How to Come Up With Top-Of-The-Funnel Content Ideas

Top-of-the-funnel content is often the first brush a visitor gets with your site. This means the quality of this content can determine whether a visitor stays on your site long enough to become a customer.

With your top-of-the-funnel content, you’ll want to target people in the ‘awareness’ stage. This means they’re beginning to realize they have a problem and are trying to get a better understanding of it so they can find the solution.

During the awareness stage, people will typically turn to Google for help, which means you need to be targeting the right keywords with your top-of-the-funnel content. Doing this successfully can increase awareness of your brand and attract new visitors to your website. Your secondary goal will be to turn these visitors into customers. Your content should help with this, but you can also nurture your leads with the help of email marketing and customer relationship management software.

In the early stages, people aren’t interested in running branded searches. They’ll simply be trying to find out what kinds of products or services they need, and who offers them. So, your top-of-the-funnel content should be more informative than commercial.

Here, I’ll talk you through how you can come up with ideas for this type of content.

How to Come Up With Top-Of-The-Funnel Content Topics

If you want to create quality content that’s going to attract the right people to your website, you need to get into the minds of your ideal customers and work out what kinds of information they need.

Here are some tactics you can use to help with this.

Do Competitor Keyword Research

Choose a keyword that’s relevant to your products or services and type it into Google. You should then note down the names of the companies that rank in the top 10 spots. These are some of your competitors.

You should then run these sites through a keyword research tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs to see what kinds of keywords they currently rank for. This will then give you an idea of what kinds of content opportunities you’re currently missing, and what types of blog posts or guides you should be writing to become more competitive.

Of course, we’re talking specifically about top-of-the-funnel content, so you’ll want to isolate any keywords that are relevant to this stage of the buying journey. These will typically start with “what”, “how”, and “when”.

Once you have a list of keywords that are likely to be searched by customers in the awareness stage, think about what kinds of content you can weave them into, and what topics you should be covering to provide the most helpful information for your target audience.

Send a Survey to Your Staff

Another way you can come up with top-of-the-funnel content ideas is by surveying your customer service team. Ask them which questions they often receive from prospective customers, and what kinds of content you could create to address them. Your customer-facing staff have the most interaction with the people you’re trying to connect with, so their insight will be invaluable.

Try to survey your customer service staff at least every three months, as this will help you to keep track of whether your customers’ needs are changing over time. It can also be a good idea to set up a dedicated custom landing page where your team members can log the most common questions they get quickly and easily.

Thinking of how you can answer frequently asked questions that are relevant to the awareness stage of the buying journey will provide you with plenty of content ideas you can use to attract your target audience.

Address Common Problems

Along with common questions, it’s likely your customers have a lot of the same concerns or problems that they’ll want a solution to. So, consider how you can address them with your content.

Think about a lot of the pain points people might have that relate to your business and industry. It’s also worth trying to eliminate any roadblocks that might deter people from making a purchase with you.

For instance, let’s say you sell electric scooters. A few concerns or problems you might want to address include:

• Can electric scooters be charged with solar power?
• How long does it take to charge electric scooters?
• Are there bank loans available?
• What’s the mileage on a single full charge?

While these questions might not necessarily signal intent to buy, they’re queries people will want the answers to before they decide they definitely want to invest in one of your products. So, look to create content that puts worries like this to bed, so people will feel more comfortable buying from you.

Talk about the Pricing of Your Service or Tool

Before making a purchase, one of the biggest concerns someone will have is how much it’s going to cost them. This can be true even if they haven’t decided exactly what they’re going to buy or where they’re going to buy it, so it’s a good idea to create content that provides them with an overall idea of the outlay they can expect.

For example, if you offer solar panels, you could create content around how much it typically costs to cover a roof in solar panels, or how much energy they can provide a home with, and therefore how much money someone could save in the long-run.

Top-of-the-funnel content that helps your ideal customers to understand the cost of the types of products or services you offer can attract a lot of relevant visitors to your site. It can be great for SEO and, the more traffic you get, the more sales you can secure.

Choose The Right Format For Your Top-Of-The-Funnel Content

You don’t just need to choose the right topic for your top-of-the-funnel content — you also need to pick the best possible format.

There are several options you have, from blog posts to infographics. The most suitable option will typically depend on the type of business you have and what kind of topic you’re looking to explore.

Let’s say you run a fitness business. You could create:

• A blog post that rounds up different types of exercises for building your abs
• An infographic that shows how much protein and other nutrients you need to stay healthy
• A workout video tutorial
• A podcast series about the importance of wellness
• Visual content like diagrams that show how to execute certain exercises
• Custom QR codes that take people to a helpful exercise guide on your website

Conclusion

Your top-of-the-funnel content will often provide people with their first impression of your business, so you want to ensure it’s of a very high quality.

It shouldn’t be about driving conversions — those will come later. The goal of top-of-the-funnel content is to teach your ideal customers about your products or services and build trust with them.

You should always monitor the success of your content to see if any changes need to be made, too. Measure your bounce rate, for example, to ensure people aren’t disappointed when they land on your content. If people are sticking around to learn more and have a look around your site, you know you’re getting it right.