A tiny actionable guide to mysterious MOF content

The Content Consumption Journey

You need clients for your business but no one knows about it.

So you write an article or create a video telling the world about your product.

Since no one knows about your business, no one read that article or watched that video except your supportive college friends.

Good sense prevailed and in the next content piece, instead of talking about your product, you talk about the problems it solves.

A lot of people struggle with those problems, and they come flocking to your content anticipating quick hacks and solutions.

Many enjoyed the content, learned a lesson or two, pressed the like button, left a nice comment, and returned to their lives. Never to come back again — no one remembers mundane one-off events unless they are extraordinary.

A handful of visitors loved the content, looked around for more information about your work, watched the product demo, and decided to do business with you - sign up or book a demo.

✅ You acquired new customers.

❌ They are far too less.

🤷 Mixed feelings!

Let's analyze what happened

When you created content on the problem your product solved, you attracted a lot of people struggling with that problem. They might not be at a stage to buy a solution, but they were interested in learning to solve the problem. Thus, you cast a wide net by building Top-of-the-funnel (TOF) content.

A handful of them were also looking to buy a solution. When they liked your TOF content, they looked around for more information and chanced upon your product-specific Bottom-of-the-funnel (BOF) content. When they understood how your product solves their problems and liked it, they took a leap of faith and made a purchase.

Between the two ends of the people, from no interest in buying a solution to looking to buy a solution right now, lies a group of people who can be brought to purchase with a bit of nurturing the interest, convincing of the value, and hand-holding. In a corner of their mind, they are considering different options: using a new software, designing their own ad hoc system, hiring a consultant, maintaining the status quo, or delegating the work to someone else.

Propsects' intents and volume over their content consumption journey

And they have no urgency to make a decision.

It's not easy to scope the journey to these people.

It's not easy to acquire them as clients.

Not easy, but possible and profitable.

The content that nurtures, convinces and hand-holds is called Middle-of-the-funnel (MOF) content.

It brings new customers and more revenue to your business.

Since it works with prospects who have already interacted with your business and/or potentially have an inclination towards buying, it helps acquire clients at lower costs than a pure cold start.

Igniting the MOF flame

Commonly suggested MOF content includes a wide range of content from webinars to whitepapers to infographics.

Many of these work but they need a lot of effort and resources.

But as an early-stage SaaS team, you probably have your plate full to create and publish any infographic consistently for months.

So, what can you do within the available resources to deliver the highest impact?

Here's a strategy to build MOF content easy way.

But first, let's look at the four goals for MOF to achieve:

1. Earn attention consistently: prospects should continuously be motivated to consume your MOF content for it's a slow nurturing process
2. Fill the knowledge gap: educate them.
3. Develop trust: the more they consume your content, the more they should trust you
4. Educate about your product: The goal of MOF is to sell, so never shy away from talking about your product, bit by bit educate them about its superpowers.

In terms of system design, this translates to three requirements:

1. Communication Link: Unlike unknown website visitors, for MOF to work, prospects should be connected with you in one way or another and you should be able to communicate with them individually if there is a need.
2. Updates: Prospects should receive an update every time you publish new content
3. Feedback: You need two-way communication for them to share their feedback, instead of speaking in the void.

With that out of the way, let's look at the most actionable strategy of all time for building MOF content during the early stage: Daily Research notes.

Don't have time to create lengthy blog posts? No worries.

No knowledge of SEO? It's alright.

Don't know copywriting? Fine

Can't write viral social media posts? You don't have to.

Spend five to ten minutes every day writing a short note about your product, the problems it solves, the struggles of your target market that moved you to build the product, the new changes you are observing in the market, and so on.

Can't write? Go for an early-morning or late-evening walk, turn on the recorder on your phone, and speak your mind. Send the audio file to an audio-to-text LLM and voila, have your daily note ready.

Alright, so you've got a repository of your daily research notes. Now what?

Here are a few ideas, pick one that suits you best:

Idea I

1. Create a private area where prospects can sign up for free to access your notes. It could be a member-only page on your website or a Discord server/Facebook group.
2. Publicize your work to your audience by tying it up with the problems your product solves. For example: "How to cut costs while improving efficiency: notes for smart CFOs"

Idea II

1. Email Sequence: It's not new, but it never gets old. Set up a free email course, or a newsletter and publish your candid notes on it.
2. Want to amplify the benefits? Publish a book. Don't worry about who will publish it, copyright, or ISBN. Once you have been writing notes for a few months, mildly edit them and create a book. Publish it on Amazon, Google Store, and your website. A book, successful or not, gives credibility. If you are unsure about the book, answer this: what do you have to lose?

💡Enterprise won't build research notes, it's below their proud standards. Growth-stage companies won't do it either, it's not lucrative enough for those fast-growing companies, but your tiny scrappy early-stage SaaS can do it, proudly flaunt and gain from it.

✅ Here's a second-order benefit of research notes: these daily notes will go a long way in building your content engine, ju st pick a note, elaborate, add creatives, and turn it into a blog, LinkedIn post, or video. Whenever you are in a position to hire a content creator, simply give them access to these notes. You will accelerate their progress significantly by providing them with deep domain insights for creating high-quality content.

Building a repository of research notes is that behind-the-scene exercise that no one talks about but many actively do.

A word of caution

Irrespective of the content type you create for MOF, please ensure that it's part of your overall funnel flow and not standing alone. Disconnected content does not help.

For example, let's say you are selling a CRM for construction companies and to get new leads you've created a simple CRM spreadsheet template. Users can download the template on your website by providing their email.

Now, my question to you is, what happens after they have downloaded the template?

Are you going to hope that they will love the template, use it, and eventually reach a point where the template wouldn't be enough, and then they would come back to sign up for your product?

I hope not.

Instead, integrate MOF content with the rest of the funnel. So, for our CRM template example, right after users download it, add them to an email sequence. For the first few days, send them emails that educate them about best CRM practices and help them use the template efficiently. Gradually, your email can lean towards establishing the differentiated value of your product.

Build continuously

Daily research notes form the basis of multiple content types and open many opportunities for you to design MOF content depending on the resources available to you.

You should also build one-off MOF assets: comparison pages, alternatives pages, and case studies.

That's all I wanted to talk about building middle-of-the-funnel content for early-stage SaaS. Thanks for reading!