Beyond the funnel content and client retention go hand in hand.
Congratulations! You’ve made it through the marketing funnel from the first date (top of the funnel), to tying the knot (bottom of the funnel), and now you find yourself beyond the funnel. At this stage, you’ve successfully wooed your prospect to commit, now it’s up to you to deliver on promises made in the courting stage. Beyond the funnel, your partnership is just getting started — so is your content. Once the honeymoon is over, it’s time to use beyond the funnel content (BeFu) to strengthen relationships and keep customers happy for the long haul.
Why you should care about keeping existing customers happy
You’ve likely heard it before, maintaining an existing customer is easier (and cheaper) than winning a new one. Your beyond the funnel content is your best marketing for keeping customers onboard, transforming one-time buyers into repeat customers, and preventing subscription customers from canceling (hello, booming ROI). Bottom line, beyond the funnel content is all about client retention.
Onboarding Documentation
You’ve worked hard to lead your prospects to this point in the relationship, don’t give them a reason to walk away just yet. A smooth onboarding and implementation process will start your relationship on a good note and set expectations from the get-go. Create startup checklists, tasks, timelines, and onboarding videos to ensure your client has everything in place to ramp up successfully.
Think of your onboarding process as the compass to set your newly won prospects on the right path. At the end of the day, you want your customer to derive the most value from your product or service (so they stick around) and that starts with a solid foundation. Crafting effective onboarding tools will make the adoption process easy for everyone at the company, not just your point of contact.
Support Articles
If your onboarding docs are the compass, support articles are the map. Much like onboarding, support articles are designed to help your reader navigate (and get the most use out of) your product or service. Product guides, how-to articles, feature glossaries, and knowledge bases serve as valuable beyond the funnel support content that shows your audience you’re invested in their success.
Support articles provide a quick self-service option for your clients, ensuring they have the right intel at their fingertips (at any hour of the day). Product guides and support articles can even serve as the script to be transformed into tutorial videos and training webinars.
Webinar Training
The trusty webinar, a familiar tool that provides value at nearly every stage of the buyer’s journey. Beyond the funnel, webinars can help you retain customers and build trust. At this point, you can hold live webinar trainings to offer product certification (aka an expert in your product), help customers level up their industry skills, or simply have their day to day questions answered.
Email Newsletters
Keep your relationship top of mind with bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly newsletters. You can use this opportunity to share new features, best practices, company updates, or relevant industry news. Newsletters establish a cadence of conversation that continues to engage and nurture relationships without doing too much (like drowning them in sales content).
As a training resource, you can use this channel to promote new webinars and links to existing support articles. Newsletters also serve as the perfect vehicle to sprinkle referral benefits — here you can offer discounted pricing, referral rewards, or even free support for bringing on new clientele.
Through the funnel and beyond
Beyond the funnel, your content shouldn’t stop. Fostering existing customer relationships is just as important — if not more important — than starting up new ones. You need beyond the funnel content to build trust, set your customer up for success, and deliver on promises made in the courting stage (ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu). The good news is, beyond the funnel content can directly sweeten client retention, helping you keep customers coming back year after year.
lainey 