Top-of-the-Funnel Marketing: A Quick Guide

You’re mindlessly scrolling on social media when a quiz pops up, “What dog breed were you in your past life?”. As a fur-parent, you have to know, right? You answered the quiz and gave your email for the grand reveal (you were a chihuahua!).

You’ve just entered the top-of-the-funnel pipeline.

As most of you probably already know, a marketing funnel is a tool that combines all your marketing efforts and steers your brand in a clear direction. It leads your audience to purchase your product or service starting from their first discovery of your brand.

Most of your target customers don’t know your brand even exists. Marylou Tyler, the author of Predictable Revenue, explained this through the 100 Audience formula. Here’s how it goes:

Imagine 100 of your audience in a big stadium; only three are ready to buy from you, six need a little more convincing, and the rest are oblivious.

These oblivious strangers are the target of your top-funnel efforts. There are two goals:

• Promote brand awareness to a target audience.

• Generate quality leads that can convert into high-paying customers later on.

But what are the key things to remember to make them notice your brand? Let’s look into the inner workings of the top funnel.

Top-of-the-Funnel Content

Imagine a stranger dropping down on his knees and proposing. That’s a woah-there-back-off situation, right? The same goes with your target audience—they don’t know you, so warming them up is the best course of action.

Don’t sell.

The time for that will come later down the pipeline. Your focus should be on upgrading the audience's level of awareness by attention-grabbing content. It can be blog articles, social media posts, videos, podcasts, PDFs, and other forms.

Top funnel content should follow these essential elements:

• Attractive - Catch their attention with visual creativity. Don’t plaster an infographic or copy with no regard for how it looks or sounds. Face value influences whether someone stops scrolling and gives your content the time of day.

• Buyer-centered - It should be about your audience—not your brand. Create relevant content about their interests, likes, and even hobbies.

• Consumable - TOFU audiences have the shortest attention span. You have to grab their attention and present your content in an easy-to-consume manner. That’s why 60-second videos are trending; they can consume the content without sacrificing precious time.

• Engaging - Interact with your audience through actionable content. As early as now, let them feel they are not onlookers but a part of your brand. You can ask them questions worth pondering.

At this point, we build content to become lead magnets. These are introductory assets that lead your audience deeper into your funnel. The main goal of a lead magnet is to drive your prospects to give their emails so that you can nurture them further.

It doesn’t have to relate to what you’re selling. Your content topics could fall under your general niche umbrella. If your brand sells scannable pet tags, you can do the dog quiz as your lead magnet.

TOFU Dos and Don’ts

TOFU is the gateway to your brand. What you do in this stage will determine whether your funnel brings in customers.

Here’s what you can do to optimize your top funnel:

1. Don't lead everyone to your brand.

   Imagine selling pet tags to someone with allergies or living in a no-pets-allowed condo. It is unlikely that they will buy your product. Targeting people who don’t even need you is a waste of advertising budget (and a nuisance to them).

   But how will you know the right people to lead to the funnel?

2. Do your research.

   Learn more about your niche and who’s in it. Identify their pain points and whether your product or service can solve them. Do competitor research and compare solutions.

   Learn where your target audience hangs out on the internet. Are they on Instagram? Do they spend time watching TikTok videos? Or are they more into longer YouTube videos?

   You don’t have to push out content everywhere. Be where your audience already is.

3. Do keep creating content that your audience likes.

   The top of the funnel is usually a place of experimentation. At the start, you’ll be churning content and testing whether it will attract attention. But as you keep doing it, you’ll find more insights into what works and what doesn’t.

   • Don’t be afraid to repurpose. A blog article that’s getting good traffic can be turned into a YouTube video or a series of carousel posts on Instagram.

   • Keep creating the type of content that gets engagement. If a quote post does well, keep creating more of it. If infographics seem to do the trick, then do more of that.

   • Keep creating content about a topic they love. If a carousel post about dog care mistakes has been shared a hundred times, they’d probably like to hear more—so create another. Maybe your reel about productivity tools got the most views—post a part two. And maybe a part three.

4. Don’t sell.

   We’ve said this, and we’ll say it again: now is not a time for a sales pitch. Don’t even mention your products or services.

5. Do have a call-to-action.

   Don’t just catch your target audience's attention; drive them towards your brand. Ask them to follow your page or subscribe to your newsletter, where you can give them more value. Getting their email allows you to nurture the customer relationship and guide them deeper into the funnel.

Leading Down the Pipeline

Optimizing your marketing efforts from the top will help with conversions further down the funnel. It ensures that you’re reaching the right audience and can build good customer relationships from the beginning.

And with that, you can convert strangers into your brand’s acquaintances. But how do they become your friend? That’s where the middle-of-the-funnel strategies come in.

We’ll discuss the middle of the funnel in the next blog. Get notified when it’s published—subscribe to our newsletter! Add your email below and sign up.