Your Content Funnel Is Incomplete: 3 Stages Required for Success
Content marketing is powerful—when done right. It’s easy to think that making funny memes or writing hard-hitting sales pitches are the only approaches we need to generate leads or close a deal. But focusing on just one of these tactics misses a crucial point: effective content should nurture our audience across all stages of their journey, from first learning about our business to ultimately making a purchase.
This is where the content funnel comes into play. When we create content that moves from awareness, to interest, to desire, you’re guiding our potential customers along a thoughtful and deliberate path. That’s how we build trust, credibility, and relationships that actually convert into business.
Let’s break down how different types of content fit into each stage of our funnel:
TOFU (Top of Funnel): content that drives awareness and attracts our target audience.
MOFU (Middle of Funnel): content that keeps that audience interested and starts to educate them.
BOFU (Bottom of Funnel): content that converts that interest into decision-making and sales.
To illustrate, we’ll use a fictional business called TenantGuides—a software company that helps commercial real estate agents create custom guidebooks to make showings easier for prospective tenants. Let’s see how TenantGuides can craft content for each funnel stage to drive growth.
TOFU: Creating Awareness
At the top of the funnel, our audience may not even know that our business exists—or they might not fully realize the problem we solve. TOFU content is all about creating that initial awareness. It’s content that grabs attention, introduces our business, and helps position you as a helpful voice in the market.
For TOFU, think about:
Blog posts that answer common industry questions or discuss trends
Social media posts that inspire, entertain, or provoke thought
Infographics that make data approachable
Memes
A note about that last one… I love memes. Mainly because I love to laugh. I’m in the camp that nothing tells your ICP that you understand them and that you’re one of them quite like a well-timed and tasteful joke about your industry. Of course, this takes tact and pretty deep knowledge of your industry, but it makes for amazing TOFU content.
One (very important) warning about TOFU content: it is the easiest stage to attract the wrong people. When you’re thinking about what to put out there, let’s make sure that the content is crafted to bring in people within our ideal customer profile (ICP), rather than a broad audience that doesn’t fit our offerings. Why? Because when we target the right people early on, our entire funnel becomes more efficient, resulting in higher quality leads and better conversion rates.
TenantGuides Example:
Alright… the first examples. To attract tenant-rep brokers, TenantGuides might write a blog post titled “5 Ways to Make Your Tenant Showings Stand Out in a Competitive Market.” This piece could highlight general showing tips and trends, aiming to capture the interest of brokers looking for ways to be more effective. The goal is to create content that is widely interesting to our target audience— tenant-rep brokers —without any hard sell.
A blog like this could then easily be split out into a handful of short-form pieces of content that could be posted on LinkedIn or X, both of which have solid numbers of commercial real estate agents.
TenantGuides could create a meme that pokes fun at the unpredictability of prospective tenants. For example, an image of a broker showing a stunning commercial property, accompanied by a caption like, "Tenant: 'This place is perfect! But do you have something just like this, only completely different?'” This kind of humor highlights a common frustration for brokers and makes the content relatable and shareable, while subtly showcasing TenantGuides' understanding of their audience.
This type of content positions TenantGuides as knowledgeable about the challenges brokers face, making it more likely brokers will follow their posts and continue exploring what they have to offer.
MOFU: Building Interest
Once our audience knows who we are, MOFU content moves them from awareness to deeper interest. At this stage, our audience is trying to understand whether our business could help solve their problem. There’s also a chance that our content actually educates them on a pain point they have, or will have, that they didn’t realize yet! They may not be ready to buy, but they’re actively researching solutions.
MOFU content is about providing value, education, and starting to make our solution look attractive:
Posts that dive into specific problems or solutions (cough cough, that your product addresses)
Product comparison blogs or solution-focused articles
Webinars that showcase our expertise and foster interaction
It’s here that we’re building rapport, authority, and trust. The more you can help your ICP avoid pain, increase revenue, and feel more confident from your free content, the more likely they are to consider paying for your product or services.
TenantGuides Example:
For TenantGuides, a great MOFU piece could be a downloadable guide called “The Ultimate Guide to Creating Effective Tenant Showing Guidebooks.” This piece would help brokers understand why a well-made guidebook can lead to better showing outcomes. By sharing how guidebooks lead to higher tenant engagement, brokers start to see
How important quality guidebooks are, and more importantly…
why having a tool like TenantGuides automate the creation of top-notch guidebooks could make their lives easier.
This kind of content builds trust. It shows that TenantGuides isn’t just here to sell—they genuinely understand the pain points and are interested in educating brokers to make them more successful.
BOFU: Converting Desire into Action
Finally, BOFU content is where the rubber meets the road. This is the content that turns a warm lead into a paying customer. Here, our audience knows about our business, understands what you do, and is trying to decide whether or not to buy.
BOFU content needs to focus on what makes our product the right solution and overcome the final hurdles:
Case studies that demonstrate past successes and ROI
Showcasing free trials, product demos, or detailed feature walkthroughs
Sales-oriented blog posts or landing pages that highlight key benefits
BOFU content is where the calls-to-action (CTA’s) live. That implies that you actually have to ask your audience to purchase your product or service! If we’ve done our job in the top two thirds of our content funnel, then the result of posting BOFU content should be an increase in demos, registrations, and sales.
TenantGuides Example:
At the bottom of the funnel, TenantGuides could create a case study on how “ABC Brokerage Increased Tenant Closing Rates by 30% with TenantGuides.” This case study would show potential customers how similar businesses achieved great results using their software. Additionally, a product demo video showing how easy it is to create a guidebook with TenantGuides might seal the deal for brokers who are considering buying.
BOFU content is often where you directly introduce pricing, testimonials, and other elements that help convert interest into commitment.
The Comprehensive Approach to Content
Each type of content—TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU—is crucial to a well-rounded content strategy. Relying on just one of these will not lead to consistent results. Only posting TOFU content, like memes or generalized blog posts, will attract an audience but won’t convert them into buyers. Focusing only on BOFU content might come off as too salesy and fail to engage potential customers who aren’t quite ready to make a decision yet. A smart content strategy leads people naturally from awareness to interest and finally to a decision to purchase.
Think of it as dating: you wouldn’t propose marriage on a first date. Instead, you’d build a relationship, showing our value over time before making our big ask. Content marketing works in much the same way—each stage is designed to strengthen our relationship with our audience, gradually building toward a decision.
Conclusion
Creating an effective content strategy means understanding where our audience is in their journey and meeting them there. TOFU content draws our audience in, MOFU content deepens the relationship, and BOFU content converts that relationship into a sale. When these pieces work together, you build a full-funnel approach that nurtures our leads and guides them seamlessly from awareness to purchase.
For TenantGuides, TOFU content grabs brokers’ attention, MOFU content educates and engages them, and BOFU content gives them the final push to invest in making their showings easier and more effective. By thinking about all three stages of our content funnel, you can create a strategy that helps drive not only awareness but real, long-term business growth.
Ready to make your content work for every stage of our customer’s journey? Start mapping out your TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU strategy today and watch your audience move smoothly down the funnel.
