What is Top of Funnel Marketing?

You might have heard the term “top of funnel marketing” on your travels around the internet – but what does it mean?

Imagine a sales funnel. It looks like this:

The shape, an upside down triangle, represents the way it filters a pool of prospects until only the people most interested in the offer are left.

So, when we’re talking about top of funnel marketing, we’re talking about publishing content at the top of the funnel to reach the widest pool of potential customers available. It’s a form of lead generation, which relies on content. This content has to have broad appeal, but still specific enough to call out the audience’s problem, and highlight the offer as a solution.

Types of top of funnel marketing

Content at the top of the funnel has very little to do with products and services, and everything to do with your buyer’s interests and needs. It’s a bit of a fishing rod: getting people to think about their problems, dangling the bait, and making their pain points seem a little more painful.

Typically, top of the funnel marketing consists of things like how-to’s, explainer videos, advice, opinions and reviews, as well as other content. Very little happens in the way of a sales pitch: that comes later. The watchword for this stage is “awareness”, so that when the prospect wants to find out more, they already know where to click.

Some examples of top of funnel marketing include:

• Blogs and websites
• Social media
• SEO
• Video marketing
• Online ads
• Influencer outreach

Another fantastic word you want to keep in mind is “snackable”. It’s not just fun to say: it’s descriptive of the way potential customers eat up bitesize, easily digested, delicious little bits of content.

Engaging visual content is very snackable. Think of how many times you’ve just mindlessly scrolled, letting one 6-second video play after another: with recipes followed by sponsored ads followed by reviews followed by cute puppy videos, how many brands were you made aware of?

Another reason top of the funnel content is snackable is because some marketers call it “ToFu” for short. Yum!

The science behind ToFu

This wouldn’t be an authoritative blog posts if we didn’t throw in a few statistics. Fortunately, when it comes to top of funnel content and funnel lead generation, no one’s short on proof of why it’s effective.

According to HubSpot, the average customer engages with 3-5 pieces of content before talking to a sales rep or otherwise moving down the funnel. All of that content is top of funnel: blog posts, videos, ads, and more.

Not only that, but 87% of shoppers now begin their search on digital channels. Instead of browsing catalogues or asking friends what to buy, they’re turning to the internet not just to make new purchases, but to discover what to buy in the first place.

Of course, the key to gaining their attention is to have the very best top of funnel content, oh-so-snackable and easy to find, so your brand is the first name they think of.

What to do with top of funnel marketing

Of course, it’s not enough to just throw up a few blog posts or videos, and call it a day. It’s not even enough to have a consistent publishing schedule: you have to think of your short-term goals.

What do you want your prospect to do after they read your content?

Obviously, you want them to move them down the sales funnel, so they get closer to making a purchase and giving you money. One way to do this is by putting a call to action at the end of your content. Not a “buy now” – this would come later in the funnel – but something like “learn more” would pique their curiosity, and get them to consume more content or at least view your sales page.

At the top of the funnel, you also have the option of collecting email addresses or phone numbers to nurture as leads.

You could ask for an email in exchange for a checklist, whitepaper or ebook. This is called a “lead magnet” and turns passive content into an action that moves your prospect down your funnel. After the prospect has given you their email address, it doesn’t feel that much more of a leap to give you a payment in return for something else. A lead magnet helps to bridge the gap between becoming interested and making a purchase.

How to be successful at top of funnel marketing

In our experience, lots of people love things like Facebook ads and SEO, but they don’t really like content marketing.

The truth is, you need to make the top of your sales funnel as broad as possible to catch as many people as you can. Content marketing is a great way to do this – but lots of people do it wrong.

They ask questions like:

• How many blog posts should I write?
• How often should I be tweeting every day?
• What should my video budget be?
• Do I really need a whitepaper?

The thing is, content creation isn’t just about budget, beating the competition or playing a numbers game. There’s no magical “write 10,000 blog posts” number to increase profits.

You need to think of every piece of content you create as an opportunity to bring a new lead closer to a sale, or to inspire an existing customer to take action. Talk openly and authentically about your brand, focus on making a connection and providing value to the reader or viewer.

Top of funnel marketing, in basic terms, is there to move people down the funnel. Adding a call to action is the bare minimum: to make a long-term impact, your ToFu needs to build your authority in your niche and position your brand as a leading provider of solutions.

Remember: at the top of the funnel, this is where you’ll find people who are beginning to research a product or service. They’re in the information-gathering stage, the mindlessly scrolling stage, the Googling-their-problem stage. This is when you’re most likely to lose them, as they quickly swipe through potential options and ideas – but this is where you have the opportunity to move them further down the funnel, or catch their attention more than once.

If you give them a good idea, a chuckle, and some valuable information along the way, they’ll remember you even if you don’t catch them this time. They’ll be back – as long as you provide enough delicious ToFu.