The middle-of-the-funnel is where we fan the flame, fuel demand and shape interest using insights gathered from the top-of-funnel awareness phase. As prospects actively evaluate your brand, your goal is to provide warmth by helping them feel valued and supported.
Every effective middle-of-funnel tactic revolves around objection handling and confidence building. Branding is ultimately about trust, and the best way to build trust is by instilling confidence. By educating and empowering your audience, you transform interest into intent.
To build momentum in the middle of the funnel, it’s important to understand that the more complex your solution, the greater the need for strategic touchpoints and ongoing education to move prospects toward conversion. This means leveraging a mix of content, conversations, and personalized interactions to address objections, reinforce value, and guide decision-makers through the buying journey. Complexity isn’t a barrier —it’s an opportunity to engage, educate, and differentiate. As the great Marcus Aurelius once said: “The obstacle is the way”.
Among other middle of the funnel tactics, case studies, interactive demos, free trials, testimonials, and tailored email nurturing all ensure prospects feel informed and empowered to take the next step.
Why You Can’t Afford to Ignore Middle of the Funnel Marketing
People don’t want to be sold to, they want to feel like empowered explorers. To accelerate the middle of the funnel, you need to understand the buyer's journey and tap into a prospect’s instinct to chart new territory and discover solutions that truly meet their needs. Think of it as helping to channel their inner Lewis & Clark, navigating the landscape of software and innovation to find the perfect fit.
According to Gartner Research, B2B buyers “only spend 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers when considering a purchase”. The rest of their time is spent researching solutions independently online and offline and meeting with their buying group. The age of empowered buyers is upon us, and our marketing tactics need to change with the times.
Source: Gartner
In a recent survey of almost 1,000 B2B buyers, “43% of surveyed respondents agreed that they would prefer a rep-free buying experience. When cut by generation, 29% of Baby Boomers preferred to buy solutions without rep involvement, while remarkably over half of Millennials, 54%, expressed the same sentiment” (Harvard Business Review).
B2B buyers are increasingly signaling a strong preference for independent exploration, taking the time to research, compare, and educate their internal teams on potential solutions long before engaging with a sales rep. By the time they do reach out, they are already well-informed and narrowing down their options.
As a marketer, your role is to meet buyers where they are by providing high-quality middle-of-the-funnel content that supports their self-guided journey. This content should:
- Educate and Inform: Dive deep into your solution’s value, use cases, and differentiation.
- Address objections: Proactively counter concerns with case studies, testimonials, and comparison guides.
- Build confidence: Showcase success stories, expert insights, and interactive experiences like demos or ROI calculators.
The goal isn’t just to capture attention but to deftly guide buyers toward recognizing your brand as the standout solution—the one that best aligns with their needs, challenges, and aspirations.
How to Create Winning Mid Funnel Marketing Content
By empowering your prospects, middle of the funnel content plays a crucial role in the customer journey, turning interest into intent and increasing the likelihood of a final sale.
Here are five key middle of the funnel marketing tactics you must master.
1. Paid Media Marketing
Paid media and PPC ads are powerful mid funnel marketing tactics because they reach potential buyers right at the critical stage of their research journey. The most important benefit of paid search is control. You gain full visibility over the exact keywords people are searching for, pay only when they click on your advert, and gain real-time insights on the non-branded keyword insights that drive conversions and revenue.
Paid media accelerates and complements organic SEO efforts, creating a powerful, symbiotic relationship. While SEO builds long-term visibility and credibility, it takes time to gain traction. In the meantime, paid media campaigns deliver immediate results, driving targeted traffic while your organic presence grows.
Retargeting through paid media ensures your brand stays top-of-mind for visitors who initially found you through organic search but didn’t convert right away. By serving highly tailored ads to these warm prospects as they browse other sites, retargeting reinforces your messaging, nurtures interest, and encourages them to re-engage.
Paid media shortens the sales cycle by reminding prospects of the value you provide and prompting them to take action.
Businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on Google Ads.
(Google)
2. Email Marketing to Nurture Leads
Effective email marketing delivers personalized, targeted content that educates and engages. When your prospect requests more information, you have been gifted a golden opportunity to keep your brand top of mind and build incremental trust through valuable insights as part of the lead nurturing process. However, most companies miss the mark.
For some, email feels like a war of attrition, which leads to a myopic focus on quantity over quality. But like all good relationship building, success will not come solely from repetitive efforts. Truly remarkable middle of the funnel email content is smart, impactful, and positions your prospect as the hero in the boardroom.
If you use a Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) like HubSpot, you have a wealth of data at your fingertips to continually refine your strategy. Smart list segmentation is hugely powerful, as it allows you to tailor your message to appeal directly to your audience. By measuring and rewarding engagement, you can help nurture interest and drive the actions that matter most.
When someone gives you the permission to show up in their inbox, don’t squander it. Relish it.
Lead nurturing emails get up to 10x the response rate compared to standalone email blasts.
3. Events
Many marketers view events as a top of the funnel awareness play rather than a middle of the funnel accelerator. They fail to use events as a platform to deepen relationships, qualify leads, and move buyers closer to conversion. The middle of the funnel magic begins when you strategically leverage the information you collect and maximize the conversations you start.
Sharing customer success stories during events can provide tangible proof of your brand's value and help build trust with potential buyers. With carefully crafted, personalized follow-up sequences and nurture tracks, events shift from a noisy, overwhelming experience to a powerful way to stand out in a sea of sameness.
Planned and executed effectively, real-world events provide unparalleled opportunities to build personal connections that are difficult to replicate in a virtual setting.
How can you turn your event experience into a powerful accelerator for the middle of the funnel?
- Before the event: Build anticipation with personalized invitations and thought leadership.
- During the event: Capture intent signals (engagement, questions, topic interests) to score and segment your leads.
- After the event: Create segmented nurture tracks based on attendee engagement and fit.
- Sales & marketing alignment: Provide sales with clear lead insights to empower context-rich, warm follow-up conversations.
Events require huge upfront investments in time, materials, and energy. Make your booth interactive with live demos, gamification and hands-on experiences. Create memorable giveaways, rather than throwaway swag. Consider VIP experiences and invite-only dinners to draw key industry leaders who influence buying decisions - a powerful way to forge meaningful connections and strategically nurture your key contacts.
Make your brand unforgettable with the power of events.
The global events industry market was valued at $736.8 billion in 2021, and is projected to reach $2.5 trillion by 2035, growing at a CAGR of 6.8% from 2024 to 2035.
4. Product Academies
Product guides and academies are invaluable middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) content marketing assets because they address the critical phase where prospects evaluate solutions and consider their fit. High-value, easily consumed educational content showcases your expertise and builds trust, positioning your brand as a reliable, authoritative partner.
In-depth guides, tutorials, and structured learning resources show prospects how your product works and crucially how it can solve their problems. This empowers them to visualize the value your solution brings to their business. A top-tier product academy like HubSpot Academy includes courses and implementation guides, enabling users to self-educate while building confidence in their product. Supported by a robust and comprehensive knowledge base, this engagement fosters loyalty before the sale, creating a more qualified and invested lead. Some great examples of knowledge bases include HubSpot, Slack, Apple, and Amplitude.
Ultimately, product academies serve the new empowered B2B buyer by offering an engaging way to experience the product in action while gaining valuable insights throughout their exploration.
5. Pricing Calculators
While prospects are narrowing down their options in the consideration phase, mid funnel content like a pricing calculator is an interactive way to show the value of your product and the potential return on investment. Customizing pricing estimates based on specific inputs and personalizing the outputs makes your offering feel perfectly tailored to the prospective buyer.
Crucially, pricing calculators provide transparency. They introduce clarity and set clear expectations, encourage self-education instead of relying on a sales pitch. They show confidence in your offering and build trust, gently guiding your prospects toward an informed decision.
Pricing calculators can also double as lead generation tools, as prospects who use them are often high-intent buyers. This enables your sales team to follow up and further nurture the lead toward conversion.
If you want to meet empowered buyers where they are in their buying journey, consider adding a pricing calculator to your website. Transparency builds trust. Don’t make people work for it.
Within the next 5 years, I predict over 90% of all service-based businesses will have some type of real-time pricing estimator on their website.
Measuring Success in MOFU Marketing
Measuring the success of MOFU marketing requires a strategic approach with a focus on tracking key metrics and KPIs. Some key metrics to track include:
- Engagement metrics: These metrics measure how engaged potential customers are with the content, including metrics such as time on page, bounce rate, and social shares.
- Conversion metrics: These metrics measure the number of potential customers who convert into leads or customers, including metrics such as form submissions, phone calls, and sales.
- Lead nurturing metrics: These metrics measure the effectiveness of lead nurturing campaigns, including metrics such as email open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
By tracking these metrics, marketers can gain a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of their MOFU marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions to optimize their strategy.
Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) Content Examples
For every middle-of-funnel tactic we’ve covered, we’ve curated a piece of middle of funnel marketing content that stands out like a lighthouse in a storm.
Click on the content carousel below and feast your eyes upon them. If you want to shorten your sales cycle at the middle of the funnel, we're here to help.
Realizeit Learning Technologies Booth
HB Live Budget Event Calculator
HubSpot Academy
Ever Wonder Monthly Newsletter
Ignite Curiosity at the Top of the Funnel to Shorten the Sales Cycle
by Conor Ebbs
< 1 min read
B2B Lead Nurturing: The Power of Segmentation & Full-Funnel Activation
by Conor Ebbs
< 1 min read