MOFU to BOFU Guide: How to Get Leads to the Bottom of Funnel

Summary

The ever-changing nature of the buyer’s journey makes it necessary for marketers to regularly review their practices and devise new strategies to better attend to their audience’s demands and preferences.

No different were the necessary adaptations during the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which many businesses had to deal with cluttered tech stacks and disarrayed budgets—consequences of the hurried digitization by companies due to urgent social distancing measures in 2020.

In the wake of these developments, enterprises now seek to streamline their tech stacks and fix their budgets. This has, in turn, led to increased scrutiny in buying processes, which reflects in the buyer’s journey. For instance, buying committees now have an average of 11 members, and the standard number of touchpoints prior to a purchase has risen to 27, leading to longer sales cycles. These developments require marketers to promptly adapt with updated nurturing strategies, to address new buyer objections and properly earn their trust.

The need to evolve, along with a 2,2% average conversion rate in B2B verticals, has resulted in marketers finding difficulty with driving leads down the sales funnel.

This guide focuses on marketing strategies to efficiently move leads from the middle of the funnel (MOFU) to the bottom of the sales funnel (BOFU).

The fundamentals of the B2B sales funnel

Although often critiqued and improved upon, the B2B sales funnel is a time-tested representation of the buyer's journey, consisting of the steps leads take prior to and after conversion. Traditionally, the B2B sales funnel is segmented into three stages: top of funnel (TOFU), middle of funnel (MOFU), and bottom of funnel (BOFU), each one requiring a unique nurturing approach to resonate with evolving pain points and objections.

The TOFU stage

The top of funnel stage, also known as the “awareness stage”, is mostly focused on attracting leads with informational content that addresses common queries and concerns your audience has at the beginning of the buyer’s journey. This content drives brand authority and trust by leads, who perceive the brand as helpful and capable of resolving their issues. This stage includes tactics to gain contact information from leads via gated content, subscriptions, events, and more.

The MOFU stage

The middle of funnel stage is often referred to as the “consideration stage” and follows on from the lead capture and brand awareness of the TOFU stage. In the MOFU stage, leads are already familiarized with your brand and its services and are now comparing offers and proposals to find which solution best fits their needs. Therefore, it is essential to share insights on the unique benefits of your solutions, address common objections and further establish trust in your brand, showcasing your company and your offers as the most valuable option.

The BOFU stage

Although the bottom of funnel stage is commonly regarded as the stage when leads are “ready to buy”, this is not usually the case and they should not be immediately forwarded to SDRs, as this risks driving them away.

At the BOFU stage, the focus should be on providing social proof, offering product demos, or even discounts, as well as addressing final objections by the lead to enable a purchase. BOFU leads have already identified your brand as a potential solution to their problems, but have not yet been entirely convinced—hence the need for further nurturing, even at this stage.

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Best practices for driving leads
to the BOFU stage

Here are marketing and sales enablement best practices to drive your leads down the sales pipeline:

Marketing and sales alignment

Establishing good alignment between your marketing and sales departments can be beneficial to the efficiency of your strategies, and subsequently, for encouraging MOFU leads to progress in their journeys.

Due to their closer proximity to leads and their challenges, sales representatives will likely have a clearer view of an audience’s pain points, preferences, and motivations. Therefore, their input is of great help to craft content that truly resonates with your audiences. Take advantage of this information to also craft relevant content maps and nurturing cadences for SDRs to better inform and educate your prospects.

Input from sales is also useful to help you pinpoint difficulties in the enablement and nurture process, identifying and combating bottlenecks along the buyer’s journey. Furthermore, SDRs can greatly aid the scoring and qualifying of leads, ensuring investments will be directed toward prospects most likely to convert.

Lead nurturing

Premature forwarding of early-stage leads to SDRs usually leads to churn, as these individuals still need to be sales-qualified. Therefore, in order to properly enable leads to progress from MOFU to BOFU, marketing efforts should strive to deliver a well-structured, relevant, and client-centric nurturing experience—establishing your brand as a trustworthy authority and highlighting the unique value of your solutions.

Content:

Sharing relevant content is invaluable for supporting lead nurturing. For example, thought leadership pieces that establish expertise, or content exploring how your product can resolve pain points compared to your competitors’, are ideal to encourage movement from the MOFU to BOFU stage. Whitepapers, reports and long-form articles are examples of content best suited to nurture these leads.

Messaging:

Marketers should strive to ensure their nurturing efforts are custom-tailored to the leads’ language and focused on establishing trust. It is imperative to keep close track of leads' evolving challenges, questions, and pain points, to which your content should respond accordingly, closing any knowledge gaps. Strategically placed open loops can also help you boost engagement, piquing your audience's curiosity.

Later in the buying process, it is important to provide prompt and helpful responses to inquiries and ongoing support to ensure client satisfaction. All these initiatives help build trust and make leads more likely to convert.

Channels:

Another important aspect to consider when nurturing leads is to diversify your brand channels with an omnichannel strategy, focusing on where your audience is most active. Make sure to establish cooldown periods for each channel to avoid fatigue, interacting with leads on different platforms with relevant touchpoints.

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Common mistakes

Below are some of the most frequent mistakes to avoid when engaging MOFU leads:

1. Excessive focus on product features:

Avoid exaggerated product promotion of features and technical specifications. At this stage, prioritize demonstrating the ways your product can help leads resolve their particular challenges.

2. Ignoring the importance of personalization:

While managing outreach and lead nurturing can be time-consuming, tailoring messaging to address the specific needs of each lead will result in better outcomes. Invest in personalized messaging to cater to your leads’ unique pain points and preferences, emphasizing the role of your solutions in overcoming their individual challenges.

3. Failure to address objections:

MOFU leads have specific objections that keep them from progressing down the sales funnel. Both sales and marketing teams should be proactive in identifying and properly addressing these objections with persuasive and detailed answers.

4. Lack of social proof:

Because MOFU leads are still considering options, proof of results is particularly effective to sway a decision in your favor. Be sure to include case studies, testimonials, reviews, and other forms of social proof in your lead nurturing campaigns to establish trust and reinforce previous messaging from the TOFU stage.

5. Not providing enough valuable content:

Marketers should strive to provide educational and thought leadership content to establish trust and brand value among MOFU leads. Unique content, such as webinars, whitepapers, and eBooks, is essential for building demand by keeping your brand top of mind, which will also help drive leads down the sales funnel.

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progress down the sales funnel

How to move leads from MOFU to BOFU

As mentioned above, both marketing and sales teams must collaborate to enable leads to progress from the MOFU to BOFU stage. This section covers strategies for each team, as well as a fictional campaign to exemplify how to align both departments and achieve this goal.

Marketing

Offer highly relevant content: Leverage information gathered by both teams in the TOFU stage to craft a wide array of content that resonates with your prospects’ interests and challenges. Gauge the audience's reception of said content to uncover the pain points of most interest to your MOFU leads and tailor follow-up strategies accordingly. Furthermore, if content is gated, this is an opportunity to gather additional segmentation data to inform your next strategies.

Some examples of high-performing MOFU content include whitepapers, case studies, and webinars.

Closely track your leads’ activity: Utilize Client Relationship Management (CRM) platforms to keep track of your audience's reception of your nurturing efforts, adjusting strategies accordingly to increase your conversion rates.

Segment your audience for lead nurturing campaigns: Establish multiple lead nurturing cadences to engage specific audiences with relevant touchpoints, thus delivering a personalized and memorable brand experience.

Enable SDRs with engaging content: Marketers should arm SDRs with relevant materials to keep leads engaged and moving down the funnel, leveraging their feedback as the campaign progresses to publish assets that meet audience expectations.

Stay top of mind with retargeting campaigns and social media marketing: Ads and social media are powerful channels to maintain lead interest in your solutions. Utilize both as additional touchpoints during email cooldowns, for example, to drive brand interest from a fresh perspective.

Sales

Be prepared to address doubts and objections as they arise: SDRs should be prepared to provide swift and thoughtful answers to common questions from leads, easing concerns and moving them closer to a purchase decision.

Custom-tailor your sales approach: SDRs should assess the success of different content assets that talk to different pain points, in order to uncover the particular concerns of each lead and effectively personalize pitches.

Implement a solid follow-up strategy: Consistent follow-up is crucial for moving leads from the MOFU to the BOFU stage. Sales teams should aim to follow up with leads at regular intervals, offering additional information and keeping your brand top of mind.

Employ lead scoring: SDRs should devise specific tactics and approaches for MOFU leads according to their lead scores. For example, high score leads are better suited for testimonials and results-oriented messaging, while low score leads will engage better with articles that include actionable takeaways.

Create actionable sales reports: As previously mentioned, due to their closer contact with the leads, SDRs are able to glean precious information unavailable to marketers and other teams. Crafting sales reports that share data-driven insights and actionable takeaways with other departments is an interesting strategy to communicate these insights properly across the company.

Example of a MOFU to BOFU lead nurturing campaign

A B2B SaaS company offering a project management solution—TaskForce—wanted to increase lead progress from MOFU to BOFU.

In previous TOFU campaigns, TaskForce's marketing team crafted multiple gated guides as lead magnets, addressing topics such as workplace productivity, management techniques, and project workflows. All gated assets included forms to collect relevant firmographic data, in order to filter out prospects not aligned with their Ideal Client Profile (ICP), as well as to better segment their audience.

By tracking their audience's reception to said content, TaskForce's marketers noticed that the pieces with highest engagement discussed streamlined workflows and how they increase productivity. This led the marketing team to consider low productivity and cluttered processes as their audience's most important pain points.

Thus, TaskForce created email cadences focused on those subjects, featuring UTM links, which pointed to an increase in traffic. Meanwhile, SDRs leveraged messaging on how TaskForce's products could increase leads’ productivity. From their outreach campaigns with MOFU leads, sales teams identified a new common pain point among their audience—burnout episodes in high-productivity environments.

SDRs promptly relayed this information back to marketers, who subsequently devised content explaining how streamlined workflows not only boost productivity, but also reduce work-related stress by easing workers’ cognitive burden when managing tasks. Equipped with the new material published by the marketing department, SDRs were now able to address these new concerns, while simultaneously positioning the brand as a trustworthy solution provider.

By addressing these major concerns and objections by their audience, TaskForce was able to continue to build trust with leads, improving their flow from the MOFU to the BOFU stage.

Motivating BOFU leads to convert

Although BOFU leads are often considered sales-ready, most of them will require more attention before converting and making a purchase decision.

This section details strategies sales and marketing departments can leverage to encourage BOFU leads to convert.

Marketing

Provide detailed product information: BOFU leads are often looking for detailed information about your product or service. Marketers should be prepared to provide sales teams with this information, via detailed product pages, spec sheets, ROI calculators and other technical information that helps the lead make an informed decision. These assets should be shared by SDRs with leads according to their roles at the target account. While C-suite members will usually be interested in top-line information (such as forecasted ROI), technical personnel require detailed product specifications to inform their purchase decision.

Offer targeted opportunities: In this step of the buyer's journey, discounts, limited offers, and upsells can be influential for motivating a purchase. Personalized emails, targeted display ads, and customized landing pages are avenues that can be pursued for promoting these unique opportunities.

Direct leads to BOFU content in your nurturing cadences: Content best suited to BOFU leads include product comparisons, case studies, and product demos. Marketers should ensure the availability of such content, as well as the delivery of these assets to BOFU leads via their preferred nurturing channels.

Host webinars and thought leadership events: B2B buyers often want to learn about the latest trends and best practices in their industry, so hosting webinars or thought leadership events can be an effective way to engage with prospects and position your brand as an authority in your niche. As these assets are especially effective with BOFU leads, another great strategy is to retarget leads who signed up to these events with follow-up content.

Leverage personalized videos: Video can be a powerful tool for moving BOFU leads closer to a purchase decision. Consider using personalized video messages to showcase product demos, answer questions, or provide additional information that is relevant to the lead's specific needs. This demonstrates your care and investment to leads, establishing further trust.

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Sales

Build rapport: SDRs should leverage their close contact with leads to promote active listening, asking questions to better understand their needs, and providing personalized recommendations—if necessary, they should request for marketing teams to craft unique content. Establishing good rapport can help you foster trust, making leads more likely to convert.

Offer a personalized demo or trial run: BOFU leads are likely interested in your solutions. Offering a personalized demo or trial can give the lead the confidence they need to move forward with a purchase.

Employ retargeting: Retargeting can also be effective for sales teams. If a BOFU lead has engaged with your content in the past, but has apparently gone cold, retargeting can encourage them to take action.

Streamline the buying process and provide clear steps: The B2B buying process is often unclear and difficult for buyers, who frequently report facing difficulties such as slow response times and problems with online self-serve orders. Therefore, it is important that the process is clear and pays attention to the different steps in the B2B buying journey. BOFU leads still need guidance on what the next steps are—what they can expect from the buying process and from the product after a purchase. SDRs should therefore be prepared to appease final objections, highlighting benefits and post-sale support.

Create a sense of urgency: Urgency can be key to incentivize a conversion at the BOFU stage. This can be done by offering limited-time deals or by emphasizing the consequences of not making a purchase decision soon (such as missing out on a competitive advantage). Be sure, however, to utilize this tactic sparingly, as leads are wary of being rushed towards sales. Misuse of this technique can increase churn rates.

Example of a BOFU lead nurturing campaign

Following the last MOFU campaign, TaskForce now faced the challenge of motivating these leads, now in the BOFU stage, to take action and convert.

By employing ABM platforms, TaskForce was able to identify priority accounts among their leads, locating their key decision makers and evaluating their previous interactions with the brand.

The strategies adopted by TaskForce in this stage had the goal of showcasing the effectiveness of their solutions based on real examples, addressing objections and demonstrating to their audience what to expect from products in terms of functionality and post-sales support.

Therefore, the next step for TaskForce was to target BOFU stakeholders with custom-tailored nurturing cadences, featuring content such as:

Case studies: Assets that demonstrate how TaskForce’s solutions can be easily adapted to different industries, thanks to their high level of customization
Testimonials from previous clients: Social proof that builds trust and showcases results the product delivered to clients operating in industries similar to those of the leads being targeted
Product demos: Showcase the potential benefits of adopting TaskForce’s platform for resolving the lead’s unique challenges
Webinars: Deep dive into topics most relevant to decision makers’ pain points

After promoting these assets and observing the high engagement demonstrated by these accounts, SDRs then contacted them with a free trial. This offer would then include an exclusive discount, when sales would also share details on the next steps after a purchase.

This approach addressed final objections regarding the implementation process of the TaskForce platform, which resulted in a higher conversion rate among decision makers.

Full-time support was made available for all TaskForce clients, including assistance for configuring the platform, as well as access to a hub with instructional videos and frequently asked questions (FAQs).

This support earned continued renewals from many clients, who reported noticeable improvements in workplace stress levels and productivity. Some of these satisfied clients then referred TaskForce to their peers at other companies, resulting in a higher flow of TOFU leads for the business to engage with nurturing cadences.

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How to extract the most value from converted leads

Client lifetime value (CLTV) is an important performance indicator of post-sales success. Ensuring this success relies on initiatives to retain clients, such as brand evangelism and community building. Both initiatives also result in word-of-mouth marketing, as well as social proof with reviews and testimonials.

Therefore, after a deal is closed, SDRs and Client Success (CS) teams should continue to engage with the client to ensure their continued satisfaction. This can include additional training or resources, as well as cross-selling or upselling additional products that could be beneficial to the client.

Incentivizing feedback and reviews is also valuable for collecting insights to improve your solutions, as well as to fuel your marketing campaigns with social proof.

By implementing these post-sales strategies, your brand will increase its CLTV rate, which also results in a greater ROI for your marketing and sales teams.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

Here are the main points to consider when driving leads from MOFU to the BOFU stage:

Promote alignment between sales and marketing teams
Deliver a client-centric nurturing experience, showcasing your brand's UVP and addressing your leads’ most common pain points and objections
Employ omnichannel marketing strategies, to engage your leads across their preferred channels in a satisfying and memorable way
Establish social proof with case studies, testimonials, and reviews from loyal clients
Track your audience's activity with CRMs to glean insights and improve your marketing strategies
Leverage market segmentation to develop nurturing cadences custom-tailored to different audience groups
Strive to deliver a remarkable client experience (CX) after a sale to increase your CLTV rate

By leveraging these strategies, not only will you enable leads to progress through your sales funnel and increase the likelihood of a conversion, but you will also encourage brand evangelists, who will refer your brand to peers and increase the number of TOFU leads in your pipeline.

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