Marketing funnels can sound more complicated than they need to be. There are ultra-complex ten-tiered diagrams, different names for different stages and plenty of marketing jargon thrown into the mix.
But the basic idea is relatively straightforward: understanding what somebody needs from your marketing as they move from first discovering your brand towards making a purchase.
There are many different forms of the marketing funnel, from detailed diagrams with multiple stages to much simpler top-to-bottom funnels. In this blog, we’re going to focus on the three core phases that make up the spine of a traditional marketing funnel: TOFU, MOFU and BOFU.
We’ll look at what each stage means, the type of content that can work at each point and how you can encourage people to continue their journey with your brand.
One thing to remember before we start: customer journeys aren’t always neat and linear. Someone might discover you on social media, leave, find you again through search, read several pieces of content, compare competitors and then return weeks later. The funnel is a useful way to think about what somebody needs at different stages of that journey, rather than a rule saying everybody must move from A to B to C in exactly the same way.
TL;DR
A marketing funnel helps you understand what potential customers need as they move from first becoming aware of your business towards making a purchase.
The three core stages are:
- TOFU – Top of Funnel / Awareness: Help the right people discover your brand and understand the problem, need or opportunity.
- MOFU – Middle of Funnel / Consideration: Help interested prospects explore their options, understand possible solutions and decide what could work for them.
- BOFU – Bottom of Funnel / Conversion: Give people the information, proof and confidence they need to make a decision and take action.
The important thing is that your content, message and call to action should reflect where somebody is in their journey. A person discovering your business for the first time is unlikely to need the same information as somebody comparing suppliers and deciding whether to buy.
And although TOFU, MOFU and BOFU are useful labels, people won’t always progress through them in a perfectly straight line.
TOFU: Top of the funnel
We’d usually call TOFU the awareness stage.
People enter the top of the marketing funnel by becoming aware of your brand, product, service or expertise. This might happen because they’ve found a useful whitepaper, infographic or playbook that explains a problem they’re experiencing and offers helpful information. It could equally come from social media content, a blog post, YouTube video, podcast, search result or another piece of marketing that reaches a new audience.
At this point, an immediate sale usually isn’t the primary goal.
You’re trying to expand awareness and give the right people a reason to pay attention to you. That’s why it’s important to identify your target audience before creating content and to think carefully about what will actually be useful or interesting to them.
There’s little value in creating a brilliant guide if it’s brilliant for somebody who is never likely to need what you offer.
Moving people from TOFU to MOFU
Once you’ve got somebody’s attention, you need to make it easy for them to continue their journey with you.
That means providing a logical next step rather than immediately leaping from “here’s something useful” to “buy from us”.
If you’re introducing a product through social media, for example, you might highlight the features most relevant to that audience and provide a clear route to learn more.
If somebody has found you through an educational article or guide, the next step might be a more detailed resource, another relevant blog, an email sign-up, a webinar or something else that helps them explore the subject further.
The exact next step will depend on your audience and what you’re selling. The important part is making sure there is a next step and that it makes sense from the reader’s perspective.
MOFU: Middle of the funnel
We often describe MOFU as the engagement stage of the marketing funnel because the person has already interacted with your brand in some way. You may also hear it called the consideration or interest stage.
While the goal here is still education to a degree, you can start to be more direct about possible solutions because you’re dealing with somebody who has demonstrated more interest in the subject.
You’re still providing value, but now you’re helping them understand their options.
That could mean a buying guide, webinar, whitepaper, infographic, comparison piece, case study, product explainer or detailed FAQ. The right format depends on what questions somebody is likely to have before they’re ready to make a decision.
This is also the stage where you can start introducing your own brand and offering more clearly, but there’s a balance.
Hyping up your business and telling somebody you’re obviously the best option isn’t particularly helpful if they haven’t reached that conclusion themselves. MOFU content should make it easier for somebody to evaluate the problem, understand the choices available and recognise what a good solution needs to look like.
If your product or service genuinely fits those needs, the connection to your business should then feel natural rather than forced.
Relevance becomes increasingly important
At TOFU, somebody may simply be learning about a subject. By MOFU, they’ve shown a greater degree of interest, so the questions you’re answering need to become more specific.
What do they need to compare?
What concerns might prevent them from moving forward?
Which features or benefits actually matter to them?
What evidence could help them understand whether one approach is better suited to their situation than another?
The better you understand those questions, the easier it becomes to create MOFU content that genuinely helps people progress.
BOFU: Bottom of the funnel
By the time somebody reaches BOFU, they usually have a much clearer understanding of what they’re looking for.
This is the conversion stage, and it’s where your marketing can become more direct.
You can showcase the product or service, discuss pricing, explain how the process works, demonstrate the solution, share relevant case studies and testimonials, or provide a straightforward route to speak with somebody.
But BOFU doesn’t mean somebody suddenly needs no convincing.
In many buying journeys, this is where questions around price, trust, risk, implementation and proof become particularly important. A potential customer may understand their problem and know the type of solution they want but still be deciding who they should choose.
Your job isn’t simply to push harder because they’ve reached the bottom of the funnel. It’s to remove unnecessary uncertainty and make the next step easy.
Depending on the business, useful BOFU content could include:
- Pricing or package information.
- Product or service pages.
- Demonstrations and consultations.
- Case studies and customer stories.
- Testimonials and reviews.
- Detailed FAQs.
- Implementation or onboarding information.
- Proposals and sales conversations.
Often, this is where the sales department comes in.
Marketing and sales need to connect
That sales handover shouldn’t be an afterthought.
Marketing and sales should ideally have a shared understanding of what a useful lead looks like, what somebody has already engaged with and when a prospect is ready for more direct follow-up.
If marketing has spent weeks educating and nurturing somebody only for sales to approach them as if they’ve never heard of the company before, the experience quickly becomes disjointed.
Likewise, information from sales can help marketing understand which prospects are progressing, what questions they’re asking and where potential opportunities are getting stuck.
That’s why our approach to lead generation and campaign management looks beyond simply generating a lead. The audience, campaign, landing experience, lead qualification and sales handover all need to support the same commercial goal.
TOFU vs MOFU vs BOFU at a glance
| Funnel stage | What your audience needs | Your marketing job | Example content | Useful measures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TOFU | Awareness and understanding | Get discovered and create relevance | Blogs, social content, videos, podcasts, guides and infographics | Relevant reach, engagement and website traffic |
| MOFU | Help evaluating options | Educate, nurture and build consideration | Buying guides, webinars, comparisons, whitepapers and case studies | Returning visitors, content engagement, leads and enquiries |
| BOFU | Confidence to make a decision | Remove friction and support conversion | Pricing, demos, testimonials, service pages, proposals and case studies | Qualified leads, meetings, opportunities and sales |
The exact content and metrics will depend on your business, but the underlying principle stays the same: give people information that makes sense for where they are in the journey.
How do you know which funnel stage somebody is in?
You won’t always know for certain, and that’s OK.
Marketing behaviour can give you clues.
Someone reading a broad educational blog for the first time may be at the top of the funnel. Somebody returning to the website, attending a webinar or downloading a more detailed guide may be showing stronger consideration signals. A person repeatedly looking at service pages, viewing pricing, requesting a demonstration or contacting your sales team is giving you much stronger bottom-of-funnel intent.
But those signals need to be interpreted in the context of your own business.
A pricing-page view could be extremely significant for one company and relatively meaningless for another. That’s why it’s useful to decide in advance what different levels of engagement mean to you.
What qualifies somebody as a marketing lead?
When would you consider them ready for sales?
What actions suggest they’re moving closer to a purchase?
Being clear about those definitions makes it much easier to measure how effectively your marketing is moving people through the funnel.
What happens after BOFU?
Some marketing models include additional stages after purchase, covering customer nurturing, retention, loyalty and advocacy.
We’re keeping things simple here and focusing mainly on the three stages leading towards conversion, but don’t mistake the purchase for the end of the customer journey.
Once somebody becomes a customer, what happens next can affect whether they buy again, expand their relationship with you, recommend the business to somebody else or disappear altogether.
Follow-up communication, useful content, good customer service, loyalty initiatives and ongoing relationship management can all play a part.
If you want to explore that side of the journey in more detail, our guide to the Customer Loyalty Ladder looks at how relationships can develop from initial prospects right through to loyal advocates.
Marketing funnel FAQs
What are TOFU, MOFU and BOFU?
TOFU, MOFU and BOFU stand for Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel and Bottom of Funnel.
TOFU generally focuses on awareness, MOFU on consideration and engagement, and BOFU on conversion.
They are a simple way of grouping potential customers according to where they are in their journey and thinking about the type of marketing information they need at each point.
Is a marketing funnel the same as a customer journey?
Not quite.
A marketing funnel groups people into broad stages based on how close they are to a decision. A customer journey looks more closely at the different interactions and experiences somebody has with your business along the way.
The two are closely connected, but a real customer journey is rarely as neat as a funnel diagram. People can move backwards, skip stages or interact with several different channels before making a decision.
What content works at each stage of the marketing funnel?
At TOFU, educational and awareness-led content such as blogs, videos, podcasts, guides and social content can help new audiences discover you.
At MOFU, more detailed resources such as comparisons, buying guides, webinars and case studies can help prospects evaluate their options.
At BOFU, people are usually looking for more specific information about your solution, so pricing, demonstrations, testimonials, service information and sales conversations become more relevant.
The important thing is to choose content around what your audience needs rather than assuming a particular format automatically belongs at one stage.
How do you move someone from TOFU to MOFU?
Give them a logical reason to continue engaging.
That could be another relevant article, a more detailed guide, a webinar, an email subscription or a useful resource that answers the next question they’re likely to have.
The next step should feel like a natural continuation of what brought them to you in the first place rather than an immediate sales pitch.
How do you move someone from MOFU to BOFU?
MOFU prospects need help moving from understanding their options to feeling confident about a particular solution.
Useful content can include case studies, comparisons, demonstrations, practical explanations and proof that helps remove concerns or answer more detailed questions.
Clear calls to action are important too. Once somebody is showing stronger intent, make it obvious how they can find more information, request a demonstration, ask a question or speak to sales.
Does the marketing funnel end after a purchase?
It doesn’t have to.
The traditional TOFU, MOFU and BOFU model focuses on the journey towards conversion, but many businesses extend the funnel into retention, loyalty and advocacy.
That recognises that marketing can continue after somebody becomes a customer, helping maintain the relationship and creating opportunities for repeat business and recommendations.
How do you measure a marketing funnel?
Start by deciding what success looks like at each stage.
TOFU measurement might focus on relevant reach, traffic and engagement. At MOFU, you may care more about returning visitors, resource downloads, enquiries or other signs of increased interest. At BOFU, qualified leads, meetings, opportunities and sales are likely to become much more important.
Don’t look at each number in isolation. The real question is whether people are moving through the journey and ultimately taking the actions that matter to the business.
The right message depends on where your audience is
The marketing funnel doesn’t need to be complicated.
At its heart, it’s about recognising that somebody discovering your business for the first time probably needs something different from somebody actively deciding whether to buy from you.
Understand where they are, give them information that genuinely helps and make the next step clear.
The strongest campaigns also don’t treat TOFU, MOFU and BOFU as three disconnected pieces of marketing. Your audience, message, content, channels, landing pages, follow-up and sales activity need to feel like parts of the same journey.
Get that right and your marketing isn’t simply attracting attention. It’s helping the right people keep moving.
Ready to put the marketing funnel into practice?
Understanding TOFU, MOFU and BOFU is one thing. The next step is creating marketing activity that attracts the right people and gives them a reason to continue their journey.
Read our guide to effective lead generation to see how audience targeting, content and campaign activity can work together to build a stronger pipeline.
