Lead Generation Second Step: Consideration

In our last post, we discussed the very first step of lead generation: raising awareness of your brand and your products. As a reminder, the awareness stage of the marketing funnel – also known as “Top of the Funnel” or “ToFu” – consists of a multi-pronged strategy including SEO, content creation, and social media operations. In the ToFu stage, the immediate goal is to raise your brand visibility across multiple channels so that prospective customers are aware of your products’ existence, and have a general idea of how your products may help them solve their problems.

Let’s say you’ve already raised awareness as measured by an increase in social media followers, and more organic traffic to your product website and blog. What comes next? Well, you’d better not sit on those leads too long, or they’ll forget about you. It’s time to engage with them more deeply in the consideration stage, also known as the “Middle of the Funnel” or “MoFu”. 

So how do you determine if a lead has passed from the awareness stage into the consideration stage? The simplest answer to this question is: a lead is in the consideration phase if they have interacted with your brand in a meaningful way. 

Of course, there’s room for interpretation as to what counts as a “meaningful” interaction. Standard interactions that take place during the awareness phase could include someone following your company’s social media page, signing up for your newsletter, or downloading your white paper. It’s important to note that all of these are proactive actions taken by a lead, as opposed to them simply reading your blog post and then closing the tab.

In the MoFu stage, it’s standard practice for companies to carefully track the marketing channel that their leads came from and their relative degree of interest in your product/service. By keeping careful track of the customer journey, companies are able to more effectively allocate marketing budget to the highest performing channels, and thus improve ROI.

Once you’ve determined with a fair degree of confidence that your leads are in the MoFu stage of the funnel, you should begin engaging with them on a deeper level. This type of deeper engagement may include the creation of new content, as well as giving your leads the opportunity to directly interact with your brand. Content strategy in the MoFu stage can leverage the same channels as in the ToFu stage – for example a company blog – but the topics discussed should be more comprehensive and detailed. When it comes to allowing leads to directly interact with your company, webinars are a great opportunity for organic exchanges. Here are a few ideas for ways to engage with leads in the MoFu stage:

• Vertical-specific white papers with relevant data
• Easily sharable infographics
• Blog posts with deep dives into specific subjects
• Webinars
• Online Q&As (for example, AMA on Reddit)

The above are just a few ideas of how to maintain your leads and continue to generate more interest in your product. We encourage you to get creative and think up your own unique ways to show people how your product will make their life better.

That covers our intro to the MoFo section of the funnel. Next up, we’ll take a look at the bottom of the funnel to see how you can start converting your leads to paying customers. Keep an eye out for our next post on the MediaGo blog.