To understand and shape your content strategy, our team of experts rely on a proprietary analytic tool we've developed called StoryBook. StoryBook's new funnel classification feature can determine where each of your content pieces fall across the customer journey using a machine learning algorithm proprietary to Contently.

To have access to funnel classification data, you must currently be enrolled in one of our Strategy Services programs. To learn more about your results, read through the questions below and contact Customer Success lead if your question is not represented here.

The marketing funnel is a widely adopted framework for organizing marketing activities. The marketing funnel breaks down the the customer journey into discrete sections; at each stage, your prospective customer has different thoughts, feelings, and habits. Understanding where your content is positioned across the funnel is extremely useful when auditing content. Creating a balanced mix of content across these stages, and linking content from one stage to another allows you to construct the most friendly user experience for customers and prospects.

Our classifier is able to decide if your content belongs to the top, middle, or bottom of the funnel. We've chosen these three stages based on customer usage and accuracy testing. Read more about each stage in our article "What Content Works Best for Each Level of the Marketing Sales Funnel?"

Using machine learning, our classifier has studied hundreds of content examples from customers and blue-chip publications across industries to determine where it falls within the funnel. It analyzes over 75 elements of each page and their combinations in order to determine a result. These elements include detailed hyperlink information, sentiment data, text/multimedia ratio, brand name usage, and more. No single element on your page can determine the funnel stage of your content—a combination of these factors does.

Our classifier was built to serve many different types of websites and use cases. However, websites that contain significant amounts of render-blocking Javascript are unable to be crawled by our technology (and by some search engines as well). We recommend removing render-blocking Javascript wherever possible to prevent adverse affects on your site's search visibility.

Our classifier looks at a page's many attributes - it's construction - rather than its performance. Identifying discrepancies between your content's attributes and performance can help you determine which pieces need to be optimized for which stage. Before optimizing content, we recommend examining funnel stage results alongside performance numbers.

Our tool stores funnel results for 30 days. Because of this, If you are undertaking major updates to your content, we recommend waiting at least 30 days to see a change in results. We typically do not recommend shifting individual elements of your content solely to get a desired result, but our team of strategists can provide the best guidance on how to optimize your content by stage.

Our strategists recommend a split of 60% top, 30% middle, 10% bottom for most external websites. However, sites with specific goals and / or niche audience may be better served with a customized analysis and ratio prescription. Contact your Customer Success lead if you're interested in learning more.