Jewel Marketing
Taiwan Content Marketing

Is Your Business Marketing Through a Straw?



By Jason Patterson

Founder of Jewel Content Marketing Agency
Content marketing assumes your brand's marketing funnel is in fact a funnel. Though there is disagreement about what role content should play in that funnel.

Most orthodox views say that content marketing's job is to get prospects in the funnel, while getting them down the funnel is someone else's job, or a matter of external factors. Others believe content should also encourage or nudge prospects down the funnel. And still others believe content should try to drag people down the funnel aggressively.

Whatever your feelings on that, let's step back for a moment and question the underlying assumption. What if your content marketing funnel isn't actually a funnel at all?

You might look at this question incredulously and say, "Of course it is. What else would it be?"

Well, a funnel is funnel-shaped. Wider at the top and narrowing on the way down. But is this what you really have? Or is it maybe something else?

The Marketing Straw: A Topless Bottom

You have this when you have a marketing funnel with no top, and you spend all your time trying to miraculously catch prospects with that really skinny part at the bottom.

When you're marketing through a straw, everything is "sell, sell, sell." Every social media post from your brand has a model number in it. Every content piece asks for an email address.

You're always pressing, like an overeager young man who thinks the secret to seduction is effort.

Well, a straw sucks, literally. Even with unlimited prospective customers out there, you'll only catch a few, through great effort. And most B2B businesses are in industries that are nowhere near unlimited, with only a small percentage of prospects looking to buy at any one time. And if you think you're ever going to catch a whale with a straw, forget it.

If you're wondering if this might be you, here's a simple test. If the answer to every question in your marketing department is "leads," you might very well be.

The Marketing Hula Hoop: A Bottomless Top

This is pretty much the opposite of a marketing straw, a funnel that is all top and no bottom, where prospects do nothing but circle. There are two different categories.

The Media Hoop: Keep Those Hips Swaying

All your efforts here are devoted to keeping your hoop circling, which does bring more prospects into your orbit through those sexy rhythmic motions you make, but those prospects remain largely in the friend zone, rarely converting.

If your brand is marketing like this, you've probably got a well-populated blog, good website traffic, respectable social media numbers, and slick-looking marketing assets all around.

But you're spending a fortune to keep things that way. And spending more only seems to bring in more followers, pageviews, and marketing awards, instead of more paying customers.

Some would say having a hula hoop is not such a bad position to be in, since mindshare seems to be proving more important to B2B marketing than previously thought. And I agree, a hula hoop is probably better than marketing through a straw, because your problems are easier to fix, and it's better to be known than unknown.

But if your brand has a lot of mindshare, and it's not manifesting as market dominance, something is very wrong.

Because it means you're doing your competitors' job for them. You're educating the market, while someone else monetizes it, like a parasite. How does this happen? It could be a lot of reasons. But if you're a content marketer in this situation, you need to take a good look at your content mix, and what it's doing.

You might be producing a lot of content that amuses or educates your target audience, but isn't really relevant to your business. Or you might be producing content that's relevant, but only in terms of what problems your audience faces, with no information included about what you actually sell, or why people should buy it.

And if your brand is engaged in this type of marketing, there's a good chance that you view your audience more as fans instead of prospective customers, with the answer to every marketing question something non-salesy like "followers" or "relevance" or "engagement."

The SEO Hoop: You're Not Human, Are You?

Bots are the name of the game with this one. All your content is SEO content. It ranks high on whatever SEO tool you're using. And the bots do show. Your SERP rankings are great. But when prospects show, not much happens.

Maybe a tiny fraction of the 5% who are looking to buy now get through your content and become leads, but the other 95% run the other way as soon as they figure out that sentient humans aren't the target audience of your content.

Congratulations, SEO warrior. You've made no lasting impression on your out-of-market prospects. Or worse, you've taught them to ignore you (a lesson those in-market prospects who become leads will also learn before long as they figure out keywords are all you have to say).

Your Prospects Need a Balanced Content Diet

When it comes to content marketing, a functioning funnel needs a mix of content at each stage, and it should indeed look like a funnel (i.e., more awareness content than consideration and more consideration than lead gen).

If you've got the same number ticked at each level, you've got a marketing straw, which means you end up looking needy, which erodes your brand strength. And if you've got more boxes ticked at the bottom than the top, you've still got a marketing straw, because that narrow part at the top that's only as wide as a straw is still where everyone enters.

However, it's worth noting that if you find your content mix bottom-heavy because you're always being asked by salespeople to write lead-gen content for trade shows and whatnot, this is not a sign that you should stop doing it, it's a sign that you need more content and more writers (not just more AI).

If you've got just awareness and maybe some lead-gen but very little consideration content, you're either shy about selling or you think you're too pure to sell. Unfortunately, many of content marketing's dominant thought leaders (the world-famous ones) encourage this mindset.

If your brand is in this situation, you'll get some leads, but they'll often be poor quality, because they've contacted you without learning much about what you sell first, which means your salespeople may end up spending an inordinate amount of time trying to educate them, only to lose many to competitors anyway because they offer a better match to their needs.

Read more about what a balanced diet means in terms of the content marketing funnel here.

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