The world of sales has transformed. Period. The buyer’s journey is no longer simple – starting from interest and ending at purchase. All this is because, fundamentally, the whole buying process has changed. The sales process is no longer linear and if a person does the research of a product doesn’t mean that s/he would be buying it next. A buyer in today’s world has erratic buying pattern and they may go silent for long before coming back to purchase after a long slumber.
With the funnel no longer looking like a ‘funnel’, how do you ensure that you don’t let your customers slip through the sieve? By keeping a lookout on all the phases of purchase and not just focusing on the bottom of the funnel where the conversion happens. Sure, ROI is the bottom-line but focusing solely on the bottom-line may ruin the long-term success of your organization. Your marketing should start with the awareness and end with the conversion. But, often we focus so much on the conversion that we forget about the awareness part. It is very important to focus on awareness and that’s why it is at the top of the funnel marketing. Read on to know what top of the funnel marketing is and how you can incorporate it in your marketing efforts.
Top of Funnel
As the word itself suggests, top of the funnel or ToFu is the upper most part of the marketing funnel and represent an ‘awareness’ stage. It incorporate all the inbound efforts from emailers, blogs, SEO, PPC, white papers, social media efforts, et al. The major goal of the top of the funnel is to attract prospects into the funnel and drive them slowly towards the bottom of the funnel slowly converting the customer’s interest into sale.
The top of the funnel is the widest stage of the funnel and thus is a perfect place to attract new prospects with awareness through engaging, entertaining and educating content. Your goal should be to bring engaging content in front of your consumers and leave them wanting more.
More often than not, organizations completely focus on shoveling advertisements upon advertisements down the throat of a consumer hoping that it would result in conversion. What you need to understand is that at the top of the funnel, focus should not be on selling but upon engaging. This is a perfect place to show your customers why you are different from the rest of the market. If you can show what you can do best without preaching or making it sound like an advertisement, you would definitely be able to driver more visitors towards the bottom of your sales funnel.
Top-of-the-Funnel Content Types:
eBooks and whitepapers
Tips and tricks
How-to video/webinar
Social posts
How-to blog posts
Guest blog posts
Online articles
Infographics
FAQs
Driving traffic to your website isn’t enough. You need to be able to convert your visitors into sales and although it might sound like a job for the sales team dealing with the bottom of the funnel, it is the upper part of the funnel that sets the stage. From awareness to interest ultimately leading to desire and action, the sales funnel needs to work as fully marketing enabled instead of working in parts. Just like a burger would not taste good without any of its essential ingredient, sales funnel cannot work without its top, middle and bottom part working together.
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