Understanding TOFU-MOFU-BOFU Content Strategy

Understanding TOFU-MOFU-BOFU Content Strategy

If you’re a business owner, you’ve heard of digital marketing. And you understand the importance of developing a great funnel by employing an effective digital marketing strategy. This can be challenging for some business owners because they don’t fully understand what a funnel is and the role it plays in lead generation.

What is a Sales and Marketing Funnel?

The sales portion of the funnel is the process that companies use to guide potential customers toward a sale. This process begins when potential customers explore purchase options and ends with the final decision to purchase the product. The funnel is made up of several different lead generation steps.

The marketing portion also has various stages. It takes customers through a process whereby they first become aware of your brand. The process continues to build trust and create customer loyalty, even after the sale is made.

The two efforts exist together as the sales and marketing funnel. You use the funnel to generate awareness of your company’s brand and then, through a series of processes, convert clients into loyal, paying customers. The idea is not to just capture attention but to also:

• Establish a relationship
• Create user engagement
• Generate trust
• Build credibility, and
• Create repeat business

A lot of what’s involved with this overall process includes the implementation of TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU marketing strategies.

We know that all of this can seem confusing and overwhelming for a lot of business owners. But here’s the good thing, our company has a lot of experience and a pretty good handle on this process. We can help businesses leverage their funnel strategies to secure targeted leads by implementing multiple lead creation strategies.

Making a customer is like making a friend. You don’t just say, “Hi, there.” You have to build trust and credibility with customers in the same way you build relationships with friends — one step at a time.

The sales and marketing funnel has stages that allow customers to get to know you, to begin to trust you and to warm up to you. It’s an old-fashioned term called “wooing the customer until you’ve won them over.”

Think of it like the dating process, where two people get to know each other before a solid relationship can be established. The activities in sales and marketing funnels are very similar. They are designed to target quality leads, build trust and credibility, then establish a relationship that could last a lifetime.

Various Stages of the Marketing Funnel

When you think of a marketing funnel, there is a process that takes place before a sale is generated:

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Evaluation
4. Commitment, and then
5. The sale

These steps represent different stages of the purchasing process, at which point the correct content and/or activity needs to take place at the right time. This helps move potential customers through each stage of the sales funnel.

These processes should play out in a certain order to generate and convert targeted leads.

TOFU

TOFU is short for Top of Funnel. This means that at the very top of the funnel, marketing and sales activities take place to attract a large audience of potential customers. These are the initial activities used to increase brand awareness, educate and nurture leads. Oftentimes, this is the first point of contact. It’s when companies make an initial attempt to provide valuable and useful information to establish credibility and build trust. It’s common for companies to distribute content such as e-books, tip sheets, white papers, or answers to questions in exchange for potential customers’ contact information.

MOFU

MOFU is short for Middle of Funnel. After the initial lead generation activities have taken place during the TOFU stage, the MOFU stage kicks in. During this stage, there is still a wide diversity of leads who have still not been qualified. This is the stage where you begin to establish your company as the expert and as the go-to company for solutions to common problems that arise within your industry. Your content should be a bit more targeted. Those who opt-in from the initial stages can continue to receive information that educates them about various challenges that you have answers to. This content typically consists of more involved, higher level e-books that are in greater detail than the initial e-books that were disbursed during the TOFU stage. Other content consists of videos, white papers, and quizzes. This is also the stage where your potential customers should begin to warm up to your company.

BOFU

BOFU is short for Bottom of Funnel. This is the final stage of the funnel. It’s where you should have already attracted several leads during the initial stages of the process.

During the BOFU stage, your leads should know who you are and how valuable you are in your industry. This is the point in which a free trial or an assessment is provided to more qualified leads. If you sell products, it would be a great time to offer coupons or discount codes. When the sale is made, consider incentives to be applied to future sales to keep your customers coming back.

To Conclude

These are just some of the common stages that take place during the sales and marketing process. Obviously, there’s a lot more to it, but this quick explanation should help you become familiar with the process and give you some ideas about how TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU can be integrated into your overall marketing strategy.