TOFU / MOFU / BOFU: Marketing Funnel Stages Defined

What does TOFU / MOFU / BOFU mean?

TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU are shorthand for the three stages of the marketing funnel:

• TOFU = Top of Funnel (Awareness)
• MOFU = Middle of Funnel (Consideration)
• BOFU = Bottom of Funnel (Decision)

These three terms only make sense as a set. You’ll rarely hear someone say “MOFU” without the context of the other two. Together, they describe the journey a potential customer takes from “I didn’t know I had this problem” to “I’m buying this solution.”

The terms are used primarily by content marketers and marketing operations teams to categorize content, plan campaigns, and report on performance by funnel stage. If you’ve ever heard someone say “we need more TOFU content” in a meeting, they’re not talking about soy products.

The three funnel stages

TOFU: Top of Funnel (Awareness)

At the top of the funnel, your audience doesn’t know your product exists, and they may not even know they have a problem yet. The goal of TOFU content isn’t to sell. It’s to attract attention, provide value, and earn the right to continue the conversation.

Buyer mindset: “I’m curious about this topic” or “I think I might have a problem”

Typical TOFU content formats:

• Blog posts and articles
• Social media content
• Podcasts and video series
• Infographics
• Educational guides and industry reports

Metrics that matter: Traffic, impressions, social shares, new visitors, organic keyword rankings

TOFU is where you cast the widest net. The content should be genuinely useful even if the reader never buys anything from you. A blog post answering “what is marketing automation?” is TOFU. It attracts people researching the topic, establishes your authority, and opens the door to deeper engagement.

MOFU: Middle of Funnel (Consideration)

In the middle of the funnel, your audience knows they have a problem and is actively evaluating solutions. They’re not ready to buy yet, but they’re comparing options, looking at reviews, and trying to understand which approach is right for them.

Buyer mindset: “I need to solve this. What are my options?”

Typical MOFU content formats:

• Webinars and workshops
• Case studies and customer stories
• Comparison guides (“X vs. Y”)
• White papers and research reports
• Email nurture sequences
• Templates and toolkits

Metrics that matter: MQL volume, email engagement rates, content download rates, webinar registrations, return visits

MOFU content is where you start to differentiate. Instead of broad educational content, you’re showing prospects how your specific approach solves their problem. A case study showing how a similar company achieved results is MOFU. A comparison guide between your product and a competitor is MOFU.

BOFU: Bottom of Funnel (Decision)

At the bottom of the funnel, the prospect has decided they need a solution and is choosing which one to buy. The content here is about reducing friction, answering final objections, and making the purchase decision feel safe.

Buyer mindset: “I’m ready to buy. Is this the right choice?”

Typical BOFU content formats:

• Free trials and product demos
• Pricing pages
• ROI calculators
• Detailed feature documentation
• Customer testimonials and references
• Implementation guides
• Proposals and custom quotes

Metrics that matter: Demo requests, trial signups, SQL conversion rate, pipeline generated, closed-won revenue

BOFU content has the most direct revenue impact but the smallest audience. Not everyone who reads your blog post (TOFU) will attend your webinar (MOFU), and not everyone who attends your webinar will request a demo (BOFU). That narrowing is the “funnel” shape, and it’s by design.

The “funnel is dead” take

If you’ve spent any time in marketing circles, you’ve heard it: “The funnel is dead.” The argument goes that modern buyers don’t follow a linear path from awareness to consideration to decision. They loop back, skip stages, consume BOFU content before TOFU content, and make decisions in ways that don’t fit a neat top-to-bottom diagram.

This is mostly true, and mostly beside the point.

Yes, a buyer might read a pricing page (BOFU) before reading a single blog post (TOFU).¹ Yes, B2B buying committees have multiple stakeholders entering the journey at different stages simultaneously.²

But the general motion from unaware to evaluating to deciding still holds. People don’t typically go from “I’ve never heard of this category” to “here’s a purchase order” in a single step. The funnel is a simplification, and like all simplifications, it’s wrong in detail but useful in practice.

The better take: the funnel isn’t dead, it’s just not linear. Think of TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU as content categories rather than sequential stages. A buyer might interact with content from all three categories in a single week. What matters is that you have content for each category and that you can measure performance across them.

How marketing ops uses TOFU / MOFU / BOFU

For marketing operations teams, funnel-stage tagging is operational infrastructure. Here’s how it works in practice:

Content tagging in your CMS. Every piece of content should be tagged with its funnel stage. This could be a custom field in your CMS, a tag in your project management tool, or a property in your MAP. Without this tagging, you can’t report on funnel-stage performance.

Campaign attribution by stage. When you tag content by funnel stage and track UTM parameters correctly, you can answer questions like: “How much traffic did our TOFU content drive this quarter?” and “What’s the MQL conversion rate on our MOFU webinars vs. our MOFU white papers?”

Content gap analysis. Funnel-stage tagging makes it easy to spot imbalances. Many teams over-invest in TOFU (blog content is relatively cheap to produce) and under-invest in MOFU and BOFU. If your pipeline is strong at the top but deals stall in the middle, you probably have a MOFU content problem.

Lead scoring by engagement stage. The funnel stage of the content a lead engages with is a strong scoring signal. Someone who reads three blog posts (TOFU) and someone who watches a product demo (BOFU) are at very different points in their journey, and your lead scoring model should reflect that.

Reporting and dashboards. The classic marketing ops funnel dashboard shows volume and conversion rates at each stage: visitors, leads, MQLs, SQLs, opportunities, closed-won. The TOFU/MOFU/BOFU framework gives you an additional lens: which content types are contributing at each stage?

Mapping content to funnel stages: a quick reference

The important thing isn’t the framework’s precision. It’s that your team has a shared vocabulary for talking about content strategy and a consistent tagging system for measuring it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does TOFU mean in marketing?

In marketing, TOFU stands for Top of Funnel. It refers to the awareness stage of the buyer's journey, where potential customers are first discovering that they have a problem or opportunity. TOFU content (blog posts, social media, podcasts, infographics) is designed to attract a broad audience and introduce them to your brand, not to sell directly.

What is the difference between TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU content?

TOFU (Top of Funnel) content educates and attracts: think blog posts, videos, and social media. MOFU (Middle of Funnel) content helps prospects evaluate solutions: webinars, case studies, and comparison guides. BOFU (Bottom of Funnel) content drives the purchase decision: free trials, demos, pricing pages, and ROI calculators. Each stage addresses a different buyer mindset.

Is the marketing funnel dead?

The 'funnel is dead' take is popular but overstated. What's true: modern buying journeys are nonlinear. People skip stages, revisit stages, and loop between them. What's also true: the general motion from 'unaware' to 'evaluating' to 'deciding' still holds. The TOFU/MOFU/BOFU framework remains useful as a content planning and reporting model, even if real buyer behavior doesn't follow a neat linear path.