EMBiz: Top of Funnel vs Middle of Funnel

Hi, everyone, Laurel Mintz here, founder and CEO of Elevate My Brand. And this is EMBiz. Today, we're talking about the different layers of the funnel, specifically the top of the funnel versus the middle of the funnel. It gets a little narrower from the top to the bottom. 

Top Of Funnel (TOFU)

The top of the funnel is really all about visibility and awareness. And sometimes when we have those conversations with clients, they're like, well, all I want is sales. All I want is conversion. And I'm like, that's cute. So do I. But the truth is that if you are a new brand or if you're trying to pick up new market share in a market that doesn't know like or trust you yet, you have to build that visibility and awareness conversation first. It's like dating, right? You need to have some cocktail dates, some lunches, some brunches, some dinners before you're meeting the parents, getting engaged, you know, no shade, no tea, no whatever on how you like to live your life. However, when it comes to the marketing world, we really do want to make sure that we're building the funnel the right way. So the top of the funnel is the awareness piece. 

Middle of Funnel (MOFU)

The middle of the funnel is consideration. And this is when people are really starting to do their homework. They're looking at you versus other competitors in the market, which is why differentiation is so important. But the big takeaway from this conversation today, other than usually can't jump from top of funnel to conversion or bottom of funnel, is that you want to start thinking about what those budgets should look like in terms of percentage of your overall budget for marketing. So for the top of funnel, you're looking at about 60 to 70% of your marketing budget. And that is significant for a reason. You're trying to capture new eyeballs or most likely do what we call a conquesting campaign, meaning you're trying to pull eyeballs from another competitor brand in the market. Whereas in the middle of the funnel, when people have already kind of selected into your campaigns, your social channels, et cetera, they're really just comparing you against others in the market to make that final decision, your budget's significantly less, right? 10 to 20%. Now, of course, this depends on the industry that you're in, but generally, those are the percentages that you can think through as you're defining your marketing budget. Top of funnel versus middle of funnel. Now, in terms of examples of what is top of funnel versus middle of funnel, top of funnel is kind of exactly what you would probably think of, social media, search ads, influencer content, a lot of that. Then, when they're in the middle of the funnel, they're already kind of in your loop. So that would be things like SMS marketing events, because they're already on your list, and specifically and very focused email marketing. 

So that's the difference between the top of the funnel in terms of what the expectation should be versus the middle of the funnel in terms of budget, platform and spend.