When taking inventory of all content assets, what percentage of content should be for the top, middle, and bottom portions of the funnel?

This is not a one-size-fits-all solution. I have found that the content pieces through the funnel vary based on what are the current business objectives, challenges and gaps. If you are a new business and trying to generate mindshare and attract visitors to your website, you’d need more assets at the top of the funnel. If you are a known brand and the space is established (e.g. CRM), then you probably need to focus more on the lower part of the funnel. Your current account strategy is also a factor. For up-selling into existing accounts, you will probably want to focus more on advocacy (from other units), case studies and use cases – which are at the bottom of the funnel.

My rule of thumb is it helps to have at least 3 pieces of content, in different formats for each stage of the funnel.

• Top-of-funnel content to include a mix of analyst content, podcasts, awareness videos, cheat sheets

• Middle-of-funnel content to include checklists, e-guides, interactive content such as an ROI calculator or maturity assessment

• Bottom-of-funnel content to include product tours, demo videos, and customer testimonial videos

Hopefully not a cop-out, but "it depends." There isn't a magic % that I've found. When you map out your user journeys, where do you see the biggest fall-off in conversion? That's where I would suggest focusing your efforts. Sales will always ask for more BOFU content, so make sure the content that already exists is being used, or needs to be updated before creating net new content.

At a foundational level, it’s relatively the same, prioritizing the right accounts based on intent and lifetime value. Where it can change is the messaging, tactics and channels.

Let’s start with messaging. Mapping your messaging to the customer journey is critical. ToFu content begins by educating your audience on your category which will anchor thought-leadership messaging and content that validates why the category exists. MoFu, the middle of funnel content, provides your pre-customers information that helps them evaluate their options. You'll see a lot of customer proof and feature-type content required at this stage. They know your category is validated, it’s about knowing why your product exists.  Leads in the BOFU stage need persuasive content to make the final decision. They know your product exists but now they need to know why it’s the very best. 

That being said,  messaging for upselling and cross selling is different as well. I've seen a lot of companies try to cut corners and blend these. Don’t.Upselling requires content that educates your customers to purchase a more advanced version of your product, typically giving them access to more capacity, features, and users. Cross-selling helps them understand the value-add of additional tools from your suite, add ons, including services and integrations can bring to their use case. 

Expanding within landed customers is about helping them understand the business benefits of bringing on more users or teams to your tool and requires more customer understanding and ROI-type content than other plays. 

In regards to the tactics, while there is definitely not a one-size-fits-all-business, typically you’ll be invest more in digital channels such as paid and owned media when trying to acquire customers while when going wider and deeper in an account, you’re teams will invest more in events, 1:1 activities, product landing pages. 

Email plays a role in both but again, the messaging and personalization will be different. 

All of this requires strong PMM and great content writers/strategy.

The ideal percentage depends a lot on the industry, ICP, and your goals. I'd say a general guideline is:

• Top of funnel (TOFU): 60-70%

• Middle of funnel (MOFU): 20-30%

• Bottom of funnel (BOFU): 10-20%

The fact your categorizing your content and really considering what funnel stage its for is a great start. You likely have a sense of where you should be. Trust this sense. Maybe your company awareness is quite high but visitors just aren't really figuring out why your products matter to them, time to add more middle funnel. Maybe you're getting lots of interest but not converting opportunities to win, lets arm sales with better bottom of funnel content. This should be flexible. But.. here's my basic balance.

• I want about 50% of content created to be top of funnel. Having great awareness would be an awesome problem to have but very few companies have that. The rest of the funnel doesn't matter if you don't have the top.

• 20% is middle of funnel. You shouldn't need a lot here if your product positioning is good and you understand your audiences. The quality of the content matters more than the quantity here. Your content can be broader in nature by addressing more pain points, needs, jobs to be done, etc.

• 30% bottom of funnel. Here you need to spear fish. You have to create content that speaks to very specific needs. So by virtue of that you have more to do and it's ever changing. Prioritize this based on how often it is asked for and will be used.