Do you know what tofu is?

Genuine answer to this question I was asked (and I might add that I misread as it’s actually TOFO) months and months ago was “yes and I hate the stuff”. Did I think it was weird that a client was asking me for my thoughts on meat substitute protein sources? Yep, did I question it? Nope.

After some farcical confusion it turns out he was talking about TOFO- top of funnel optimisation and after much study and after writing several blogs for clients I can now comfortably say that i still feel exactly the same.

For anyone that hasn’t heard of the marketing funnel let me do this as simply as possible. Getting sales/customers/money generating opportunities with marketing is (or should be) akin to using to using a funnel...

Imagine you throw 100 toys cars into a plastic funnel, about half of those are going to get stuck at the top whereas half are going to drop down to the middle. Due to the natural shape of the funnel only two or three cars are going to make their way through and out the other end.

That’s your sales process- for every hundred leads you generate, you will lose people at each stage of the process until only a small amount of them translate to actual sales. Those hundred leads are at the TOF or top of funnel and without adding the O to optimise these leads you are generating work, traffic and arrange of vanity metrics that won’t translate to success. The O, by the way, is trying to ensure that those are qualified leads in some way- they’ve purchased before, they have an interest in your area or they’ve been looking for something you offer.

The real work should focus on MOFO and BOFO (no prizes for guessing that’s middle and bottom of funnel optimisation) because that’s where the money is.

So whilst it’s fair to say that generating leads is a critical part of the end to end sales process, it is not where your effort, budget or KPIs should focus.

So many businesses focus only on leads and assume a poor conversion rate it due to a flaw in their sales process but actually it would be almost impossible to sell ice if all of your leads are residents of the arctic.

Hate might be a strong word but that’s why I dislike the general urge to focus on TOFO, oh, and I actually hate Tofu too 🤷🏻‍♀️