Content That Converts: How to Repurpose Your Content for Your Marketing Funnel

How are you filling your marketing funnel?

Creating highly effective content for your marketing funnel can be challenging. Good news...repurposing can help you create on-message content, for every stage of the funnel, that leads to conversions.

You're probably thinking, how?

The marketing funnel is a brilliant way to think about how your content connects with your audience at different stages of their buying journey. Perhaps you’ve shared a piece of content that raises awareness of a problem, so they want to know more about the problem and how it affects them.

Or maybe they’re fully aware of the problem and choosing between you and your competitor to provide a solution.

In cases like these, content can be the driving factor in moving people to the next stage and eventually getting them to make that all-important buying decision!

But it’s vital you know what content works best at each stage and how to make it the most effective it can be.

In this podcast episode and blog post, we explain how repurposing can help you populate your marketing funnel with content that makes an impact. We share what content formats are optimal for the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel, and my tips for creating content for every stage.

Press play to listen to the episode…

…or keep reading for more.

What is the marketing funnel?

The marketing funnel is a concept used to illustrate how close your potential clients are to making a buying decision. And it’s a helpful way to think about your marketing strategy as a whole.

As you can see, the funnel is an upside-down cone shape because it’s depicting the volume of people at each stage. The bottom of the funnel has fewer people and it indicates those who are ready to make that buying decision. The top of the funnel has more people and takes into account everyone that knows you exist.

Not everyone at the top of the funnel will decide to buy from your or become your client, and that’s okay. Not all of them will be a suitable client for you anyway.

The funnel’s job is to bring lots of people in, weed out those who aren’t suitable, and move those who are to work with you.

On the surface, the marketing funnel theory is the same for all businesses. It can be broken down into three main parts and there are certain types of content that work best for each stage.

The three stages of the marketing funnel

Each part of the marketing funnel does a particular job and knowing what this is can help you create the optimal content to speak to your audience.

1. Top of the funnel content

At the top of the funnel is the awareness or education stage. This is where you introduce a problem to your audience and raise awareness about it.

The best type of content to create at this stage is wide-reaching content, for example podcasts, videos, blog posts, and social media content. Your aim is to get as many people into the funnel as possible, and that starts with building awareness about problems that your product or service solves (more about this shortly).

Here are some ideas for top of the funnel content you could create:

• How-to blog posts
• Video tutorials for YouTube
• Podcast interviews with industry leaders
• Social media posts that share your thoughts and opinions

If you’re looking for a real example of some top of the funnel content, look no further! This blog post and accompanying podcast episode are both examples of top of the funnel content. They educate (check), are aimed at a wide audience (check), and are in an easily-accessible-format (check).

You should aim to populate the top of your funnel with lots of content frequently. Remember, the goal here is raising awareness and lead generation, and while it’s certainly a numbers game, don’t forget how important it is to create high-quality content for high-quality leads.

This can be challenging for businesses, but just creating one pillar piece of content per week and implementing a killer repurposing strategy, can generate lots of interest and get many people into this initial stage fast. Plenty of businesses outsource to help with this because there's a lot of work that needs to go into creating consistently high-quality content all the time.

2. Middle of the funnel content

The next stage is the middle of the funnel, which consists of two parts: interest and consideration.

After people become aware of the problem, you want to agitate their natural curiosity. This leads to the interest stage, where people will want to find out more. At this point, you want to encourage them to think about potential solutions, steering them toward yours.

The middle of the funnel is all about capitalizing on the progress your content has made so far by creating a connection. People at this stage may be directly experiencing the problem you raised at the awareness stage, and now this is your opportunity to build a relationship.

Here, you need to create trust by showing that you’re the authority on the subject. That means diving deeper into that top of the funnel content to create content that shows you mean business. For example, you can do this with:

• Email newsletters
• Case studies
• Industry articles
• Webinars

You could repurpose a how-to blog post from your top of the funnel content into a webinar explaining more about the topic. Or you could flip it around and take some of the concepts from your case studies to create top of the funnel content.

Those social media posts you shared may have sparked a debate online and you could use these to inspire a whitepaper. Or you could try summarizing the key points from your latest podcast episode in your next email newsletter (just like we do).

Changing the angle and format are really easy ways to transform existing content into something brand-new, so experiment and see what you can come up with!

3. Bottom of the funnel content

Finally, there’s the bottom of the funnel. Here is where you have the opportunity to make people take action. That might be buy your product, enquire about your services, or become a paying client.

Content at this stage should be value-rich. It should be inspired by your ideal clients’ pain points and demonstrate how your product or service can provide a solution. Examples of this include detailed product pages or offer pages that encourage people to make that final move and say “yes” to you.

We recommend creating a sales video to accompany your product or service page. This is a creative way to make a strong connection with your audience – and it’s even better if you can show yourself on camera too. See an example of this here.

While this content is potentially the last content your audience will come across before making a decision, it should be the first type of content you create for your marketing funnel. Here’s why.

How to repurpose content for your marketing funnel

When it comes to repurposing content for your marketing funnel, you should start at the bottom.

Think of your product and services pages as the core of your marketing funnel. All your other content should point to these pages, so it’s crucial that you get these right. These pages are the end result, so it makes sense to reverse-engineer the rest of your content so that your audience ends up there.

It’s like having a treasure map with the treasure marked out clearly. You just have to work out how to get there.

Starting at the bottom of the funnel means that all the content that follows will relate to these core messages, so your audience will know what you’re about and what to expect. It helps to generate more impactful content throughout the whole funnel. 

The three-step marketing funnel content repurposing process

So here’s our three-step repurposing strategy, broken down so that your content can pack a punch.

1. Create your bottom of the funnel content first
2. Use the core ideas in your high-value, bottom of the funnel content to inspire top of the funnel content (aka, repurpose your core messages into lots and lots of shareable, educational content!)
3. Repurpose your top of the funnel content into more in-depth content that builds relationships and shows your authority (middle of the funnel)

You can play with this structure too. Perhaps you want to repurpose those core messages into middle of the funnel content, or repurpose responses to your top of the funnel content into further content…as always there are so many possibilities!

Hopefully this has given you some ideas for how to create impactful content for all stages of your marketing funnel!

Do you want to learn more content repurposing techniques that could revolutionize your marketing funnel? If you’re just getting started then check out our book, Content 10x: More Content, Less Time, Maximum Results. The book guides you through a comprehensive introduction to repurposing, and gives you the skills and confidence to put your knowledge into practice. Get your copy here.

If you want to take your content repurposing skills to the next level, our toolkit is here to help. The Content 10x Toolkit is the ultimate secret weapon to repurposing your content, maximizing your reach, and saving you time. Learn more about it here.