There’s a bit of a paradox at work in the content marketing funnel. On the one hand, many companies see content marketing mainly as a tool “to generate leads and sales of our existing products.” Consider how 70% of industrial marketers were evaluated on lead generation in 2017, but only 48% had progress measured by web traffic or other metrics at the “awareness” level. The numbers don’t lie: leads are what matter.
On the other hand, the top of the funnel is marketing’s specialty. And it should be. This harrowing report by McKinsey advises marketers to stop focusing so much on lower-funnel loyalty and closing sales. Instead, they recommend loading those resources into top-of-funnel awareness and consideration efforts. This is, in part, because customers in our digital age tend to research constantly and behave rather fly-by-night with their brand loyalty: