TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU: the best SaaS content marketing funnel explained
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Creating content for your SaaS (software as a service) business from scratch can be overwhelming. You need a few things to allocate your sales and marketing efforts effectively.
First, a clearly defined audience. Then, a solid understanding of what's special about your SaaS product. And finally, you need to know how to showcase it on socials to get qualified leads and raise your brand awareness.
Whether you decide to create content for your own personal brand or your company account on social media, the best way to do it is to implement a content marketing funnel into your strategy.
TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU: social media content funnel components
TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU are acronyms for the stages of the marketing funnel. They describe the customer's journey towards making a purchase.
Each social media content piece takes its own place in this journey:
TOFU (Top of the Funnel)
This content generates interest and grabs the attention of potential customers. It includes educational content, industry trends, or thought leadership pieces that resonate with your target audience and spark their interest in your brand or product.
MOFU (Middle of the Funnel)
This content nurtures potential customers and leads them toward a sale. It’s more specific content tied to features, benefits, and problems your service or product solves. You can also use customer success stories, case studies, blogs, or resource guides to build trust and confidence in your solution.
BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel)
BOFU content focuses on converting potential customers into existing customers. It comes down to special offers, demos, free trials, or direct messaging to answer any remaining questions or concerns and encourage the final purchase decision.
Benefits of using TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU framework for your SaaS marketing funnel
Using the TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU framework for social media content creation offers several benefits.
Clear customer journey mapping
Each marketing funnel stage corresponds to a specific phase in the customer's journey. This allows for targeted content creation that addresses the customer's needs at each phase, from awareness to consideration and decision-making.
Balanced content marketing strategy
This content marketing strategy ensures a balance between educational content (TOFU), product-specific content (MOFU), and conversion-focused content (BOFU). This balance prevents overemphasizing promotional content and ensures your audience receives valuable content at every stage.
Improved audience engagement
By providing content that resonates with the audience's needs at each stage of their journey, you increase the chances of engagement, whether through likes, shares, comments, direct inquiries, or overall marketing efforts.
Increased conversion rates
The TOFU, MOFU, BOFU framework guides potential customers through each stage of the marketing funnel, nurturing them from being mere prospects to becoming actual customers. This step-by-step nurturing process, supported by tailored content, can boost conversion rates and lower customer acquisition costs.
Effective resource allocation
Knowing what type of content to produce at each stage allows for more effective use of resources. You can allocate your time, effort, and money strategically based on the type of content needed for each stage, creating a successful SaaS marketing funnel.
The key to successful content marketing efforts is understanding your audience and delivering quality content at the right time.
What's the perfect % split of TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU content in the B2B SaaS content funnel?
The ideal content distribution for a B2B SaaS company would be 50% TOFU, 30% MOFU, and 20% BOFU. This ratio balances generating interest, nurturing leads, and converting them into existing customers. But it's not always true for every company.
Consider different scenarios:
- If you're new to the market, prioritize generating awareness for your product over selling your content. If you do the opposite, nobody will engage with your content, the algorithm will penalize you, making your content less visible in the future.
- If you have followers for your personal or business account and need conversions, push for MOFU and BOFU content—show testimonials and case studies, and share your new features and updates.
- If you plan a product launch, create a separate marketing strategy for the big event that focuses on getting people to support you during the launch. Establish relationships with key influencers, allow them to test your product, and share their testimonials on social media. Be active not only with your content but also with engagement.
Adjust your marketing strategy and content funnel based on your primary goals and the current stage of your business.
What are the typical mistakes of not using the content funnel for your SaaS business?
The common mistakes of not creating content according to TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU content funnel for B2B SaaS include:
1. Overemphasis on promotional content: when every piece of content is about selling your product, your audience loses interest. Balance is key.
Example: You create posts about discounts but forget to explain to new followers what your product is about. Or you talk only about your features but don't mention the benefits your target audience would gain by using your product.
2. Lack of content diversity: failing to provide a variety of content that caters to different stages of the buyer's journey can result in lost opportunities.
Example: if you only share snippets of your podcast, you'll bore your audience. Another common mistake is solely promoting your webinars. SaaS content marketers often share links to their blog posts on social media - avoid this. No one wants to read your blog post if it's not transformed into native content for the platform (LinkedIn—carousels, Twitter/X—threads, etc.)
3. Ignoring the customer's journey: content should be tailored to guide your potential customers through the marketing funnel. Failure to do so could lead to a disconnect and lost conversions.
Example: you share various content pieces with different CTAs (calls-to-action). You want people to listen to your podcast, download your freebie, sign up for your newsletter, and attend your upcoming seminar. Point out the customer's journey and figure out how these different CTAs lead to a sale.
How to incorporate a content marketing funnel to your B2B SaaS founder's personal and business page?
To incorporate TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU in your B2B SaaS founder's personal and business page, it's essential to strategically plan your high-quality content. To achieve results from your social media, generate leads, and bring organic traffic to your website, clarify whether to focus on awareness, consideration, or conversation stage.
There are different content types that you can incorporate into your sales funnel for a specific stage of your marketing funnel.
We've gathered examples for both personal and business page perspectives. We analyzed Arnaud Belinga, founder of the sales CRM tool Breakcold, and Triple Whale, a marketing analytics tool. Although the examples are from LinkedIn, you can use the same type of content for Twitter/X.
TOFU: generates interest and grabs attention
The top-of-the-funnel content creates interest in your business. You can raise awareness with memes, behind-the-scenes and build-in-public content, stories from the perspective of your founder or employees, and podcasts. TOFU content is broad and can engage those who aren’t interested in your business, like your founder's story or how you started your startup.
Let's take a look at different content examples that represent TOFU.
4 TOFU content examples for your personal account
1. Share personal observations and ask for the opinion of your audience.
2. Give personal advice that has worked for you in growing your business.
3. Share your strong opinion and ask people if they agree with you.
4. Create a freebie relevant to a wider audience and potential clients.
The above example worked so great that Arnaud reposted it again 2 months later. This time, with a different copy.
This is a good strategy—to repeat what worked on social media and post it again after a couple of months. In addition, you can mention other founders and influencers from your industry who helped to create the resource (NB: tag people who would interact with your content, otherwise the algorithm can penalize your post).
4 TOFU content examples for your business account
1. Share memes to show your industry's struggles, challenges, and humorous experiences. Memes are quick to share, thus increasing their chances of going viral and fostering a sense of community.
2. Record a podcast or short conversations to inform about significant news in your industry. In this case, Triple Whale has created their mini-series "Whale Informed," which is very on-brand 🐳
3. Share a short, fun post to entertain your audience, even if they don't consider using your tool (similar to a meme).
4. Establish authority in your industry by sharing statistics and data to which you have exclusive access. Triple Whale created content stories "Trends" to showcase marketing data from e-commerce brands.
TOFU content for personal accounts includes sharing personal observations, giving advice, stating strong opinions, sharing engagement tips, and creating freebies. For business accounts, TOFU content is memes, podcasts, entertaining posts, and sharing industry statistics or data.
MOFU: nurtures and leads toward a sale
This content shows potential clients why they should consider your SaaS products over your competitors' solutions. You can use infographics, posts about updates, and features to showcase your offer.
Use in-depth content to show all the amazing things about your SaaS business. UGC (user-generated content) is another MOFU content type that creates trust with your audience and presents your product in an entertaining format. There are 4 types of UGC you can use for your MOFU (and BOFU) content.
Let's take a look at different content examples that represent MOFU.
5 MOFU content examples for your personal account
1. Create a demo video showing specific use cases for your tool. You can use Loom or Tella to record a simple tutorial.
2. Share a freebie that people can use only with your tool. This post implies a very powerful strategy of listing different target audiences that can benefit from these templates.
3. Share an update of your SaaS products, even if it's a confetti feature (everyone loves confetti). You can use Screen Studio to record your screen to make this video more interactive.
4. Share a step-by-step tutorial. Arnaud created a 5-step instruction on how to save +5 hrs/week with a CRM automation workflow. Besides the value shared in this post, the carousel with visuals makes it special.
5. Overview common problems within your niche and present different solutions (include your own).
4 MOFU content examples for your business account
1. Share statistics in a fun way. It showcases the product and also entertains the followers.
2. Share your updates by showing your dashboard. B2B SaaS can share any updates by showcasing their software—graphs, statistics, data, etc. Data attracts people's attention.
3. Record a video to showcase your new update. Triple Whale wisely mentioned, "We heard your feedback." This statement builds trust with the brand.
4. Share your features by explaining their benefits. Use social media post types favored by the algorithm. On LinkedIn, carousels are the best-performing content pieces.
Share the link in the comments (if you have one), as LinkedIn doesn't like that you want to drive your traffic outside their own platform.
MOFU content for your personal account includes creating demo videos, sharing freebies specific to your tool, updating your product, and sharing step-by-step tutorials.
Business account examples include sharing statistics in an entertaining way, showcasing updates with your dashboard, recording videos for new updates, and explaining the benefits of your new features.
BOFU: converts into loyal customers
The bottom of the marketing funnel leads your potential client to a sale, trial, or sign-up. For conversion, such content pieces as testimonials, case studies, comparison posts, reviews, and results can lead to your end goal for your business.
Let's take a look at different content examples that represent BOFU.
3 BOFU content examples for your personal account
1. Share testimonials and say a public "thank you" to the person who made the appraisal about your tool.
2. Share a testimonial accompanied by the founder's personal story. This post shows the vulnerability and comparison with another competitor that makes this post stand out.
3. Share the results of your satisfied customers. If you can’t share their success publicly, then show your own. Seeing other people's success is very convincing at this stage of the content funnel.
3 BOFU content examples for your business account
1. Share a testimonial in a narrative way.
2. Show how many people use your tool.
3. Share customer success as a case study and give tips on how to get similar results.
BOFU content for personal accounts includes sharing testimonials, personal stories, and results of your clients.
On your business accounts, post testimonials, show the number of people using the tool, and share case studies of customers using the tool with tips on how to achieve similar results.
CTAs for each stage of your content funnel
Use different CTAs for each stage of your content. Each marketing funnel stage requires a different call-to-action because each serves different goals—to raise awareness, boost engagement, or convert into clients.
CTAs for TOFU content
To build awareness, use CTAs that engage your audience to comment. This will ultimately boost your post's overall performance.
You can use questions such as:
- What do to think?
- Do you agree with this statement?
- What are your marketing strategies to do x?
- What's your take?
If you want to gain more followers, you can simply ask them to follow you.
CTAs for MOFU content
In the consideration stage, you should use CTAs that drive people to take a certain action. Do you want them to download your freebie, leave a specific comment, read our blog post, or sign up for a webinar?
CTAs for BOFU content
At the last stage of the marketing funnel, you need to lead your potential clients to a sale. The most common tactic is to offer a discount and rush your clients to sign up before the sale ends. You can use such CTAs as "free trial", "get a demo", or "buy now".
Different marketing funnel stages require specific calls-to-action (CTAs). When creating your content, consider its stage and choose the most relevant CTA.
Final words
Now, you have a good understanding of how to create quality content using MOFU, BOFU, and TOFU principles for your personal and business pages. If you want to combine the strengths of both pages on social media, you can apply the same marketing strategies.
The more relevant content you create for your audience, the better customer retention you'll get in general. Your content strategy allows you to turn clients into repeat buyers, keep your monthly recurring revenue, prevent them from switching to a competitor, and increase your customer lifetime value.