As the initial stage of the customer journey, the top of the funnel represents the critical entry point where prospects are introduced to your brand, products, or services. It's the phase where awareness is kindled, curiosity is piqued, and the foundation for future relationships is laid.
In essence, the strength of your TOFU strategy sets the stage for the entire customer lifecycle, influencing acquisition, engagement, and retention efforts down the line.
Building a substantial top-of-the-funnel requires a strategic blend of outreach, compelling content, and seamless experiences tailored to capture the attention and interest of your target audience.
From leveraging the power of digital channels to harnessing the reach of traditional marketing tactics, the possibilities for TOFU expansion are vast and ever-evolving.
I want to highlight 3 channels that you can use on a regular basis to put your top of the funnel in hyperdrive, and keep it busy sustainably.
Youtube:
Youtube is one of the biggest discovery platforms in the world today. I’d rank it as the best platform, simply because it has something for both ADHD-ridden quick flickers, and those who like to go through long-form videos as they drive or work-out.
Also, all your target personas and their grandmothers are on Youtube, so it is the place to be. As long as you can consistently put valuable content out, and take care of the basics, you will garner valuable views.
The Youtube approach might work better for folks selling things like courses. It may or may not work as well for folks selling things like groceries, strictly based on the way Youtube content can be positioned for each industry, and the space that needs to be filled up in order to provide valuable information to the user, and establish superiority of offering.
The goal is to get more people to watch your long form Youtube content, because that’s where they form actual opinions about you and your brand.
Here are some actionable items that you can immediately use.
Youtube basics: Make sure each piece of content you put out has an intriguing title, an exciting thumbnail, and detailed captions with shoutouts, mentions, and all the important links you want the viewer to follow through on.
I believe captions are rarely needed, but it really sucks when the viewer actually goes looking for more info, and finds little to nothing there.
CTAs: A natural extension of this would be to have a few cards for callouts in between the video, but use them sparingly. Youtube videos are usually a first date, and most content on Youtube should be focused on creating awareness and top level positioning by providing value and entertainment.
Community posts: Don’t forget to leverage community posts. It can be used for important announcements, sharing personal anecdotes in the written format, or also along with a picture. They can also be used to promote an important video of yours, or sometimes even an offering.
Youtube Shorts: Shorts work best to amplify an existing Youtube channel’s voice. Leverage shorts to maximize organic reach. Make sure you link your Shorts to a longer form video, because engagement there results in TOFU magic. Use hashtags and everything else you’d do to push an organic piece of content.
Community:
Building a community might seem like something more suitable for engaging your existing customers, and that is true. But consider the application of building a community for new user growth, by expanding the top of the funnel.
Also, please note that this is one of those activities that would require time and investment to bear fruit. If you have a fairly evolved content strategy, you can include community building in it with some extra effort, and see results.
Here are some of the things you must focus on while building a community.
The why: There has to be a raison d'être for the community you’re building. Why are you building it? What do you want to achieve from it? What can the members hope to achieve by joining? These are some of the questions that require thinking and a written charter. Doesn’t have to be long or tedious. We’re looking for clarity of purpose here, more than anything.
For example: One of your biggest goals for your community may be to get new users for your offering. Or, it can be to keep your existing users engaged. Try to have one major goal, that is most important.
Content strategy: Where do you want to build this community? Do you want to use a social media platform? Would you prefer a community on a messenger service like WhatsApp or Telegram?
What are your key content buckets? How often do you post? What are the incentives that are to be offered for members to join?
How different is the content / experience of a member inside the community, VS on your social media presence?
Members will be happy to excuse the similarity of experience in the community VS your social media as long as there are exclusive incentives to be a part of the community.
It also is key to keep the strategy in sync with the overall content strategy of the org, to ensure it doesn’t go off on a completely different tangent - unless that’s your goal.
Creators:
Identifying creators that fit your brand is not as easy as it looks. Do the basic checks – their reach, quality and frequency of content output, their engagement and reach, their engagement numbers (and how it stacks VS the average for their number of followers).
Have a chat with them, schedule a call, discuss your campaign, check out their rate card, negotiate fairly with them. See if they buy into your campaign and its value proposition, and what they actually think about it.
Carefully define the scope including the payment, their deliverables, your contributions, and the delivery timeline. Try to sign a contract with them, if possible, to formalize your agreement. See if they’ll agree to whitelist their content for you.
Be involved in the creative process. Share with clarity the top 1-2 messages you want them to propagate in their creative deliverables.
Allocate ample time for them to create, and to share drafts and incorporate ideas / make edits as required.
Have a plan for what to do once the campaign is live, and the content has been shared.
Track. If possible, create exclusive landing pages for them to promote. If not, definitely track through UTMs on your Google or CRM analytics, apart from the social media analytics.
Work with 2-5 influencers every month, depending on your budget. Feel free to repeatedly work with the influencers you really liked working with, and who were able to make a measurable impact in terms of, for example, users visiting your store, new registrations, subscribing to your newsletter, making purchases, or signing up to a free webinar - depending on your CTA.
Do this till you have a list of ~5 influencers you can consistently work with. Feel free to keep exploring as and when the need arises.
If you do this right, you will not only see your social channels blow up, but also a big, evidently measurable impact on your top of the funnel.
These inputs are obviously most suited for profitable startups, with a minimum of $1M in revenue, and will stay relevant till around $10M in revenue or thereabouts. Outside of this range, you’d need to tweak this strategy, and you might even have to look at other channels.
But the goal remains the same. If your flywheel is up and running, and your conversion rate is at least hitting the industry average, supercharging your top of the funnel will deliver sustained growth to your business.