TOFU, MOFU and BOFU – this has nothing to do with curdled soya milk, yet everything to do with attracting visitors, capturing leads and nurturing them with highly targeted communications and offers. Read our basic introduction to the three-tiered Inbound Marketing funnel and learn how it shapes online marketing campaigns. 

Why a funnel?

Most marketing and sales people will have come across a funnel visualisation of some kind. There are different interpretations – especially between marketing and sales methodologies – but generally it describes a progression from having lots of potential customers at the top of the funnel, to ending up with far fewer, yet more highly qualified, sales prospects and customers at the bottom.

The further along the marketing and sales processes we go, the fewer people we deal with. However, each tier gives us with more sales intelligence and further qualifies those individuals.

Explain the three tiers, please? 

In Inbound Marketing there are three general tiers, though each can of course be divided up further. For the sake of this beginners’ guide, let’s stick with three:

• Top of Funnel (TOFU) – In online marketing terms, the top of our funnel consists of website visitors that have been attracted to the website by our social media, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM / PPC) and content creation activities. TOFU offers and content – ebooks, white papers, videos, webinars and introductory offers – are very general, have mass appeal and give us shareable material we can spread on social media, announce on our blogs and create Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads for. 

• Middle of Funnel (MOFU) – We ask visitors to fill in a form and provide their contact details in exchange for a resource or offer, and those that do download or sign-up become our leads. We might also provide new MOFU offers and resources to further qualify and filter visitors – these offers would be more specific to our business activities, such as case studies, product reviews, buyers’ guides and testimonials, and would serve to explain our services and build brand and customer loyalty.

• Bottom of Funnel (BOFU) – Quite simply, we use automated email marketing to stay engaged with our growing lead database and move, or “nurture”, individuals towards a final sales offer, such as a free consultation, extended trial or discounted price. Understanding how and why a person became a lead, plus other form data, allows us to send highly focused, and therefore more effective, communications. 

How does the funnel shape our campaigns? 

It’s all about the journey of an individual from making first contact through to securing a sale. 

Let’s look at one example of a TOFU/MOFU/BOFU compliant campaign. For this example, imagine that we are a school wishing to increase annual enrolment numbers: 

• TOFU – We seek to build a large social media community where we share our weekly blog articles, many of which link to an offer such as an education white paper or video of life at our school. All our articles are written for search engine visibility, so we can be found easily when people search for certain things. We also try to share our content with other websites, blogs and write regular guest blogs too, all with links to our landing page offers. 

• MOFU – Our landing pages have pictures of the school and wording to make our offers and resources attractive, so we can generate more leads. Our second-tier MOFU offers are more specific to the school – a brochure pack, for example. At this stage we know that anyone that takes up these offers are highly qualified and ready to be nurtured.

• BOFU – We create lead nurturing emails to keep leads engaged, with interesting blog articles, other offers and a final sales offer, such as a private tour and chance to meet students and staff.

Read more about how Inbound Marketing actually helped one school client of ours double its traffic in just four months, establish an active social media community, and achieve a high lead generation rate on its landing pages with one in five visitors converting – read Inbound Marketing Case Study: Swiss International School.

If you’ve recently launched a company blog, or are discussing it within your marketing department, one of the hardest aspects is generating interesting and valuable blog topics on a regular basis. Here are five quick tips that will help your blogging team promote your business online. 

1. Define a content strategy with customer personas 

This should be the first thing your company does before even thinking about actual, concrete blog topics. Your content strategy will also include ebooks, white papers and reports, webinars, videos and other content items that you’ll host on your website. It will define how often you blog, where you share the content, and, most importantly who your audience is.

Create at least three customer personas – we’ve explained how to do that here, and give you some examples here. Brainstorming topic ideas will be many times easier and more productive when you can consider your customers’ pain points, challenges, personalities, and other relevant characteristics.

2. Divide blogs by structure and format 

As part of your content strategy, establish the kinds of blog articles you want to provide for your audience based on their personas.

Blog articles come in many varieties, and you should ensure an even mix of your chosen types:

• List – Typically round-ups of statistics, but anything with a bulleted list. These are easily digestible and usually quick to produce.
• News – An article announcing the latest news from your company or industry, relevant to your business activities and audience.
• Interview or Q&A – Find someone interesting and ask them some questions. This is great content that’s easy to produce, and most people will be happy to talk to you in exchange for a little promotion.
• Opinion – These work best when they’re written by someone who can best represent your company and give it a human face and voice. 
• Top Tips – An article just like this. Short, simple, actionable advice is very popular.
• In-depth – Something more journalistic in style with further research, interview quotes, and references, all revealing something of importance to your readers. 

If you have a diverse audience, you’ll find that some are more versed in what you’re writing about than others. Be sure to provide introductory, intermediate and advanced blog content and label it accordingly. We tag our blog articles according to these same skill categories. 

4. Turn one idea into many

When a great idea surfaces, don’t immediately write it up – that could be a wasted opportunity. Instead, take a moment to run it through your content strategy and specifically the three points above.

Can you create one main article with two or three shorter, supporting articles? For example, would this article benefit from something more in-depth, or a Q&A from a well-known blogger on how they themselves brainstorm?

Expand one idea into many and spread them out across your schedule or editorial calendar.

5. Create a mind map of your customers’ pain points

This is one that has worked very well for us. Sit down with the people within your company who regularly interact with your customers – most likely your sales team.

Now, write down all the questions you’re normally faced with when approaching potential customers. Each pain point will generate multiple blog topics that can be addressed in many different ways.

We use MindNode Pro, but there are many other similar mand mapping applications available such as MindMeister and XMind. They vary in features provided and complexity, but basically allow you to create a visual representation or map of pretty much any thought process. In this example, you want to start with your customer personas in the centre or at the beginning of your map, then branch out into the questions that illustrate their challenges and reservations, followed by relevant blog topics on the final level of your map. You should end up with a map that looks like a tree of words and ideas.

How can companies double their email newsletter click-through rates, enhance their brand visibility and strengthen relationships with their subscribers, contacts and partners? Read how Versio2 helped one client do exactly that, and find out how you can do the same.

Email newsletters have been around for a long time, but remain a great way to communicate the latest company news and stay in touch with leads, subscribers and partners. 

Their ubiquitous nature and popularity is also their downfall, but therein lies the challenge: how can you keep your newsletter fresh, interesting and something your subscribers regularly look forward to? How can you maintain and hopefully increase your open rates?

Let's first discuss some practical tips when creating newsletters, before we introduce to you a case study from a recent project of ours.

Practical tips for your newsletter design

• Through experience, we’ve found that a subject line with buzzwords relevant to our audience produces better open rates. This matches the advice from MailChimp, a popular newsletter platform: “When it comes to email marketing, the best subject lines tell what’s inside, and the worst subject lines sell what’s inside.”

• Your subject line should grab attention while avoiding anything too sensational – an important consideration in the more conservative European market. Avoid anything too “sales-speak”, instead think creatively. Try asking a question that tells a subscriber that you’re going to give them valuable information.

• Knowing what your audiences’ main pain-points are will help you brainstorm newsletter themes and subject lines. Imagine you’re a subscriber who sees your email – what would make you want to open it? Send test emails to your colleagues and of course yourself, and see how it works in your inbox.

• It’s important to get the header right because it’s the first thing most recipients will see upon opening the email. Make the right first impression – modern, well designed, professional – then add in your newsletter character, branding and so on. Be consistent from the start; your header will give your newsletter a recognisable identity and branding. 

• Include a friendly image and a short introduction from someone that best represents your organisation. A managing director, CEO or other principle figure can give your newsletter the human touch.

• Use icons, a strong slogan or short text in your header to convey a sense of what your subscribers are about to read. Colours and fonts should be consistent with the overall look, feel and layout.

• Headings are important for breaking up your text and allowing readers to get a quick snapshot of your content. Headings allow readers to jump to the text that interests them, and lets you draw attention to important items.

• Similarly, use lots of strong images and visual elements to break up blocks of text and make for a more engaging, interesting experience.

• More people are reading emails on their smartphones, and statistics show it's one of the leading uses of the internet "on the go". Make sure your newsletter design is mobile-friendly, or pick a responsive template that can change its layout automatically depending on screen size.

Thinking strategically: how to drive clicks, traffic and generate leads

• Your newsletter design is just one aspect of your actual newsletter strategy. Remember this is a form of email marketing, so be clear of your objectives. Do you only want to keep people updated, or do you want to drive traffic and capture leads?

• If you want to drive traffic, you need to give people a reason to click and multiple opportunities to do so. Call-to-Actions (CTAs) in the form of banners and text links are hugely important for informing readers of your offers and resources, and directing them to your landing pages where you’ll have lead capture forms.

• Your CTAs should be a mix of graphics and text. Banners, headers and buttons make up some of visual elements, while text links like “Read more” and “Download now” will provide a logical next step at the end of your content items. 

• Include teasers for blog articles hosted on your website, along with interesting thumbnails. These should encourage readers to read more by visiting your blog for valuable information. You can then introduce CTAs for your offers or resources within your blog articles.

• Advanced content such as white papers work very well on newsletters, and give you something to host on a landing page behind a web form. Your subscribers should understand that they are supplying their details again in exchange for a valuable piece of content, as well as agreeing to further communications relevant to your offer. 

Case study: design and content really does generate leads

One client of ours – a Swiss technology provider – asked Versio2 to re-design its newsletter to improve click-throughs, brand visibility in its German and French-speaking key markets, and bolster lead generation.

We not only came with a new design, but a strategy based on the principles above – strong, engaging visuals and valuable content to drive traffic to a landing page.

As a result, newsletter figures in the month following the launch of its new-look newsletter were far in excess of the client’s goal of a 10% increases in click-throughs. Rises of 162% and 170% for the French and German-language newsletters, respectively, surpassed expectations. The following chart shows the German-speaking results only:

Read about the strategy in more detail and its results in Case Study: Newsletter Re-Design for More Leads. If you would like to speak to Versio2 about redesigning your newsletter and defining a new content strategy for your company, please take a moment to read about our Newsletter Design & Campaign Starter Offer »