Top of Funnel

Also called TOFU

Top of funnel: the awareness stage, where you reach people who do not yet know you, through content, ads, SEO, or PR. The widest part of the funnel.

Why it matters

TOFU fills the pipeline, but volume here means little if it does not convert deeper down. Balancing top-of-funnel reach with the quality that survives to the bottom is the whole game of efficient growth.

For example

A viral LinkedIn post and a podcast appearance fill the top of the funnel with thousands of people who had never heard of the startup.

Worth your time

Measuring Top of Funnel and Incrementality Testing with Zach Epstein from Haus
Measuring Top of Funnel and Incrementality Testing with Zach Epstein from Haus Haus on YouTube · article Haus runs incrementality tests for a living, and here their founder talks through how you actually separate ads that cause sales from ads that just show up next to sales that were coming anyway. It grounds the holdout idea (withhold ads from a slice of your market, then compare) in how brands really run these experiments. Watch it once to build the mental model before you design your own test. Watch on YouTube youtube.com →

Related terms

Middle of Funnel Bottom of Funnel Brand Awareness

Go deeper

See how founders actually handle this on Growing and marketing, part of the Starting Up hub.

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