The old way of making buying decisions is never coming back, and you need to get your business up to speed on the latest changes in how customers purchase products if you want to keep up.
In the past, potential customers had only a few companies they could choose from when they wanted to do business. They had no way to do company research besides Better Business Bureau, word of mouth, or contact the company and speak to their sales team.
Fast forward to today, and customers are empowered now more than ever. They can quickly research your business and your competitors, as well as the problem they are trying to solve and the possible solutions.
If your business doesn't supply them with the information they seek, you are missing out on a prime opportunity to snatch up some of these potential customers for yourself.
Especially if your competitors are doing a better job at providing them with the self-serve information they seek to fix their problems.
One way to reach these information-hungry prospects is to create content that provides answers to the questions they ask while they do searches on Google.
What is MoFu Content?
MoFu, or Middle-of-the-Funnel Content, answers questions your potential customer has when they research their problem online. They are looking for possible solutions, so they can learn how to fix their problem. Those answers will help them decide if they want to do it themselves or get someone to do the work for them.
Let’s discuss how this type of content fits into the buyer’s journey, so you can get a better understanding of what you need to be communicating to prospects who are in this stage.
Are you in a hurry? Get the highlights by reading the quick recap at the bottom of this page, and get your free marketing strategy by subscribing to our newsletter before you go.
How Does MoFu Content Fit into the Buyer’s Journey
MoFu content can take the form of blog articles that you write and publish on your website, free guides, whitepapers, case studies, podcasts, or even webinars.
The goal of your MoFu content is to reach your ideal prospects and convince them that you're the right company to help them solve their problem.
Let’s dive into each of the different types of MoFu content so you can learn how to leverage MoFu content for your professional services firm.
6 Examples of MoFu Content
1. Blog Articles
Blogging is a pretty common marketing tactic that most companies use, but I’m here to tell you a little secret... most of them do it wrong.
What do I mean by that?
Most companies treat blog articles as nothing more than a page to stuff keywords on or entertaining “fluff pieces” that drive tons of traffic, but rarely see any sales as a result.
Instead, I want you to think of blog articles like sales letters that come in the mail. A lot of mail is quickly categorized as junk and ends up tossed out without ever getting opened.
The same thing essentially happens with blog articles, except it's online instead of in your mailbox. You see, blog articles pop up all the time in your email, social media feeds, and when you Google search, but how many do you actually click on and read?
The tactics you would use to keep someone from immediately tossing the letters you mailed out are the same tactics you want to use when writing your blog articles.
Your blog articles must quickly catch the prospect’s attention within the first few sentences and tell them why it’s going to benefit them to keep reading.
A word of caution: don’t be too “salesy” or “pushy” when creating content for ToFu or MoFu leads. These types of leads are looking for information, not a pitch. Save your pitch for after you show them why they should choose you instead of doing it themselves or hiring a competitor.
Let’s take a look at an example of an exceptionally executed MoFu blog article so you can get an idea of what I mean.
Example:
Thrive Themes: How to Build a Conversion Focused Coaching Website — Step-by-Step
Thrive Themes is a software development company that created a custom theme with plugins to make it easy for solopreneurs to DIY a professional website without knowing any code.
The owner, Shane Melaugh, does an excellent job of producing ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu content to attract and convert more leads.
One great example of a MoFu article they published is one they wrote to teach professional coaches how to build a business website using WordPress along with their themes and suite of complementary plugins.
Why does this make an excellent MoFu post?
The content answers one of the most common questions their target audience is searching: “How do I build a website?”
They present the information in a well organized and engaging way. They use their custom graphics and videos for visuals. This is an excellent way to encourage people to interact with the page and click.
They even keep the article completely informational and educational until the very end, and then they pitch their offer: “Become a member.”
The only thing that’s missing that would make this article even better is a lead magnet.
What’s a lead magnet?
A lead magnet is a free guide, eBook, or another downloadable resource that helps them solve a problem or teaches them something useful they can take and implement swiftly.
The goal of a good lead magnet is to establish yourself as an expert in your industry and convince them your services or products are the best solutions for their problem.
By not offering a lead magnet, they are missing out on the opportunity to capture emails for prospects who aren’t quite ready to invest in their solution yet. These prospects could become customers with a little TLC and lead nurturing.
You can take a look at Thrive Theme’s MoFu blog article here.
2. Free Guides or White Papers
As mentioned in the previous section, free guides can be used as lead magnets to capture email addresses of potential prospects.
What makes this so powerful is that by signing up for your list and downloading your lead magnet, they agree to allow you to contact them again.
This gives you the opportunity to put them into a lead nurturing campaign and send them more useful and relevant information that moves them from being a lead to being a new customer.
Your free guide or white paper needs to be complete and should never leave the person feeling like it was a waste of time to download and read.
This is your opportunity to provide some valuable information to your potential customers and show them why you are the right company to help them.
Be careful not to overwhelm your readers with too much information, however. You want to keep the flow of the guide or white paper moving at a decent pace, so they consume all the information and don’t set it down because it gets tedious or too difficult to understand.
Consider publishing your guide as a clickable blog post series and offer the PDF version for the most engaged visitors who want to save the information and come back to it later when they have more time.
Let’s take a look at an example of a free guide that does an excellent job of checking all these boxes.
EXAMPLE:
HubSpot’s Social Media Workbook
HubSpot’s core product is its suite of marketing and business software. Ideal MoFu prospects for HubSpot would likely be searching for information on how to use social media for their business.
HubSpot did an excellent job of anticipating this question that their MoFu prospects would have. They created an actionable social media workbook to help these prospects achieve a quick win and build trust, as well as establish themselves as an expert in their industry.
They organize their guide in such a way that makes it easy for a beginner to create and implement a social media strategy from start to finish.
This first chapter focuses on developing the strategy, and the following chapters explain how to implement the strategy, measure your ROI, and additional tips for success.
The biggest thing I think they could have done to make their guide even better is to include more visuals and graphics to break up the text. Most people don’t want to read a wall of text, and that makes this guide a little intimidating for them.
Now that you know more about using blog articles with lead magnets for your MoFu prospects, let’s talk about some more ways you can build trust and establish your authority with your potential customers.
3. Case Studies
Social proof is necessary for creating trust with your potential customers, and case studies or reviews are the best examples of content you can use.
Use case studies, testimonials, or reviews on your landing pages and sales pages to help convince your prospect they can trust you enough to do business with you.
Show them how your service or product is going to help them by using a case study to demonstrate how it helped someone else that is just like them.
Case studies help you overcome the objection that somehow they are different, and it won’t work for them.
Let’s take a look at an example of how to use a case study in a blog article to establish social proof and your authority on the subject.
EXAMPLE:
EZ Texting: How Top Corporate Headhunters Use SMS for Recruitment
Software providers like EZ Texting help businesses use SMS messaging for marketing and recruiting.
In an article they published last year, they teach MoFu prospects how they can use SMS messaging to communicate and market to potential hires.
The article hooks you in with a warning that if you aren’t using SMS for recruiting, then you’re lagging behind your competitors, which no business owner wants.
They further go on to tell their prospects how effective text messaging is for getting your message read by linking to a study that proved 98% of people who received texts from businesses had opened them.
To further prove that it could work for recruiting and not just marketing purposes, they include this testimonial next.
"Even I was surprised at the high engagement rate text messaging delivered! Almost no opt-outs, lots of follow-ups, and very positive impact on recruitment."
-Haley Lanigan, Recruiting Manager, Fidelis Freight [source]
While this is incredibly effective to get the reader to keep reading, they drop the ball somewhat at the end of the article by not including another testimonial at the critical point, right before the CTA.
They are trying to get that prospect to engage by downloading their free lead magnet.
Another testimonial at the end to showcase a different benefit would have been a nice touch to persuade them to give their email address and download a guide they have to spend time reading.
If you don’t make the prospect excited to read your download, he will likely skim over it and never come back to it again.
This is only one example of a way you can use case studies for social proof. You can also include them inside your lead magnets, on sales pages, or even inside of emails.
4. Podcasts
Hearing your voice through a podcast makes you real to your MoFu prospects and lets them engage with you in a way that gives them a glimpse of who you are.
Your distinctive accent and verbal personality that comes through in a podcast will give your reader some insight about you and allow them to relate to you more quickly than if they just read your written text.
When you read and talk about your blog articles to your reader/listener, include some bonus information or insights in the podcast that isn’t in the written text. It will entice them to click and listen.
Upload your podcasts on an audio platform like Apple Podcasts to help get your podcasts discovered by more people and drive more MoFu prospects back to your website.
Make sure to include a CTA in your podcast, and don’t make them too long. The best podcasts are easy to digest in short chunks of time. I wouldn’t recommend making your podcast any longer than 15-13 minutes for a blog article, and no more than 30-60 minutes for a podcast channel.
People who are actively listening to podcasts on channels are already aware of their value and more willing to listen longer. People landing on your blog article pages are going to be in more of a hurry and less willing to invest a lot of time on you yet.
Here’s an example of a particularly good podcast.
EXAMPLE:
Donald Miller: #194: Stephen Mansfield—Nine Secrets to Leading During a Crisis
Donald Miller released a new podcast series surrounding COVID-19 and how businesses can navigate the challenges coming their way because of it.
By pivoting the topics of his podcast, he was able to enter the conversation his MoFu prospects were having, and establish trust and authority by being the voice that calms them down and helps them get through it.
His podcasts are always formatted to start with a musical introduction that quickly says his business name and tagline and leads into a “live” presentation with himself and his co-host.
After the introduction, he plays the first half of a pre-recorded interview with an expert, takes a break to play an ad with a CTA, and then continues with the rest of the discussion.
At the end of the interview, he always leads into a recap of the discussion and then repeats the previously mentioned CTA with a sense of urgency, do it now or time is running out, for example.
This format makes his podcasts entertaining, informative, and not too "salesy." The CTAs are always relevant to the topic of the podcast and the audience listening.
He’s also very good at ensuring there is never dead air or anyone fumbling for words. In one of his podcasts, he mentions that he discussed everything with the interviewee before making the recording for the podcast.
His careful planning and attention to detail make his podcasts extremely useful for attracting and converting ToFu and MoFu leads.
5. Videos
Videos are similar to podcasts in establishing trust and authority quickly, but they are even better than podcasts because your viewers get to see you.
Knowing more about you and what makes you tick helps your ideal audience relate to you so you can reach them with your message.
Videos are great to use in blog articles, podcasts, and on video channels such as YouTube.
Entice your prospects to watch the video, listen to the podcast, and read the written text by including different information in each.
Make a video introduction to include at the top of your blog article that quickly hooks the visitor, tells them the highlights of what they’re going to get out of your podcast and post and tells them to listen and read now.
Your videos should be short, like the podcasts, and shouldn’t be longer than 10 minutes. By the time your prospect spends 10 minutes watching a video, 10-15 minutes listening to your podcast, and a few minutes skimming or reading your text, they will be primed for your call to action.
Thrive Themes does an excellent job of using introduction videos in their posts. Let’s take a look at one now so you can see what I mean.
EXAMPLE:
Thrive Themes: Is Thrive Theme Builder Right for Your WordPress Website?
In this article, the author includes a short, 5:27 video that gives a quick rundown of what the viewer will learn in the following article.
They don’t include a podcast, and you don’t have to, but they do tell the viewer to read their article and list the reasons why they should.
The article includes a deep dive into the tactical steps they need to take, so they can decide to accept their call to action or not before leaving their website.
Matt’s body language in the video helps to communicate he is trustworthy by using a square posture and open hands. The pace of the video progresses smoothly and doesn’t feel too slow or too fast.
Videos are used for more than just blog articles, and we’re going to talk about another way to leverage the power of video marketing next.
6. Webinars
All of the content types that we’ve discussed have been self-serve, passive content that your MoFu prospects do engage with to a certain extent, but they can’t interact with you in real-time.
Webinars let you interact with MoFu prospects in real-time so that they can get the answers to their questions right away.
Host a webinar that teaches them something they would be trying to learn that’s relevant to your business. Let them ask questions in chat and do a Q&A at the end.
You’ll learn a lot more about your audience and how you can meet their needs when you interact with them frequently.
EXAMPLE:
ImpactBND: Digital Sales & Marketing Day
ImpactBND recently hosted an all-day event with back-to-back live webinars on a wide range of topics that would interest their potential customers.
The informational content was pre-recorded and played to the live audience while the instructor from the video was answering chat questions and interacting with the audience.
Each webinar was scheduled for a specific time. The schedule was divided into a morning and evening list that had been emailed to the attendees.
Attendees picked what webinar they most wanted to watch at that time, but ImpactBND made sure they could see them all at their own pace by giving them login access to view all the replays.
As a bonus, attendees who logged in with their new accounts could view even more video content on the related topics from the webinars.
How MoFu Content Creates Customers
We mentioned briefly at the beginning of this article that potential customers use MoFu content to answer their questions when they turn to Google, or Bing, or some other search engine.
By providing the answers to their questions, you establish yourself as an expert on your topic and build trust with MoFu prospects.
Once your prospect respects and trusts your brand, they are going to see how you stack up against your competitors.
This comparison is a good thing, so don’t worry. No business is the perfect fit for everyone in the market. Because your prospects are comparing you with the competition, you’re going to end up with quality leads that are better suited for your products and services.
How do you know what questions your customers are asking?
Do some research by surveying your subscribers or social media followers, asking your current customers how they found you or talking to your sales and marketing team. You need to also keep up with the comments on your social media pages and blog articles to see the questions asked there as well.
Now that you know what MoFu content is and how to use it, let’s do a quick recap of what you learned.
Quick Recap
MoFu, or Middle-of-the-Funnel, content is created to attract potential customers who already know what their problem is, and they are researching ways to solve it.
You need to demonstrate to them that you are an expert who can help them by answering the questions they are researching.
Use the following types of content when trying to attract MoFu leads:
- Blog Articles: educational and informational blog articles that demonstrate your knowledge and expertise on your topic.
- Free Guides or White Papers: actionable guides that give easy-to-follow instructions to help your MoFu Leads earn a Quick Win (teach them how to fix their problem).
- Case Studies: provide proof that you can help them by showing them how you helped someone like them (a former customer).
- Podcasts: make your blog articles more personable and engaging by recording your voice reading and talking about the article to them.
- Videos: attract organic traffic from YouTube or other video sites, and get skimmers to stop and stay awhile by including a video at the top of your blog articles.
- Webinars: establish authority and trust, and make the Quick Win more interactive and engaging by teaching them how to fix their problem through a webinar.
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This article is part of the Series: ToFu, MoFu, BoFu Content for B2B Professional Services Firms.