The awareness stage where potential customers first discover your brand.

Strategy

What is Top of Funnel (TOFU)?

The awareness stage where potential customers first discover your brand.

Definition

Top of funnel (TOFU) represents the awareness stage of the customer journey — where cold audiences first encounter your brand. TOFU campaigns optimize for reach, video views, or landing page views rather than direct purchases. The goal is to introduce your brand, educate the audience, and generate interest that can be nurtured through mid-funnel and bottom-funnel retargeting. TOFU creative should be engaging and informative, not hard-selling.

Example

A brand allocates 30% of their ad budget to top-of-funnel video ads showing their manufacturing process and brand story. These awareness campaigns feed the retargeting pool, which then converts at 5x higher rates than cold traffic.

Related Terms

Brand Awareness The extent to which consumers recognize and recall a brand. Reach The total number of unique people who see your ad. Retargeting Showing ads to people who have previously interacted with your brand.

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