Top of Funnel Marketing Tactics for SaaS Brands

Top-of-funnel (ToFu) marketing is a little bit like fishing - you put your bait on the fishing line and wait for a fish to bite. In ToFu, a well-executed top-of-funnel marketing tactic serves as a hook for prospective buyers.

Top of funnel (ToFu) marketing for SaaS brands: how does it work

Top-of-funnel, or ToFu, is the initial stage of a potential customer's journey. This stage of marketing can also be called the awareness stage, as it's all about attracting the right people to your product. The top of the funnel is exactly that, the very first (topmost) part of the three that comprise it:

1. The top-of-the-funnel: The stage where you build brand awareness and try to educate people about the problem you’re solving.
2. The middle-of-the-funnel: The stage where you provide leads with the help they need so that they come closer to buying the product.
3. The bottom-of-the-funnel: The stage where your prospective buyer is ready to buy.

It's to be expected that the number of leads will dwindle as they proceed down the funnel. As the stage with the highest number of leads, the main goal of top-of-funnel marketing should be to convince people to learn more about the problem your product solves. Other important goals include:

• Getting potential customers acquainted with your product and securing a top-of-mind positioning in their heads
• Addressing your potential users' pain points
• Marketing the product with appropriate visuals, like product demos
• Making a good first impression 
• Trying to predict what your users might want to see next

5 top-of-funnel marketing tactics for SaaS

Don't waste your time on top-of-funnel marketing tactics that don't work – here are some practices that are guaranteed to get you good results when done right.

Content marketing

Content marketing is one of the best ways to attract potential customers and keep them interested in your products. Blog posts, videos and social media posts are all good ways of creating targeted content that will improve lead quality. We’ll cover a few of the most effective content marketing methods below.

Run an educational blog

Educational blogs are an excellent lead magnet. A blog post that solves a customer's problem or helps them address a concern will be a strong driver of interest. Couple educational content with thorough keyword research and you get a recipe for success.

Blogs are a great tool for customers to use at the beginning of their search journey so using the best SEO techniques while writing your posts can make your business more discoverable by having it rank higher on search engine results pages.

Keep in mind that SEO goes well with every form of content. From writing a blog post to creating a SaaS walkthrough, you should never underestimate the potential of a few well-placed keywords.

SaaS businesses that focus on content as part of their top-of-funnel marketing efforts report a 400% lead generation growth. 

Embed interactive product tours

Give people a chance to experience your product by creating and embedding interactive product tours on your website. Usually, you only have one shot at engaging people when they are interested; you should make it count with an easy-to-use solution that lets you create engaging demos and share them with ease.

By embedding interactive demos, your prospects can learn what your product can do in an engaging, interactive way, resulting in 1.7x more sign-ups.

At least, that's how Flagsmith increased sign-ups – by using interactive product demos. It takes 10 minutes on average to create your first product tour and zero code knowledge, so you don't have to worry about wasting time and effort.

Establish your brand as an authority in your niche in social media

With a third of online shoppers finding a new product or brand through social media platforms, you shouldn't miss out on this golden opportunity. Instead, you should leverage the power of social media by launching paid campaigns to build awareness and create engaging and informative content.

Remember, when it comes to social media posts, quality trumps quantity. You want to be consistent, but you don't want to publish poor-quality content out of haste.

There's no need to utilize every social media platform, either. Every industry or niche has a platform where prospective customers are most likely to go, so focus most of your attention on platforms that make sense for both your audience and your team’s ability to create high-quality content consistently.

Create engaging videos

Since the human brain processes visual content 60,000 times faster than text, creating engaging videos can be one of your main top-of-funnel marketing tactics. Even a short video is more likely to attract potential customers than walls of written text.

Whether posting video content on platforms like YouTube or putting them on your website, you should use this opportunity to educate your target audience about your products. Ultimately, you can always repurpose your content to help your message stick and reach your target audience.

Pay-per-click ads

Pay-per-click or PPC is a form of advertising where the advertiser pays a fee whenever one of their advertisements is clicked. It's a way to purchase website visitors and can be a great investment for businesses that are willing to put in the time and effort into optimizing their campaigns.

There are a few things to know if you decide to generate leads this way:

• PPC can be a cost-effective solution, as you only pay once someone clicks on your ad;
• Unlike search engine optimization, which takes a while to show results, PPC can yield results immediately;
• PPC ads are displayed above organic search results, giving you better brand visibility;
• You can reach your target audience easily due to extensive targeting options, such as demographics and past online activity;
• You get detailed data about your campaigns to use when planning future ones.

Influencer marketing

Partnering with people who have influence can be a good way to fill your marketing funnel. Influencers usually have extremely loyal fan bases that you'd be smart to tap into if they resemble your target audience.

Businesses tend to think influencer marketing is only for B2C, but bloggers and vloggers exist for all niches and products. They form close communities with their audience and are great at narrating and presenting products. The right influencer for your audience can influence people by helping them understand the complicated technical features of a product, as well as introduce them to the perks of making a purchase.

Influencers will usually add a personal touch by showing how your products fit into their daily lives. All of this is to say that partnering with an influencer can help with lead generation by converting some of their fan base into your leads.

Email marketing

Some marketers say email is dead, but it’s still one of the best marketing channels for nurturing leads. Successfully using email marketing in a sales funnel can be accomplished through:

1. Email segmentation: This strategy allows for more relevance in your content, as it segments lists based on demographics, purchase behavior, interests, etc.
2. Personalization: By using information your business has gathered about leads, you can personalize emails to boost engagement and ROI. For example, your newsletter subscribers give valuable information when signing up, such as their name, date of birth and anything else you’ve put in your subscribe form. You can use all of this to target your audience in subsequent email campaigns better.

Partnerships and PR

A partnership with another business can benefit both parties – provided that you share the same audience. It can be a way to cross-promote your brands and reach more viewers.

Say you partner with someone who has a podcast. By participating, you'd be reaching the host's devoted audience, and you could use your five minutes of fame to invite listeners to take an action that will benefit your business - check out your website or try your SaaS through a guided demo.

Partnering with another business or organization and appearing in public might not be your cup of tea, but you should seriously consider it – it's a great thing to add to your marketing strategy.

‍

Top-of-funnel marketing tracking: metrics

In order to know if your top-of-the-funnel marketing efforts are working, you need to understand some key metrics.

Marketing qualified lead (MQL) to sales qualified lead (SQL) ratios

An MQL is a lead who has engaged with your company’s marketing efforts. You would analyze the lead’s online behavior to see if they qualify. For instance, looking at what CTAs the lead clicked on and which pages they visited.

An SQL is a lead that has interacted with your sales team and has shown immediate interest in buying. They are now part of the sales pipeline and the team uses different tactics to move them down and motivate them to finish the purchase.

The MQL to SQL ratio presents the number of people that have turned from marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads.

A MQL to SQL conversion rate of 13% is considered to be satisfactory across a wide range of industries and channels. Hence, if your business' MQL to SQL conversion rate is less than that, you still have a lot of room for improvement in your digital marketing strategy.

This might be the most important metric when it comes to the quality of your leads. It shows how effective your marketing channels are individually in generating leads that move further down the funnel, allowing you to see whether they are worth the cost and effort.

Your interactive product demos could be generating a small number of leads with a high ratio, but posts on your social media platforms might be doing the opposite. With the MQL to SQL ratio, you'll get a good understanding of the quality of leads generated (not just the volume) so you can make informed decisions on what’s working vs. not.

Opportunity creation rates, win/loss rates, conversion rates

Want to understand which parts of your marketing funnel need some work? The following metrics will give you a better sense of what's going on:

• Opportunity creation rates: Once you’ve managed to generate demand for your SaaS business, you have a chance to turn an SQL into an opportunity by providing a viable solution to your customer’s pain points. Opportunity creation rates aim to show how successful you are at that. Since lead to opportunity conversion rate is an important metric, you should always be optimizing it and adjusting your digital marketing strategy based on it.
• Win/loss rates: Are many of your prospects disappearing from the funnel? Before you can remedy the situation, you must find the source of the leak – you can do this through win/loss analysis. Find the critical dropoff point for prospects and use the data to make the buyer journey better.
• Conversion rates: There aren't many marketing funnel metrics that you can't measure through conversion rates. From lead to MQL and SQL to opportunity, conversion rates can give you a good idea of how effective your top-of-funnel marketing efforts are, which stages of the funnel are performing, and allow you to adjust your strategy accordingly.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) and sales cycle length

Customer acquisition cost, or CAC is an important metric that reveals how much you are spending on the acquisition of new leads. It represents the total cost of marketing efforts necessary to convince someone to buy your product.

CAC is one of the most important performance indicators, showing you how much each customer costs your company to acquire. The number helps you understand which channels have the best returns in terms of marketing spend. Always make sure it’s lower than your customer lifetime value (LTV) so you don’t lose money acquiring new customers.

If you want to succeed in the competitive market, there's one other metric besides CAC to be mindful of – sales cycle length. Knowing the average time it takes to convert new prospects into customers and close deals can help you better predict your revenue numbers.

Conclusion

Top-of-funnel marketing is your chance to build demand for your product and brand awareness in order to feed a steady pipeline of prospects into your sales funnel. The better you market your products through posts, demonstration tools and partnerships, the stronger your funnel will be.

Give yourself a trustworthy ally in the process by partnering with HowdyGo.

 Get started for free and help ease the buyer's journey with easy-to-make product demos that will help you educate and convert leads.

FAQs

What are top-of-funnel marketing tactics in B2B?

Top-of-funnel marketing tactics in B2B aim to inform your audience that your product exists. This is the first stage of the marketing funnel and usually revolves around content creation, PPC, partnerships and email marketing.

Why invest in top-of-funnel marketing?

Top-of-funnel marketing can be a worthy investment for developing a strong and steady demand for your product and brand recognition. It's a chance to capture high-quality leads by building demand.

What is the top of the funnel concept?

The top-of-the-funnel concept is the first stage of the theoretical customer journey, also called a 'purchase journey.' This marketing strategy is concerned with building brand awareness, attracting leads and engaging early-stage prospects.

How do you increase the top of a funnel in SaaS?

You can increase the top of a funnel in SaaS by implementing effective marketing tactics. These include lead generation, search engine optimization, content marketing, influencer marketing and email marketing.

How do you generate top-of-funnel leads?

You can produce top-of-the-funnel leads by implementing reliable lead-generation strategies. Try to educate your prospective customers by providing sufficient, easily digestible information, invest in your website and blog and focus on quality instead of quantity when it comes to your content strategy.

‍