Building a social media Content Funnel that generates leads

Part III. How to use bottom-of-funnel content to convert your audience into customers

Author

Tommy Clark
January 22, 2024

Hey!

Welcome to Social Files—your no-BS guide to generating demand for your B2B product using social & content.

Hope you had a great weekend and got some time offline (maybe a bit optimistic? 😂).

It’s time to round out the 3-part series around building your social Content Funnel.

Today, I’ll walk you through how to create content for social media that converts the audience you’ve built using the other 2 content types.

Let’s dive in.

🔎 DEEP DIVE

Building a social media Content Funnel that generates leads

Part III. How to use bottom-of-funnel content to convert your audience into customers

So far, we’ve gone through:

  • How to use top-of-funnel content (TOFU) to generate mass awareness on social and bring in a ton of new eyeballs.

  • How to use middle-of-funnel content (MOFU) to establish yourself as the default industry thought leader.

If this is the first piece you’re reading here (welcome!), I’d recommend starting this essay series from Part I—check that out here and come back when you’re done.

Now. Let’s bring it home. Today, I’ll guide you through:

  • How to use bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) content to convert the audience you’ve amassed through TOFU and MOFU content on LinkedIn & X.

  • I’ll also show you how to create it in a way that doesn’t ruin post performance on-platform, to give the piece a chance to go niche viral.

  • I’ll even show some specific examples for you to reverse engineer!

What’s the function of BOFU social content?

Simple. Convert people deeper into your funnel.

There are a few ways this could look.

(1) They buy your product. You’ve built up enough trust and affinity through content that they are ready to buy from you. They’ll either sign-up (if you’re self-serve) or book a demo (if you’re sales led).

(2) Sales conversation starts. Maybe they’re not ready to buy now, but they’re exploring. They might shoot your founder a DM or reach out to your sales team.

(3) You move them to an owned audience. You should have an email list. Ideally one where you provide valuable content. Long-form owned content is the most effective way to build affinity. Different topic for a different day, though. Point is, BOFU content moves your audience to that owned list.

(4) You move the reader to a YouTube channel or podcast. Long-form owned content is best. But YouTube and podcasts aren’t far off. If you can get someone from social to listen to your founder or CMO talk for hours—there’s a good chance they’ll buy when they’re ready.

What are the ‘content physics’ behind how BOFU content does this?

(Law 1) Overwhelm your audience with social proof.

Prospects want to see that other companies like them have had success with your SaaS or service. Think about how you evaluate products to add to your tech stack. You want to see some receipts.

(Law 2) Show product features that are highly-requested and solve a pain point.

The feature-related content you show should mostly tie back to a pain point that your ICP suffers from. If you can show that A) other companies like the prospect are using your product B) that the product solves a core pain in their business—you’re golden.

Example: If you’re a B2B SaaS CMO looking for a content partner to help you produce social content—I need to be able to show you that we’ve achieved results for companies like yours & you need to be bothered enough by lack of social traction to consider us.

How to systematically create BOFU content.

There are a few steps you’ll want to consider here.

STEP 1: Select your BOFU content type.

BOFU content is any type of content that is product-heavy. Here is a handful of tried-and-true content assets you can choose from.

  • Case study

  • Feature launch

  • Company update

To expand on each:

Case study → This is self explanatory. You likely have case studies somewhere on your site as social proof. Those should be distributed on social media, where that social proof can be amplified. Don’t let your case studies collect cob webs in the ‘Resources’ tab of your site.

Feature launch → Also self explanatory. Launching a feature or new product? Let the timeline know. It’s shocking how many SaaS companies just launch stuff without saying a thing.

[Btw - if you want me to do a full piece on my ‘Feature Launch Playbook’ for startups, reply to this and let me know]

Company update → ‘Building in public’ is in vogue these days. You don’t have to share your entire P&L with your LinkedIn network, but there is merit in selectively sharing company updates and learnings (this is mostly useful from the founder’s account.

STEP 2: Optimize for distribution.

This is where 97.5% of B2B companies screw up. Let’s make sure you don’t.

The vast majority of marketers will just toss a case study link on the LinkedIn or X timeline and hope for the best. Not good.

Kill the habit of ‘link blasting’—right now. Instead, follow these specific strategies to give your BOFU content the best chance at performance.

(A) Use content formats that are being rewarded by the social platforms.

By now you should be familiar with this concept.

Understand: There are always formats that platforms are prioritizing at any given moment in time. Right now, LinkedIn loves carousels. X loves long-form with media. And yes, X threads are even making a bit of a comeback.

This law applies at all levels of the funnel. A lot of marketers get lazy with it at the bottom of the funnel because they assume this content isn’t meant for virality. That’s true, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give BOFU they best chance you can at strong performance.

(B) Position the content as a ‘story’ when it makes sense.

Humans love stories. And case studies are stories. Lean into that.

You can (read: should) also craft a narrative around certain product or feature releases.

(C) Lead with stats (most of the time).

This tip is especially relevant for case studies, where there is likely some sort of key metric you’re highlighting:

  • Pipeline generated

  • Increase in CVR

  • Time saved

Idk. The list could go on. But you get the point. If you’re rolling out a case study, lead with that shocking number in the hook. That usually works well.

This can be applied to other BOFU content (and across the entire funnel). ‘Specific numbers’ in hooks absolutely rip.

(D) Use your founder as a distribution channel.

Not to be one of those LinkedIn ‘personal branding’ gurus… but you should be pushing content from your founder’s page at this point.

This applies across the funnel—but today let’s look at how founder-led content can apply to BOFU content.

BOFU content—like case studies, feature launches, etc.—work well from founder pages because it feels like the founder is sharing a milestone. LinkedIn loves milestones.

There’s also just consumer behavior and platform mechanics rewarded personal accounts more aggressively than company pages. Let’s not ignore that.

Let me be clear. Don’t ditch the company pages entirely. Company and C-Suite accounts work in tandem when executed properly. Topic for a different post, though.

(E) Tap into your network.

In simpler terms—send the post link to your homies once it goes live.

Post a new case study?

  • Send it to investors on your cap table to amplify

  • Have any influencers you work with repost and engage

  • Literally send the link to your family and friends to pump the post

Platforms like LinkedIn and X reward early momentum on a post. If you are able to tap into your network to get a post some early action when it hits the timeline, you will give it a better chance at a longer life cycle.

Pro-tip: Be selective when you call in favors here. This isn’t a ‘sustainable’ thing to do for every post (I’d block my colleague’s number if he or she spammed me with every LinkedIn think piece that went live from their startup’s founder). But done tactfully, it works well.

What’s the ideal amount of BOFU content in the Content Funnel?

Use BOFU content consistently, but sparingly.

Here’s what I mean. There should be some amount of BOFU content going out on social every week. But it should not crowd out MOFU and TOFU content.

Rule of thumb: BOFU content should make up 10-20% of your Content Funnel.

Examples of BOFU content.

I have a few callouts here:

  • The case study was published in a platform-native format that tends to perform well in the algorithm (threads).

  • The hook of the thread is framed as a story. Humans love stories. Frame case studies (and feature launches) as stories when you can.

  • Great use of specific metrics in the hook: “Sweet Dreams uses creators on TikTok to generate 25% of their total revenue, at a 40% lower CAC than paid ads.”

  • Communicates the key takeaways from the case study in a way that can be digested on-platform, and then links case study at the end.

  • This is a perfect example of why companies should at least consider using their founder’s account as a distribution channel for launches.

  • The company account got just over 1% of the reach that Chesky’s account got on the same announcement.

  • I wrote more thoughts on this strategy in this piece.

  • I love how there are loads of specific stats that only Shopify would be able to share in this post (nobody else has access to that data).

  • This functions as both a company update and builds a ton of social proof by showing the volume done on Shopify during BFCM.

  • They tied it to an IRL activation (though I know not every startup has the budget to buy ad space on the Sphere… lol).

TL;DR

(1) Don’t ignore BOFU content. It’s important for actually converting the audience you’ve built, and built trust with, using TOFU & MOFU content.

(2) Three winning formats for BOFU content are case studies, feature launches, and company updates. You can rotate between these angles and fulfill 95% of your BOFU content slots.

(3) Use content formats that are being rewarded by the social platforms. Also, use tactics like story-based hooks and specific metrics (and others listed above) to give the BOFU content a chance at niche virality. Also, consider using your founder’s personal account as a distribution channel.

(4) Tap into your network to help you amplify important BOFU posts (like a new product launch). This is massively overlooked.

That’s all I’ve got today.

🗃 FILE CABINET

Here’s my favorite marketing and business content I bookmarked this week.

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

Two things!

1) I’m taking YouTube seriously in 2024. We’re 3 videos deep, and the 4th drops on Wednesday. You should subscribe to my channel here. I cover more B2B content & social strategies like I do here, just on video.

2) Here’s an update on how things are going at Compound (my agency). We’re also hiring for a Content Writer!

Hope you have a great week ahead.

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark

PS: If social is going to be a part of your GTM motion in 2024, apply for Compound’s waitlist here. We may be opening up some capacity soon, so if you want to be first off the waitlist, get ahead now.