The top of the funnel is the spark that lights the fire of curiosity about your brand. It's where prospects experience the excitement of possibility and lean in closer.
It’s the bold, arresting social post that makes you freeze in your feed; the tantalizing video that leaves you craving more. Effective top of the funnel tactics transform the spark into a steady flame of interest, guiding your prospects further into the funnel toward your brand.
To accelerate sales from the outset, you need to adopt the mantra: right person, right message, right time. Top of the funnel content should align with your Ideal Customer Profile and buyer personas, and focus on quality over quantity. Getting the top of the funnel right triggers the next two dominoes—middle and bottom—to fall in sequence.
When you activate awareness and curiosity, your top of the funnel marketing acts like a signal fire, strategically placed to send a clear, unmistakable message to your audience. Just as ancient civilizations lit fires to communicate over long distances, your marketing efforts need to attract the right audience at the right time to be effective. This is where content marketing comes into play, creating and distributing valuable information that engages your target audience.
High-performing top of the funnel marketing sends a clear signal to the market that your brand is trustworthy, credible and deserving of attention and curiosity. It sets the stage for true middle of the funnel nurturing by burying your brand in your prospect’s subconscious mind. Integrating top-of-funnel content within a content marketing strategy is essential for enhancing brand visibility and driving conversions.
Modern digital marketing is attribution-obsessed, and many marketers are under pressure from Executives to leapfrog the top of the funnel and go directly to generating demand and high-quality leads, without first creating mental availability for their brand.
This can be a costly mistake, as buyers typically consider only 2-3 brands when going to market for B2B products and services. You can’t wave a magic marketing wand and generate demand from nothing. At best, you can position your brand in a consideration set as early as possible, and channel existing demand for your product or service.
Ultimately, recognizable brands are more likely to be shortlisted by future buyers, enhancing the returns on your top of the funnel marketing. If you fail to invest in the top of the funnel, you risk impacting your future pipeline and response rates. If you want to shorten the sales cycle and close deals faster, don’t make the mistake of ignoring awareness and lighting signal fires.
(Better, Bolder B2B Branding: How To Unlock The Biggest Opportunity In B2B)Branding impacts the 95% of the market who make up next year’s revenue pipeline.
Now you know why you need to invest in top of the funnel content to attract and engage your audience, how do you do it?
By educating prospects early, top of the funnel content builds trust before your prospects consider competitors, increasing the likelihood of a final sale.
Here are five essential top of the funnel marketing tactics that you can’t ignore.
Investing in search engine optimization (SEO) is an iterative process of curating your content to control the conversation and shape the narrative based on your value propositions. The rise of AI chatbots does not reduce the importance of SEO in driving targeted traffic to your website. The fundamental logic of value propositions informing keywords and underpinning your content strategy remains sound. While AI is making SEO more efficient and user-centric, prioritizing user intent over simple keyword matching, the human element remains hugely important. AI creates overwhelming noise, and Google is now rewarding unique perspectives.
Algorithms like Google’s RankBrain and BERT focus on context and meaning, making high-quality, relevant content more important than ever. Human expertise remains crucial under Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). Personalization and user experience now play a larger role, as AI tailors search results based on user behavior, increasing the importance of engagement and relevance. The rise of voice search also means SEO strategies must adapt to conversational, long-tail keywords.
Marketing teams play a crucial role in executing SEO strategies by understanding customer needs and tailoring content to enhance engagement and relevance. SEO remains a crucial top of the funnel marketing strategy, where balancing AI efficiency with human creativity is key to staying ahead in search rankings.
SEO drives 1,000%+ more traffic than organic social media.
High-quality, relevant content is the foundation of any high-performing SEO strategy. Search engines reward websites that consistently publish valuable content. Blog posts provide opportunities to target keywords, answer user queries, and earn backlinks. This has the triple win of increasing organic traffic, improving website authority—remember Google’s EEAT guidelines - and increasing top of the funnel brand awareness.
High-value blogs educate, inform, and build trust with your prospects. They also provide content that can be repurposed to power your complementary marketing tactics. By transforming well-crafted blog posts into social snippets, downloadable resources, or webinar topics, you can extend their reach and impact. Consistently providing valuable insights helps position your brand as the leading resource in its space, paving the way for deeper brand engagement by nurturing qualified leads through high-value content.
More than 55% of bloggers say their blog drives some marketing results. And 26% say their blog drives strong results.
Social platforms have been mainstream for decades, making them highly competitive and noisy. To succeed, brands must go beyond basic engagement to strategically navigate algorithms and innovate to maximize reach and cost-effective impressions. This requires a deeper, reflective approach rather than just showing up and hoping that prospects will notice you.
To build brand awareness on social media, begin with a clear, consistent brand voice that resonates with your audience and stands out amidst the clutter. Prioritize meaningful engagement over high-frequency posts, listen to your followers and respond authentically.
Leverage analytics to understand what content truly sticks, and continually refine your strategy. Explore creative ways to foster community and build lasting relationships. Balance consistency with creativity, and aim to add value, not volume.
75% of internet users use social media to research product offerings by brands.
Video marketing is an incredibly effective top-of-the-funnel strategy, unmatched in capturing attention and engaging prospects through dynamic, easily consumable content. By creating informative, entertaining videos that address your audience’s pain points or introduce your brand, you boost awareness, increase reach, and build trust. Audiences in 2024 spend an average of 17 hours watching videos online. Visually arresting videos can make them freeze in their feed and bury your brand in their subconscious.
YouTube is the second most visited website globally, with over 2 billion logged-in monthly users. Since Google owns YouTube, videos hosted there are more likely to rank well in search engine results, providing you with an additional opportunity to expand awareness. Over 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute! This gives brands the ability to tap into a vast library of content while benefiting from YouTube’s sophisticated algorithms that recommend videos to users. Over 90% of people say they discover new brands on YouTube. Is your brand primed for discovery?
Additionally, short-form video content is becoming more popular on social media platforms, where users spend increasing amounts of time on bite-sized videos. By creating quick, attention-grabbing videos, you capture potential customers’ interest early in their buyer’s journey. This combination of engaging content, effective SEO opportunities, and high consumer preference makes video marketing an undeniably powerful top-of-the-funnel marketing strategy.
83% of video marketers say that video helps them generate leads.
People do business with people. An effective way to drive real connection with your brand early in the buyer journey is running high-quality, high-value webinars—not sales-y pitches. In a marketing ecosystem flooded with AI-generated content, well-executed webinars provide real-time engagement with real people, offering content that both educates and empowers your prospects.
By introducing the personalities behind your brand, you create connections early and leave a lasting impression. Webinars provide the spark that inspires further action. They raise top of the funnel brand awareness and pave the way for middle of the funnel lead nurturing. Additionally, by sharing the webinar recording on YouTube, you combine TOFU tactics for the win! Webinars can also help convert marketing qualified leads into sales qualified leads by providing deeper insights and personalized interactions.
73% of B2B marketers hail webinars as the golden ticket for generating high-quality leads.
(Hubilo)
For every top of the funnel tactic we have discussed, we have collated a piece of content that cuts through marketing noise like a Samurai sword.
Click on the content carousel below and feast your eyes upon them. If you want to shorten your sales cycle at the top of the funnel, we're here to help.