Like many of us, Araminta Robertson realized at a young age she knew very little about how the world worked — especially the world of money. She decided to educate herself by reading personal finance books and blogging about what she’d learned in the hopes of helping others learn more about taxes, mortgages and the like.

Soon after, she was asked to join a fintech company, where she managed the blog and created content. She continued growing her career in the industry before founding Mint Studios, an agency that helps financial services companies acquire customers through content, with a focus on bottom-of-funnel (BoFu) content. 

Bottom-of-Funnel (BoFu) Content Drives Conversions

During her time in-house, Araminta saw many marketers creating content for brand awareness and thought leadership purposes. However, leadership held these same marketers responsible for metrics like sales-qualified leads (SQLs) and marketing-qualified leads (MQLs), which can be hard (if not impossible) to tie to top-of-funnel, or ToFu, content.

Araminta saw firsthand the frustration that ensues when leaders are looking for numbers and marketers can’t prove the value of their work. She discovered the work of Grow & Convert, an agency that publicly acknowledges most content doesn’t actually drive business and pioneered the BoFu approach. 

Then, she read a book called, “They Ask You Answer,” which posited that all content is really about answering people’s questions. As Araminta learned more, she too began to feel that BoFu was a better option for many businesses. 

“BoFu content targets people who already know they have a problem,” Araminta explains. “They’re actively looking for a solution, versus someone who’s at the beginning of their buying journey and isn’t even aware of the problem.” 

The people currently aware they need help with an issue are much more likely to convert, which is why you should ensure their questions are fully answered! 

Is BoFu Appropriate For All Businesses? 

While all companies can implement BoFu, Araminta notes there are a couple prerequisites she looks for before doing so: 

  1. Are you targeting an audience that does online research? Because SEO is the primary channel for BoFu content, it follows that your audience must be actively looking for information online. Otherwise, they’ll never see your content. 
  2. Have you been able to cold-acquire customers? If you’ve only ever gotten business through referrals or word-of-mouth, it’s unclear whether folks are finding you online yet. It might make sense to wait awhile before implementing a BoFu approach. 

If the answer is “yes” to both of these questions, then BoFu can absolutely work to drive revenue within your company. 

5 Types of BoFu Content 

Here are some different bottom-of-funnel formats to try:

Comparison 

Comparison posts convert the highest of any BoFu content types, at an average of 8x higher than regular content, across Mint Studios clients. 

You’ve likely seen tons of these by now — some variation of “HubSpot vs MailChimp: Which One Is Right For Me?” that gives readers information on two competing products and aims to help them differentiate between them. 

Example: Descript vs. Riverside: What’s Best for Content Marketers?  

2. Pricing 

In the fintech industry, many people balk at Stripe’s high fees. A post listing cheaper alternatives to Stripe and breaking down fees for different platforms can help target people who are unhappy with Stripe as their current provider. 

Example: Top 5 Stripe Alternatives

3. Use cases

These posts show the customer how to use a certain platform or integrate it with other tools they’re currently using. 

Example: How to Use Trello for Content Management

4. Pain points 

Think about the pain points your customer struggles with and then create content to address them. If you know there’s a segment of your audience who has a hard time navigating specific fee structures, for example, maybe you write a post addressing those concerns. 

Example: Western Union fees (2024 guide)

5. “Best of” 

Finally, there’s “Best of” content that presents a roundup of the best software, top accounting tools or another compilation of top recommendations.

Example: Best CRM Software Of 2024

How To Develop BoFu Content Through SME Interviews 

Client interviews make up 90% of the content Mint Studios creates. 

“We’re targeting people who are already close to converting,” Araminta reiterates. “These are people who are likely experts on that topic, and they’re just looking for information to make a business decision. They don’t need fluff or generic content. The best way to write at their level is to get expertise from people who know what they’re talking about.” 

By interviewing the experts on the client’s team, Mint Studios can go into a lot more detail about the product and specific use cases. They can also discover “hot takes” that help the content stand out from competitor pieces. 

Think beyond leadership here. You might interview salespeople, the product team, engineers and other folks — basically, anyone well-versed on the topic is fair game. 

Tracking the ROI of BoFu Content

To date, Mint Studios has created content bringing in millions of dollars in annual revenue for clients. They attribute conversions via HubSpot or Salesforce, setting up reports that track first- and last-click attributions. 

With first-click attributions, you learn how many people discovered the site via a specific piece of blog content and how many converted. If they did convert, you also see the value of that individual contract. For last-clicks, you follow someone’s journey from a different page to one of the blogs, where they converted. 

Araminta’s team also tracks influenced deals. That way, if someone enters the site via the homepage or a product page, reads some blogs and then goes to a product page and converts there, it still points to the power of the blog content. 

“It’s important to track all of that because it gives you a really deep understanding of the customer,” Araminta emphasizes, “and how they’re interacting with your site and what topics they’re interested in. It also obviously helps marketers prove the contribution of content to their leadership.” 

While tracking data can be intimidating to some content marketers, Araminta encourages you to get comfortable with it. “Speaking the language of leadership will help you get more budget when you need it,” she says. “And best of all, it will give you more confidence because you can easily show you’re contributing to the business.” 

PS: If you’d like a starting point to learn about tracking metrics and BoFu content, here are some resources Araminta shared: