Top Of Funnel Marketing: Best Practices to Follow

In the current competitive landscape where the cost per click is rising, as a marketer, you need to pivot and start marketing at the top of funnel where there is less competition.

I have worked with various B2B companies to generate highly qualified marketing leads in the last decade. I have noticed a common trend, where due to high competition, the CPC for high intent keywords has become very expensive.

So it’s the right time to start investing time and effort in building top-of-funnel marketing campaigns.

In this article, I will explain precisely how you can use the top of the funnel to generate leads for your business. But first, let’s establish a basic definition of top-of-funnel marketing.

What is Top of Funnel Marketing?

Do you know that old saying, “Google is your friend”?

Well, it’s true – and these days, we are finding more and more people at the top of the funnel. These people aren’t ready to buy yet, but they’re looking for basic research on a topic.

For example, they may learn a new language or search for information on how something works.

But as a brand, if you target these questions and give solutions, you put yourself in front of your audience as a thought leader who will help build trust and turn these visitors into leads for future sales opportunities.

How Top of the Funnel Works In Practice

Let’s suppose I am interested to know more about – What insurance do freelancers need? So if I type this in Google and stumble upon a blog post from an Insurance Company, which matches precisely my search query [what insurance do freelancers need], I will click through to read the article.

So if the blog post covers more in-depth information on sub-topics like:
Types of insurance?
Various Covers?

And all the other things I need to consider when buying insurance, I will find all this information highly useful. Finally, if I download a PDF to learn more about the insurance cover, I educate myself into an IQL – Informational qualified lead.

So in the background, you can imagine what has happened. I typed my problem in Google, I found a solution, and finally, to learn more, I downloaded some more valuable content. The insurance company now has my email and can nurture me to buy the right insurance.

How to Use Top of the Funnel to Generate Leads For a Business?

Top of funnel searchers are usually new to a particular topic and often looking for basic information. They may eventually buy, but most ToFu prospects are researching to learn more about the “what, how, when, or why” of a particular search topic.

To get ideas for inspiration, you can use tools like:
Ahrefs, KeywordTool.io, AnswerthePublic.com, or type your query in Google, scroll to the bottom of the search results, and analyse some related search queries.

Let’s go through an example and understand how you can create your ToFu with the help of KeywordTool.io.

Step 1: Head over to KeywordTool.io type in the search query, e.g. Insurance for Freelancers click search.

Step 2: Head over to the ‘Questions’ tab and check out the results.

Step 3:You should be able to find keywords that start with “what, how, when, or why”

Now that you know your prospects’ most common pain points, it is time that you start creating content that can educate them about how your brand can quickly solve their problems.

Creating Content For Top of Funnel Marketing Audience

Continuing with our example, let’s take the idea of insurance for freelancers one step further. But now, it’s time to get creative.

Here are a few ideas for what type of content we can create around the topic ‘insurance for freelancers’ for your top of funnel audience:

• A blog post detailing how freelancer insurance works, various covers it provides, things to consider before buying one, and benefits.
• An infographic showing how the insurance cover works.
• An explainer video that details how to make that decision.
• An ebook that goes in-depth on a topic like “Freelancers Guide to Professional Indemnity Insurance”.
• A calculator that calculates how much it could cost to get an insurance cover.
• A Quiz that diagnoses the problem and shares an outcome in exchange for an email.

You can understand from the above example that creating ‘awareness’ content that drives your sales funnel is not that hard. You have to address consumer concerns and effectively communicate what you can do through content.

Let’s move to the marketing aspect of Top of the funnel.

Top of Funnel Marketing Content

After getting your content ready, you can promote it via various channels.
If you put together a blog post, you can start efforts to rank it on Google by doing on-page and off-page optimisation.

You can run social media ads from Facebook and send traffic to your blog post. You can also run low intent Google ad campaigns targeted at visitors typing in their problems in Google.

If you created an explainer video – you could use it on social media and Youtube to expose
your videos to more people. You can also repurpose your video in blog posts, emails, landing pages, etc.

Remember to follow a multichannel approach while marketing to the ToFu audience, as it helps it effectively get your message across to potential customers.

Conclusion

Top of funnel marketing tells you what you need to do to influence clients at each step after a comprehensive evaluation of the market requirements. By strategising your ToFu with great content and consumer concerns, there’s a better possibility of driving higher sales, more loyalty, and more vital brand awareness.

Before you go, download this sales funnel mind map which shows various examples of content you can use at each stage.

I hope you found this article helpful. Check out my other blogs on lead generation, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel to make your sales cycle more efficient and reliant.

Also, Check:

B2B Startup Marketing Guide: Key Elements and Strategies

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