Marketers need to monitor leads’ interest, thought, intent, and purchase decisions. This monitoring occurs throughout multiple stages: awareness, interest, evaluation, and finally, purchase. Read more about this at The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing Funnel Design and Master the Funnel to Ace Performance Marketing!
Bringing potential customers to the end of the funnel requires time and money invested at the top of funnel. To get sales, you must first have successful outcomes to nurture. Top funnel marketing strategies are the first step since they help you build credibility and thought leadership with potential clients.
We are surrounded by the top of the funnel marketing. Every day, you encounter it on billboards, TV, radio, etc. Signs for “McDonald’s” or ” Car Wash” can be seen on highways and at stoplights. You might have heard advertisements on radio and television. But what does it really mean? What is the aim of top funnel marketing? Let us take a closer look at the top of the funnel.
Understanding Top of Funnel Performance Marketing
The top of the funnel involves marketing activities to create brand or product awareness, marking the first stage in the sales funnel. At this point, the goal is to make people aware of your product.
Digital marketers often create content, such as blogs, podcasts, or videos, to reach a broad audience at the top of the funnel. This content aims to attract attention and generate interest in your brand before diving into the sales process. Following are some of the most popular ToFu (Top of Funnel) activities:
- Blogs and custom landing pages
- Promotional Ads
- Social media posts
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
- Video marketing
- Influencer marketing
Most marketers focus PPC, Facebook Ads, and SEO efforts on the bottom of the funnel for quicker conversions. Yet, businesses can enhance ROI across other platforms with organic top-of-the-funnel content. Content marketing efforts at the top of the funnel are highly effective. It offers the following benefits:
1. Builds Brand Awareness
Consistently providing valuable information makes your company the go-to source for potential customers. A strong content strategy keeps your company in their minds. Therefore, whenever they’re ready to hire, you’ll be the first name they recall.
2. Builds Trust
With top-of-the-funnel marketing, you can establish trust among the audience. Each high-quality piece of content you publish helps stay at the top of customers’ minds.
3. The Snowball Effect
Create a dedicated page to answer frequently asked questions from your readers. Optimize the page to rank as a solution and fully explain it to new customers. Over time, this content will gain momentum and attract new visitors and potential customers. Further, building the Snowball Effect for your business.
4. Lowered Competition
Many businesses focus on the bottom half of the marketing funnel. By addressing topics in the upper funnel, you compete with Quora and Wikipedia, etc. These sources are used by Google to fill gaps in search results. With less competition, there’s a significant opportunity for businesses to provide solutions and replace these generalist websites.
Getting started with Top of the Funnel Marketing
A customer is new to your brand at the “top of the funnel.” It’s their first encounter, and they lack prior experiences. In this awareness phase, a gentle approach is crucial. Create a positive first impression that sparks their interest in learning more. Educate your audience on issues related to your brand through content based on their interests, guided by analysis and research.
Here are a few tips for creating top-of-the-funnel content ideas that can attract and educate visitors.
- Research your main keywords and look for related, long-tail terms.
- Use Google suggest, Quora and ‘people also ask’.
- Ask sales and customer service what questions they get asked the most.
- Solve common problems your users have, even if they are not related to your business.
The top of the funnel is usually the most expensive stage in a marketing campaign. Since, it requires more investment and can be harder to measure than other stages. However, it also leads to higher conversions because it helps you connect with people who are already interested in your product or service.
Top of the Funnel Marketing Strategies
Custom Landing Page
A custom landing page is an appealing, user-friendly platform that efficiently converts visitors into leads and sales. Whether it’s a sales page or informational page, it’s an excellent place to collect emails from interested visitors and build a list of potential customers. Landing pages are also effective for promoting offers on your website.
The key is having clear call-to-action (CTA) in place. This will direct users to take an action like signing up for your newsletter or making a purchase, for instance.
Landing pages play a crucial role in email marketing. They enable you to track and measure the success of your email campaigns. You can observe where people land on your website, how long they stay, what content they interact with, and more.
Blogs
Blogs are a great tool for generating leads and building relationships with your potential customers. They can help you connect with people and provide valuable information to your target audience. Further, helping you generate more leads for your business.
It is a fantastic way to get started because they require little initial investment and can be done on a low budget.
If you want to create engaging content, try using these:
- Write for your audience: The most effective blog posts are those that are written from the perspective of the audience.
- Use visuals: Visuals bring people into your content. Since, they help make it easier for people to understand.
- Break up complex topics into smaller pieces: Break ideas down into smaller pieces for easy understanding. You can use bullets, for instance. Try implementing this, while writing about complex topics like marketing strategy or product development.
Promotional Ads
These are often used by businesses to inform potential customers about new products, services, or promotions. They are a powerful way to attract leads. They can include discounts, coupons, and other incentives, for instance. You can send these out to potential customers via email or social media.
Promotional ads do not have to be limited to just one page either. You can create multiple pages that promote assorted products or services and then use them to send out your promotional emails.
Social media posts
Top of the funnel marketing is all about getting people to your website or landing page. Social media posts are one of the best ways to do this. Especially, through Facebook and Instagram. They are easy to create and can be shared easily. The content is also quick to consume, which makes it a great tool for reaching new customers.
However, remember to not just post once a week. Keep it fresh and interesting! An effective way is to share content related to current events or topics relevant to your target audience. This will help keep things interesting while also reminding people of what you offer.
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation
SEO is a top of the funnel marketing technique. It is a way to get people to your website by using keywords.
You can use SEO to target specific groups of people who are interested in what you have to offer. Suppose, you sell shoes and want to target women over 30. You can use an SEO strategy that targets these demographics, for instance.
Simply put, if someone searches for “shoes for women over 30,” and your site is not listed among the top results, it indicates that there are better sites out there with higher quality content. These sites will rank higher for this search term.
Video marketing
Video marketing is a powerful tool for creating awareness and engagement with your target audience. It is a cost-effective way to generate leads. Besides, the best part is that it can be done in a noticeably brief period.
Videos can be used by companies of all sizes to reach their audience and drive sales. The most popular type includes informational videos, how-to videos, and product demos.
Winning Examples of Marketing Campaigns at the Top of the Funnel
Nestle
Due to the pandemic, Nestlé India changed its digital marketing strategy for Maggi and Nescafé products. They explored new ways to inspire and inform their audience. They used Google Search Trends and YouTube to recommend new ways of enjoying their morning coffee and cooking at home to their audience.
To effectively connect with India’s coffee drinkers, the brand crafted personalized messages. They partnered with 106 top YouTube food channels to create DIY recipe videos featuring Maggi products in popular dishes.
B-Naturals ‘100% Indian’ Campaign
The brand centered its efforts on brand positioning and an upcoming patriotic event. They launched a cost-effective ‘100% Indian’ Campaign on Instagram with the goal of increasing participation and engagement. People nationwide recorded videos using the filter, answered questions, tagged @bnaturalbeverages, and shared their videos. Finally, the campaign could generated 146k impressions and 899 video submissions for the brand.
Measuring Top of Funnel Success
Impressions
A fundamental requirement for increasing brand awareness is impressions. Impressions indicate how often users view your ads or posts on screens. If your audience doesn’t see your ads or content, they are less likely to be aware of your brand.
If your objective is increased brand awareness, concentrate on achieving a low cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM). Followed by, comparing it to cost per click (CPC) and clickthrough rate (CTR). This will help you gain insights into how a campaign or ad performs.
Reach
Reach is the total number of distinct users that have seen your ad across all digital media. Reach can be used, like impressions, to gauge how well your marketing strategies are performing. If your ads are being seen but don’t lead to any users becoming paying customers, consider making changes to improve performance. Alternatively, focus your efforts on the audiences that, according to data, are more likely to interact with your ads.
Website traffic
To measure the effectiveness of your initial marketing strategies, check website traffic. Importantly, determine if the increase in website traffic is due to top-of-the-funnel strategies or other lower-funnel efforts.
Average Time on Page
In Google Analytics, average time on page shows how long visitors spend on a page, indicating their engagement with the content. Increased time spent on a page suggests higher audience interest in what you offer.
Top-of-funnel (ToFu) tactics are crucial for business success. A solid foundation of leads, sales, and conversions is essential for rapid business scaling. To begin, employ top-of-funnel marketing strategies to build trust and establish an authoritative voice with potential customers.
If you are looking for more information on using the funnel marketing strategy, then read our articles, Performance Marketing in the Middle of the Funnel and Performance Marketing at the Bottom of the Funnel.
