If you’re in the marketing industry, you’re likely familiar with the acronyms TOF, MOF, and BOF. If you aren’t, we’re here to break down the meaning of these acronyms and define which type of content works best in each stage of a marketing funnel. TOF refers to the top of the funnel, MOF refers to the middle of the funnel, and BOF refers to the bottom of the funnel. When you apply these principles we’ll outline today, you’ll have the blueprint for a fully functioning funnel that warms up your audience at the top of the funnel and brings them down through an online sales process which will produce highly qualified leads at the bottom of the funnel.
What is this marketing “funnel”?
Think of the funnel as the discovery process your customer takes along the path to buying. The stages they go through include awareness, consideration, and finally, making the decision. As a marketer, you need to create content and advertisements that reach them at each stage of their decision-making process and have appropriate retargeting set up that brings them through this funnel.
TOF – Top of the Funnel
Top of the funnel will be where you’ll want a larger audience, as your audience will get smaller as they move down to the bottom of the funnel and you’ll want to drive as many conversions through the funnel as possible. Content that works great for the top of the funnel could include a video that allows your audience to self-segment. What we mean by this is if someone watches a video on “How to Claim a Business Page” 75% of the way through, they’re likely interested in the topic. You can compare this audience to those who only watched for 3 seconds or 10%, which would be a pretty disinterested audience. The cool thing about Facebook Advertising is that you can now take the audience who watched a certain percentage of your video and then retarget a different set of ads to them. Gamification also works great at the top of the funnel stage, especially in dryer industries. For example, If you’re a financial planner, you could put together a quiz with a built-in calculator that predicts how much they could have in a 401K by the time they retire. They fill in a few fields and just like that, they become a lead you can follow up with or retarget that’s interested in building their 401K.
MOF – Middle of the Funnel
Middle of the funnel is the consideration phase. Keep in mind that conversions can happen anytime throughout the funnel, but this is where you should start targeting warm and highly interested audiences. The type of content that usually does well at this stage in the funnel can include a conversion campaign where you send those who are interested in your product to a landing page funnel with a pixel to track the traffic throughout it. The pixel on this landing page is key, as it tracks who became a lead and who did not. This information is incredibly important as you create the bottom of the funnel, which will tie up some of these loose ends.
BOF – Bottom of the Funnel
The bottom of the funnel is where you’ll retarget highly interested audiences who did not convert to become leads earlier. It’s important to switch up the offer/creative in these ads, since seeing the same ad over and over again will inevitably irritate your customer and lead to low conversion rates. Often, a direct response messenger ad works well with this type of audience.
A Few Final Tips
While we’ve shared some types of content and ads that work best in each stage of the funnel, there is not one “best practice” to follow. Why? Because each industry and each audience responds so differently. It’s important to test several different creatives, offers, and personas throughout the Facebook Ad process to fully optimize a campaign and get the lowest cost-per-acquisition with quality leads. We currently have a client who’s getting killer leads at a cheap cost through messenger, while another one does the best with landing pages. As you get more familiar with Facebook Ads and testing, you’ll find where your niche does the best.
Need Some Help?
If you’re not sure where or how to start with your digital advertising, our experts can help you. To schedule a consultation with one of them, feel free to give us a call at 435-264-1819.