The top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) plays a vital role in fueling your sales engine. Without a steady stream of quality leads at this stage, evaluating and optimizing your downstream efforts becomes nearly impossible. To help you drive greater success at the top of the funnel, we’ve shared some key strategies emphasizing prioritization, diversification, and collaboration between sales and marketing.
Prioritize Lead Channels for Maximum Impact
One of the most common pitfalls in TOFU marketing is spreading resources too thin. To avoid this, it’s crucial to prioritize lead channels and ensure the right team members are focused on net-new business.
The Role of Focused Resources
Asking account managers or general sales teams to juggle existing accounts and net-new business can dilute their efforts. Instead, consider leveraging specialized Sales Development Representatives (SDRs). These professionals are dedicated to prospecting, trained for it, qualify leads, and keep your pipeline full.
If dedicating an existing member of your team or hiring an additional resource isn’t feasible, outsourcing this can be a smart move. Dedicated SDRs bring fresh energy and attention to generating new leads, helping your sales team focus on existing clients.
Diversify Your Lead Generation Channels
Relying on one or two lead channels makes your business vulnerable to sudden market shifts and competitive pressures. A more sustainable approach is to diversify your lead generation strategies.
Why Diversification is Key
Channels like Google Search Ads may be effective now, but they come with risks:
- The rules are constantly changing, impacting results.
- Competitors can always enter the ad space, driving up costs.
- Customer behavior may shift over time, making single-channel reliance risky.
Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, aim for a mix of lead generation strategies, such as:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): help drive organic traffic that grows over time. This includes keyword research, meta descriptions, backlinks, etc.
- Display Ads: raise brand awareness amongst targeted audiences. Examples include banner ads, video ads, and other formats that appear on the Google Display Network.
- Direct Outreach: build personal connections through emailing, LinkedIn messaging, and cold calling.
Break Down Silos Between Sales and Marketing
A key advantage of a diversified strategy is the opportunity it creates for collaboration between sales and marketing teams. When these two functions work in sync, TOFU success becomes much easier to achieve.
Unified Messaging Yields Results
Companies, including ours, have seen tremendous success by aligning messaging across multiple channels, including sales sequences and content marketing. When prospects see cohesive messaging, they’re more likely to engage. An aligned strategy also achieves:
- Prospects receive a unified story no matter where they interact with your brand.
- Channel fatigue is reduced by varying content delivery methods (for example, not bombarding them with repetitive emails).
- Sales and marketing teams experience better collaboration, helping close the gap between leads and conversions.
By fostering alignment, your teams can reach prospects more effectively and, perhaps more importantly, with greater consistency.
Don’t Fumble the Handoff
Lead generation doesn’t end when a prospect enters the pipeline. For TOFU success, the lead handoff process must be smooth and accurate. Imagine a prospect converts on a paid ad and provides you with all the details needed to follow up quickly. However, if that lead fails to reach your CRM or doesn’t get assigned to the right SDR/account manager, you risk losing the lead entirely.
Such breakdowns usually stem from poor technology integration or unclear processes. To avoid these issues, ensure your tech stack is fully connected and your workflows are established. Proper lead handoffs will keep your momentum going and reduce time-to-conversion.
Collaboration Make It Happen
When leads move from marketing to SDRs or account managers, clear communication is critical. Marketing automation tools can nurture leads with helpful content, keeping them engaged until sales teams are ready to take over. For example, you can provide prospects with value-driven emails or qualify leads from paid campaigns before handing them off. This close coordination between marketing and sales ensures no prospect falls through the cracks.
Fuel Your Sales Funnel with TOFU Excellence
Achieving top-of-funnel success requires focus, balance, and collaboration. Start by prioritizing your lead generation efforts, diversifying your channels to create resilience, and eliminating silos between sales and marketing. By implementing these strategies, you’ll be well on your way to driving consistent lead generation and fueling the entire sales funnel.
Partner with Concept to Strengthen Your TOFU Strategy
Is your sales engine ready to run? If not, it’s time to take a closer look at how the top-of-funnel can set the pace for your success. Need some help? At Concept, we have dedicated SDRs, marketing professionals, and CRM gurus who are here to help optimize your sales funnel. Reach out today.