3 Stages Of Marketing Funnel To Grow Your Business – TOFU, MOFU, BOFU

If you are starting out with your website and want to grow your online presence, then it is important that you have a marketing funnel in place.

A marketing funnel is basically the concept of bringing in prospects, turning them into potential clients, and then converting them into customers.

And to do so, you will need to plan content and strategies to qualify them from one stage to another.

Seemingly, there are three stages of a marketing funnel,

• Top Of The Funnel (TOFU)
• Middle Of The Funnel (MOFU)
• Bottom Of The Funnel (BOFU)

And in this article, you will get a brief idea of what each of these stages are.

The 3 Stages Of Marketing Funnel To Grow Your Business

As mentioned, there are three stages – TOFU, MOFU, BOFU – which make up a complete marketing funnel, and in the next few sections, we will look at what each of these stages represents, the content involved, and the results you can expect from them.

So let’s begin.

1. Top Of The Funnel (TOFU)

The top of the funnel is often known as the “Awareness & Educate” stage. This is the stage where you introduce your brand to prospects who probably didn’t know you existed in the past.

What you do is, create content and execute marketing activities to bring your brand to the knowledge of people who haven’t visited your website yet or aren’t aware of who you are and what you do.

For example, let’s say you sell eBooks on Software Development. In this case, you offer one of your beginners’ guides for free in exchange for a name and email address. It will help attract people who want to newly learn software development and will visit your site just to get this beginner’s guide. And if the guide is good, they will now recognize you and will trust you moving forward, while you have their information to reach them later (i.e., qualified for the MOFU stage).

So, the idea is to entice the prospect to visit your website and then turn them into prospects who are now ready to engage with your business in some way.

Top Of The Funnel Content & Activities

Follow the content and activities that you may execute for the TOFU stage.

• Evergreen posts/articles (relevant to your niche)
  Topics that will be useful for a long time, such as “How to” guides on topics that may not change for a long time.
• Educational/Informational Videos
  Create knowledgeable content to teach certain topics without any “financial” actions expected.
• Youtube & Facebook Live with helpful discussions
  A generic discussion on topics that people may find relevant.
• Share Viral Content on Social Media
  This will simply get you more exposure and visits.
• Infographics
  Curated data on a specific topic organized in a long media format.
• Lead Magnets To Get Subscriber
  Offer a free resource that your target audience may find useful in exchange for an email subscription.
• Basic Social Media Posts
  Generic posts, such as sharing trending data relevant to your niche.
• Podcast – discussion on pain points and solutions
  You may host a podcast where you discuss the generic pain points and possible solutions of your target audience.
• SEM or Paid Ads on SERPs
  Conduct SEO or set up paid Ads for brand awareness, with a goal of traffic generation from your target audience.
• Forum Commenting
  You may join forums in the same niche, such as Quora spaces or Reddit communities, and try to answer people’s questions with possible solutions that you covered in your content.

As you can see, these are all ways to bring fresh traffic to your website without a direct expectation of conversion.

Some State On TOFU Content (by Search Engine Journal)

• 70% of respondents consider organic search as the most effective channel for attracting traffic at this funnel stage.
• Social media marketing and email marketing were mentioned by 60% and 54% of marketers, respectively.
• “How-to” guides were identified as the top format by 72% of participants.
• Landing pages (35%), infographics (28%), and checklists (27%) remain important formats.
• The core metrics for evaluating content success are the number of visitors (73%), conversion rate (54%), and time on page (52%).

2. Middle Of The Funnel (MOFU)

The Middle Of The Funnel stage is aimed at creating Interest and Consideration. Here, your focus would be to turn prospects into potential leads to whom you may offer services or run promotional campaigns in the future.

For example, you could create a case study on your last successful client by showcasing where you or your product has helped in solving the product. If possible, collect stats such as sales growth or conversion rate to make it realistic. This will help other potential clients trust you, and many will be ready to take action when you offer them your product/service later. Collaborating with a custom software development service to tailor your case studies or other marketing materials can enhance the impact and relevance of your promotional campaigns.

You could also collect their emails and names in exchange for viewing the case study. In this case, you have to make sure the title of your case study is well-written and conveys the problems you can solve. Then it will mostly attract people that are qualified for immediate product/service promotion, i.e., qualified for BOFU content.

Middle Of The Funnel Content & Activities

Follow the content and activities that you may execute for the MOFU stage.

• ‘How to’ posts/articles
  Actionable guides related to your service or product where you can directly refer to your product/service as one of the solutions.
• Product Comparison Posts
  Compare multiple products to show which is better.
• Email newsletters (and subscriptions)
  Send newsletters to subscribers and add CTAs to take action.
• eBooks & Whitepapers
  Create eBooks and Whitepapers on topics that explain solutions to products that are relevant to your product/service.
• Case Studies
  Details & stats on how you helped solve a prospect’s problems using your product or service.
• Product Demos
  Showcase your product in a video or article.
• Landing Page
  Create a promotional landing page to promote the product/service that is convincing to take action.
• Re-targeting Ads
  Set up re-targeting Ads for people who visited your site on your TOFU content.
• Email Marketing
  Send emails to your subscribers with nurturing emails and eventually get them ready for conversion with persuasive copies.
• Pre-launch sequences
  Send out email sequences to create hype and anticipation among your subscribers leading up to the launch.
• Surveys
  Survey Tools to qualify prospects into specific lead segments to run targeted campaigns in the future.
• Lead Magnets
  Offer free resources with specific MOFU topics in exchange for leads (name and email) to run promotional campaigns alter.

All of these activities are aimed at getting the prospects ready to purchase or well-informed about your products/services to be able to run sales campaigns for them in the future. In most cases, the leads are qualified enough to run targeted email campaigns.

Some State On MOFU Content (by Search Engine Journal)

• 44% of survey participants found “How-to” guides to be the most effective in generating leads.
• Product overviews (40%) and case studies (34%) were also popular for generating leads, indicating the value placed on usability and effectiveness.
• Organic search (69%) was identified as the most efficient channel for lead generation, followed by email marketing (54%) and social media marketing (52%).
• Lead nurturing was primarily carried out through emails (72%).
• Success stories (43%), product overviews (38%), and case studies (36%) were the preferred formats to push leads toward conversion.
• The key metrics for content efficiency were conversion rate (75%), number of leads (54%), and number of visitors (44%).

3. Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)

During the bottom of the funnel, your only aim is to convert leads into sales. Hence, it is often referred to as the “Decision and Action” stage.

Here, you will create content and run marketing activities to directly influence a decision out of your leads.

For instance, let’s say you offered a free trial to your prospect to get a firsthand experience of your products. You may then send a promotional email to try and convert them. Maybe you can offer a 20% discount.

Here, the free trial and the discount emails are both BOFU content.

Bottom Of The Funnel Content & Activities

Follow the content and activities that you may execute for the BOFU stage

• Sales Pages
  A special page to sell a product directly, with promotional content and, in most cases, a discount/bundle offer.
• Webinars
  Host direct live sessions or pre-recorded webinars to showcase your expertise and discuss problems that you can solve with your product and service. Then, at the end of the session, make an offer.
• Free Workshops
  Issue free workshops to entice potential clients and get them to take a decision at the end of the workshop with an attractive offer.
• Promotional Emails
  Make discount offers on special occasions or events to convert leads into clients.
• Tripwire Offers
  Offer a low-cost product that will be more value for money. If this product does prove to be valuable, you can then proceed to offer high-value products.
• Discounts Offers
  Any discount offers you make are intended to trigger instant conversions.
• Free Trials
  Give a free trial to your product/service to get a firsthand experience before asking to pay. This experience will help to trigger a decision.
• Customer Testimonials
  Highlighting direct testimonials is a sign of why your product or service is the right choice. Hence you can use it to convince prospects to choose your product/service.

Most of the activities are either decisions already taken or are designed to influence prospects to make a decision. These are usually shared with leads that were qualified through MOFU content/activity.

Some State On BOFU Content (by Search Engine Journal)

• 88% of respondents rely on keyword research, while 73% use competitor analysis to determine content creation.
• 49% utilize in-house knowledge, conducting content audits and consulting sales or customer support teams.
• 50% find encouraging prospects to progress through the funnel to be a significant challenge.
• 71% employ email follow-ups, 67% improve internal links, and 56% recommend related content to facilitate funnel progression.
• Generating quality leads (52%) and attracting traffic (48%) were identified as other major content creation challenges.
• When measuring funnel effectiveness, 36% consider conversion rate, 23% focus on the number of payments, and 15% evaluate leads and ROI/ROMI.

Conclusion

So far, you have got a basic idea of how a marketing funnel works. If you want to grow your business, you need to prepare content and plan activities to serve all the stages of the marketing funnel.

In the upcoming days, we will prepare detailed guides on each stage of the marketing funnel so that you can plan your funnels more effectively.

And once you have a marketing funnel in place, you then have to focus on CRO and infusing conversion-optimized sales funnels to your sites to generate more revenue.

So go ahead and start working on your marketing funnel and grow your business.

In case you want to learn about sales funnels, here is an article to help you learn about different type of sales funnels:

• 7 Types Of Sales Funnels To Boost Your Conversions