Why your top of funnel marketing still matters

"Leads. I want leads."

"I need conversions. How many conversions can I get for X dollars?"

If you work in strategy or performance marketing, you've likely heard these statements once or twice, whether from clients or your internal team and leadership. And if you're a CMO, you are the person responsible for delivering those leads and MQLs.

While CMOs are increasingly more responsible for the pipeline, they must report to the C-suite and board who can lose sight of how awareness is necessary to achieve their conversion goals.

Here at Imarc, as the digital partner to many clients, we continue to drive home the importance of the top of funnel (TOFU) tactics that create bottom of funnel (BOFU) results. This article will discuss TOFU stage tactics, content, and measurement, the importance of the stage, and ultimately, how it fits into the larger marketing sphere.

All about TOFU

Filling the funnel is important, but how do you best achieve that? With the right tactics and content, and by measuring their performance intelligently.

When it comes to tactics, TOFU utilizes:

• Digital public relations
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media marketing
• Influencer marketing
• Always-on campaigns
• Retargeting

The content to use with those tactics is usually:

• Blog posts
• Infographics
• Ebooks
• Videos
• Webinars
• Podcasts

Key statistic: An average company that blogs earns 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links, and 434% more indexed pages.

The efficacy of this stage is measured using the following metrics:

• Unique visitors
• Click-through rates
• Social media engagement
• Downloads
• Brand mentions and PR coverage

Interest and attention are goals in this stage as is starting the customer journey.

Key insight: If you want to attract traffic, top-performing content types include "how to" guides, landing pages, infographics, checklists, and Ebooks/whitepapers.

By contrast, middle of funnel (MOFU) and BOFU tactics and content are about nurturing and closing customers.

Always-on (AO) & retargeting

Let's back up to the last two items in our TOFU tactics list–always-on campaigns and retargeting.

While these aren't a part of Semrush's graphic, they are highly effective and should be a part of every company's marketing plan. So how would you use them in the TOFU stage?

AO campaigns

These campaigns are literally the definition of TOFU as they are all about awareness. They are meant to put your Brand front and center with the goal of keeping you top-of-mind so that when your ideal customer is ready to convert, you're the first solution they think of.

Measuring AO campaigns

While it depends on your business goals, here are some baseline metrics to measure in most AO campaigns:

• Clicks
• Click through rate
• Cost per click
• On-page engagement (with conversion points)

Retargeting

While you can retarget at any phase of the funnel and serve any content to them based on your goals, retargeting is great for TOFU content. New product launch? Retarget customers who have bought your other products and make them aware! This tactic doubles down on the awareness you've already established by fostering strong connections with people who have already engaged with you. It's a win!

Quantifying retargeting's impact

Though the tracked metrics for a retargeting campaign may seem similar to the ones above, now is the time to consider your B2B or B2C sales cycle. Dive into the data and make goals based on how many touchpoints it takes you to earn a conversion. There's no better benchmark than your own historical performance data.

Key statistic: A retargeting ad can increase conversions drastically. 70% of customers said that they would be more likely to make a purchase after seeing a retargeting ad.

TOFU helps MOFU & BOFU exist

Simply put, customers in the awareness stage aren't ready for MOFU or BOFU tactics and content. They're just starting to know your Brand, so overwhelming them with free demos, coupon codes, and other conversion-forward elements is not the right strategy or approach for your consumer.

TOFU builds the pipeline so that MOFU and BOFU can take the sale home! It's important to have a healthy, wide group of potentials so that you can narrow it down to ones that will eventually convert.

Key insight: Though the percentage changes depending on industry, company, and other factors, on average just 10-15% of leads have the potential to end up converting. To get a better idea of how many leads you need, follow this Lead Conversion Rate (LCR) formula: LCR = (Total number of conversions / Total number of leads) x 100.

To show what led to a sale, focus on tracking web analytics and content engagement, and the lifetime value of your customers that you earn from.

Adding TOFU into conversion conversations

While we would never tell you to discount the goals of your C-suite, we would suggest that you rethink how you respond to their request for BOFU campaigns, leads, and conversions.

If they say that they want a certain amount of conversions, zoom out and say something like, "Absolutely, we'll need to build a strong top of funnel to achieve that. Based on historical metrics (you'll want to come prepared with specific company metrics or industry ones to make your case), we need X amount of interest in the TOFU stage to earn a conversion, so let's allocate X dollars."

This is also a great time to mention that AO campaigns help raise general Brand awareness and can help keep the TOFU strong in between heavy-up campaigns.

Finally, this is an excellent opportunity to talk about implementing dashboards that showcase touches that tie spend to outcomes. They can be produced to show real-time results and reported on in a month-over-month cadence, in a simple format that anyone can understand and utilize. This type of tool will give you metrics to measure your own success again and help you set realistic goals in the future.

Key statistic: Salesforce reported that 72% of high-performing marketers are able to analyze marketing performance in real-time.

Many marketers are now measuring more metrics than ever. Specifically, they are looking at:

• Revenue
• Customer satisfaction metrics
• Web/mobile analytics
• Customer acquisition costs
• Marketing/sales funnel (B2B base)
• Content engagement
• Customer retention rates
• Customer referral rates/volume
• Customer lifetime value

Full-funnel, holistic & infinite marketing

Full-funnel, holistic, infinite marketing–while the terms are slightly different, if you get down to basics they mean the same thing–looking at the whole picture and optimizing your marketing for continual engagement.

Engagement is important at the beginning of a relationship and ultimately keeps it alive, creating Brand advocates.

And that doesn't mean you can't run nurture campaigns for MOFU and BOFU campaigns while pushing separate TOFU tactics. It's smart to keep all parts of your marketing moving.

After all, while marketing uses funnels to illustrate defined stages and bucket tactics, the best way to make a long-term impact and grow your business is to adopt a holistic marketing strategy that meets the many challenges and expectations in the space including:

• Changing consumer ethics
• An evolving digital landscape
• Fragmented audiences
• Restricted resources
• Pressure for immediate results in a long-term game
• Multi-channel complexity
• Interwoven measurement needs
• Finding the balance between creativity and analytics
• Data-driven stress
• Content and demands for attention

We explore those elements in more depth and tie them back to sales in "Measure what matters: performance indicators for CMOs," if you're interested in diving in deeper.

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A strong TOFU awareness play needs to be a part of your long-term marketing strategy. If you need a hand mapping that out, let's talk.