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Growth Notes

Marketing funnels

The funnel is the metaphor most marketing teams use to organise themselves and their content. People at the top are unaware of you. They move down as they become aware, then interested, then ready to buy. The shape is wide at the top (lots of unaware people) and narrow at the bottom (few buyers) because most people drop out at every stage.

The three-stage shorthand:

  • TOFU (top of funnel) - awareness. People who don’t know they have the problem you solve, or know they have it but haven’t started looking. Content here is educational and broad: blog posts, social content, podcast appearances. Goal: get on their radar.
  • MOFU (middle of funnel) - consideration. They know they have the problem and they’re evaluating options. Comparison content, case studies, webinars, free tools. Goal: become a serious option.
  • BOFU (bottom of funnel) - decision. They’ve decided to buy in this category and they’re picking between specific solutions. Pricing pages, demos, reviews, free trials. Goal: be the one they pick.

This maps fairly directly onto Eugene Schwartz’s awareness stages, which is the more granular version of the same idea.

How CRO maps to the funnel

Section titled “How CRO maps to the funnel”

CRO traditionally lives at BOFU. The conversion event is the purchase, the test environment is the PDP and checkout, the question is “given that someone’s ready to buy, do they pick us?”. That’s a narrow slice of the funnel and a narrow definition of CRO.

The broader read is that every stage has its own conversion rate. Awareness-to-consideration, consideration-to-decision. CRO at TOFU might mean optimising email opt-in rates on blog content. CRO at MOFU might mean optimising webinar attendance from registrations. The same testing discipline applies, just on different events.

Why the funnel metaphor is leaky

Section titled “Why the funnel metaphor is leaky”

Real customer journeys don’t move neatly down stages. People jump back, leave and return weeks later, encounter the brand through multiple channels in unpredictable order. The funnel is a useful organising fiction, not a literal model.

More honest models:

  • Loops - existing customers create the conditions for new acquisition (referrals, word of mouth, user-generated content).
  • Flywheels - HubSpot’s variant, emphasising momentum rather than top-down flow.
  • Bowtie - acquisition funnel on the left, expansion funnel on the right, customer in the middle. Reflects the reality that getting the customer is half the job.