As you may know, ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu are popular acronyms for the Top, Middle, and Bottom of the sales funnel. They work as handy visual and conceptual representations of the customer’s journey from “awareness” to “purchase.”
Every stage in these arrangements requires slightly different content to help the potential customers advance through the different steps of the process. Your ability to decide what the “right” type of content is at any given stage will directly impact your conversion rates bottom-line.
Videos provide one of the most reliable pieces of content to engage audiences at the top of the funnel and motivate them into action. However, as any skilled video production team will tell you, not every type of video works the same in these early stages!
Today, we are going to take a closer look at these early stages of the funnel. Study the type of content that works best and the types of videos that fulfill those requirements best.
Let’s get to it!
The Type of Content That Works Early In The Sales Process
Right at the top of the funnel, we find potential clients who are realizing they have a problem and start looking for solutions. This is the most crowded stage, so you need to focus on getting as many prospects as possible and converting them into the next stage.
Your focus here is making your brand stand out as a great alternative, creating an excellent first impression and trying to form a connection with potential customers. You have to establish your company as a reliable authority in your niche, and let people know you can deliver upon their needs.
A strategy tailored to these early stages, then, requires you to thoroughly understand the kind of problems affecting your ideal customer. The pain points they’ll eventually be looking to solve. Finding out which questions or doubts they are going to be looking to resolve. Then, generating solution-focused content to match them.
For that, ToFu content has to be broad, clear, direct, and instantly appealing. It has to create awareness about your brand and your solution to the client’s problems. Educating them and addressing their queries. Forgoing hard-sale content (that comes later on!) for content that forms relationships with prospects and brings them into your ecosystem.
Why video?
Videos are one of the most effective types of content out there, and doubly so when it comes to top-of-the-funnel strategies. They are visually dynamic – easily capturing people’s attention – and quick to foster engagement, motivating new prospects into action.
Audiovisual pieces are fantastic to educate new audiences, as they can effectively cover a lot of material in a short amount of time. More importantly, they can do it in an interesting and appealing way. At the early stages of your funnel, when prospects have no major reason to pay any special attention to your brand, this can be vital.
Lastly, the right videos won’t only showcase your expertise in a given area, but they can do a great job of humanizing your brand. Forming close connections with your fledgling community and giving you an advantage over the competition.
Best Types Of Videos To Use To Increase ToFu Conversions
So, we’ve established the type of content that works best at this stage of a funnel, and why video fits so well with those needs. However, that’s not to say that just any kind of video will do!
Certain styles are better suited to meet your needs, specifically for ToFu strategies, and here are some of them:
1. How-To Videos
How-to videos focus on helping customers deal with a specific problem, showing them how to overcome it with clear step-by-step instructions in a brief and concise format.
These videos are wonderful at increasing conversions during the ToFu stage because they aim to help your target audience. Focused on topics that closely relate to the pain points your product is geared to solve.
How-tos are very versatile in terms of format, letting you combine live-action, graphics, and animation to get your message across.
Do it right, and not only will you be delivering immediate value to a potential new customer, but you’ll also be positioning your brand as a “go-to for answers”.
2. Explainer videos
Without a doubt, explainer videos are among the best ways to increase qualified ToFu conversions. These are short pieces that describe your product or business using storytelling to make pieces that inform and entertain at the same time.
Usually, within the 90 to 120-second mark, explainers need to be direct and to-the-point, capturing the audience’s attention from the get-go. A formula that stands out early in your conversion funnel, when your audience has little reason – or patience! – to give your content much time.
By quickly engaging your potential customers, and delivering your message with effective branding techniques, explainers can do a great job generating conversions early on. Establishing a relationship with potential customers by reflecting their buyer’s personas and delivering useful information that can help.
3. Commercials
Bringing attention to your business is particularly vital in the early stages of the conversion funnel. Commercials give you a great way to do just that!
Do keep in mind, however, that ToFu commercials should not be aimed at closing sales, but at getting the word out about your business. Your focus should be generating content that cements a memorable first impression on your prospects, conveying your brand’s spirit.
Trade secret? Use quality storytelling. That usually means finding ways to put your audience in the shoes of someone already benefiting from your brand or products, and doing so subtly-yet-effectively.
4. Social Videos
Do you want to include mind-blasting content at the top of your sales funnel? Combine videos with social media, and you’ll get fantastic results.
Social videos can educate, explain, and entertain… and most often all three, suiting multiple purposes. They have to be short and direct, quickly getting the attention of the scroll-obsessed social media public.
These videos fit perfectly for ToFu strategies because their main goal is to have the audience talking, posting, and sharing the content, increasing the public’s knowledge about the brand.
Before making your social video, keep in mind that some videos work better on some platforms than in others. Choose the right channel – the one where most of your business’s audience uses – and focus your efforts and content there.
5. Live Streams
Live videos are an excellent way to get real-time interaction with your potential customers. Allowing you to get a deep understanding of your audience’s needs and questions and bringing them closer to your brand.
Just like social media videos, they serve different purposes. They can be educational or entertaining, or they can show the audience how to do something. The key here, however, is immediacy and interactivity.
Live videos perform well at the ToFu stage because they quickly generate engagement, and can quickly move potential customers down to your sales funnel with interactive CTAs.
Wrapping It Up
For a conversion funnel to work effectively, the first stage is crucial. As you’ll only be able to convert those people that enter your funnel in the first place! For that, you need content that appropriately addresses the specific needs and particularities of ToFu audiences.
The videos we talked about today give you perfect avenues to do just that. Not only bringing awareness to your business but providing your audiences with content they won’t quickly dismiss! Priming them to quickly continue down your funnel as they get closer to a purchase decision.
Start brainstorming ideas on how to adapt these styles for videos of your own, and have your ToFu strategy grow stronger because of it!
Editor’s Note: The article is part of the blog series Grow Your Business brought to you by the marketing team at UniTel Voice, the virtual phone system priced and designed for startups and small business owners.
