You Don’t Need More Tofu

lead nurturingDo you focus on lead nurturing throughout your sales funnel?

When my wife and I started dating, we went through the normal phases of getting to know each other and our commonalities. We quickly both discovered one glaring difference… she was a vegetarian and I resembled more of a carnivore.

She introduced me to many new ways to eat vegetables but luckily she never introduced me to tofu. Although I tried many new dishes, I secretly feared I would be asked to try those unknown little cubes of oddness. This unfounded threat alone pushed me to be more open minded about other vegetables.

Although tofu isn’t normally talked about in business, Ryan Deiss, the host of Traffic and Conversion’s marketing conference opened day 2’s keynote by talking about … of all things… tofu.

He explained that tofu (he spelled it ToFu) is actually an acronym for Top of Funnel and went on to make the point that all marketing campaigns are not best suited for ToFu. Instead, some might be best served in the middle (MoFu) or the bottom of the funnel (you guessed it..BoFu).

In a world of infographics, Instagram and inbound marketing, picking which marketing campaign to grow the company to help can be overwhelming. However, I learned this may not be our biggest marketing challenge for affecting growth. Instead consider at which stage of the funnel a campaign should be deployed.
To help determine how to select a campaign for each stage, think of how it aligns with these goals.

ToFu – Raise awareness
MoFu – Generate leads
BoFu – Close sales

Considering the goal will help your selection process as well as the list of examples below.

Top of Funnel – ToFu

* Blog
* Social Media
* Infographic
* Photographs
* Digital Mag / Book
* Audio or Video Podcast
* Video Podcast
* Microsite

Middle of Funnel – MoFu

* Educational Resources
* Useful resources
* Software Download
* Photo
* White Paper

Bottom of Funnel – BoFu

* Demo / Free Trial
* Customer Story
* Comparison / Spec Sheet
* Webinar / Event
* Mini-Class

As marketers, aren’t we many times guilty of focusing too much on ToFu? Your goal of more conversions is actually not much different than my wife’s goal of getting me to eat more vegetables… test something new without only ToFu.