOFU success comes down to effective collaboration.

Key Collaboration Items For Middle-of-Funnel Content

Let's talk about some key MOFU items your sales and marketing teams should collaborate on — items that can move the needle on your metrics in the bottom part of the funnel. These include:

• Focused website landing pages. These should express the benefits that your ideal customer prioritizes. They should also match up with the customer's mission that induced them to click on your ad or post in the first place. Your sales team can be a treasure trove of insights in this regard and can help your marketers develop landing pages that align with what bottom-of-the-funnel leads are telling your sales reps when closing a deal.
• Downloadable content. You want to develop and deliver high-quality content like e-books, webinars, product demos, online events, white papers, technical specs, infographics, slide decks, etc.. These should be specifically designed for your ideal customer personas and the unique journeys they will take. Sales and marketing can brainstorm which forms of downloadable content will be most effective for the company's core demographic.
• Email marketing content. Your email content should educate your customers and drive quality lead cultivation. It's important to educate leads so they can make informed decisions about whether to move closer to buying your solution. 
• Improved CTAs. You want your CTAs to inspire leads to engage with the content they get from you. This will further qualify them to move from being a marketing-qualified lead to a sales-qualified lead. Here again, your sales and marketing teams can work together to A/B test different CTAs and see which ones are most effective.

The bottom line is, marketers are responsible for creating great content and automation, and salespeople can provide insights as to how leads decide whether to buy. Sales and marketing should have a "symbiotic relationship" when it comes to the middle of the funnel stage. When marketers focus on their role of communicating benefits to leads — from the first moment they make contact via a social post, ad, or landing page — and sales reps focus on closing deals with messaging aligned to marketing materials, the overall result will be more leads in the pipeline and more sales being made.

All Leads Are Not Created Equal

It's also important to keep in mind that not all leads are created equal when it comes to the middle of the funnel. It's important for your sales and marketing teams to be in alignment about what constitutes a valuable lead, and how sales should approach different touch points with leads. What motivates one client to buy from your brand may be totally different from what motivates another. 

For example, one lead may be in the early stages of researching solutions to a problem. They may interact with your middle-of-funnel content, but not be anywhere close to actually purchasing from your brand. On the other hand, a second lead may have already researched solutions for some time and is re-engaging with your content with the intent of eventually making a purchase. Obviously, the second type of lead will be more immediately valuable to your company.

With that in mind, it's important that your sales and marketing teams work together to identify which leads are higher-value, and how to most effectively approach them after an interaction. At the same time, they should develop strategies to nurture marketing-qualified leads, and eventually nudge them into becoming sales-qualified.

Designing diverse MOFU content is often the best way to cover all your bases. You want content that will convince eager leads to take the next step (maybe data-driven content like white papers and e-books), as well as easily digestible content to keep your brand top of mind for leads who are still on the fence (infographics, blog posts, and so forth).

It's Not Just About Numbers, It's About Purpose

Having well-defined lead segments and value scores will help make the entire lead generation process more purposeful during the middle-of-funnel stage. Having a large volume of leads is great... unless most of those leads are unlikely to become paying customers. It's much better to have 50 leads in your pipeline that are likely to buy vs. having 500 leads who will almost certainly not do business with you.

The middle of the funnel is where you can start weeding out leads with low value and focus on the leads that are most likely to go somewhere. CTAs in your content can become great "lead filters." For instance, a financial services company may publish a blog post with a CTA to sign up for their free newsletter. When leads do so, they may be classified as sales-qualified leads, which will trigger outreach from one of your sales reps.

It's true that the middle of the sales funnel can pose some challenges in terms of which department should take action, and which actions they should take. But with a purposeful, deliberate approach, and a lot of good collaboration, you can create a framework for success in terms of your content and customer interactions. And when it's all said and done, you'll be in prime position to enjoy the benefits of improved sales performance.

Learn More

A healthy relationship between sales and marketing is vital to an organization’s success. Dive deep into this effective strategy in a new book called Sales & Marketing Alignment. If you'd like more insights on how you can improve your sales leadership, contact us. Or sign up for our newsletter for more valuable resources.

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