Fill Your Funnel Faster with ToFu Marketing

Most B2B buyers are not ready to purchase immediately, yet many businesses still focus only on sales-ready leads. This narrow approach often misses a much larger pool of potential customers, especially in efforts to generate quality leads in APAC, where many prospects are still in the early stages of the buying journey.

Modern buyers expect value before engagement. They prefer to research independently and consume helpful content before reaching out. This is why forward-thinking marketers prioritize top-of-funnel (ToFu) marketing: to build awareness, establish trust, and initiate meaningful engagement early on.

In this guide, we explore proven top-of-funnel strategies designed to help you attract high-quality leads, strengthen your sales funnel marketing, and prepare your teams for sustainable growth.

What is Funnel Marketing?

Funnel marketing is a strategy that maps the stages of a buyer’s journey, from first discovering a brand to becoming a loyal customer. This model helps businesses engage prospects with the right content at the right time.

The funnel is typically broken into four main stages:

• Awareness – At the top of the funnel, potential buyers are introduced to your brand. The goal here is to attract attention through educational, helpful content.
• Consideration – In the middle stage, prospects explore your offering sales and compare solutions. Content should highlight value, benefits, and social proof.
• Conversion – At this stage, the focus shifts to action. The objective is to encourage purchases by simplifying the buying process and reinforcing trust.
• Loyalty – After the sale, businesses nurture long-term relationships with excellent service and ongoing value to promote repeat business.

Funnel marketing improves customer targeting, boosts conversion rates, and provides valuable insights through data. Whether you’re in B2B or B2C, this approach helps align your business marketing strategies with your audience’s needs—driving smarter engagement at every touchpoint.

How to Capture More B2B Leads with Top Funnel (ToFu) Marketing

To keep their pipeline strong, sales teams rely on a steady flow of qualified sales leads—and that flow starts at the top of the funnel, not the bottom. In fact, 68% of businesses now prioritize ToFu marketing to build awareness, attract the right audience, and drive long-term growth.

Focusing only on sales-ready leads—like those who fill out a “Contact Us” form—limits your potential. Many high-quality prospects are in research mode when they first visit your site. They’re not ready to buy, but they are looking for answers, insights, and solutions.

This is where top-of-funnel (ToFu) marketing comes in. By creating more entry points for early engagement, you capture a wider audience and start building relationships sooner. These early-stage interactions often turn into high-value sales opportunities down the line.

Effective top-of-funnel strategies are designed to attract the right kind of B2B leads—people who fit your target profile and are likely to convert when the time is right.

Below are some of the most effective ways to capture and nurture top-of-funnel leads.

Video Content

Video remains one of the most powerful formats for engaging audiences at the top of the funnel. Many people prefer watching over reading, making video a key component of modern ToFu marketing.

Here are some effective video formats:

• How-to and explainer videos
• Interviews and webinars
• Short video courses
• Archived live streams
• Customer stories
• User-generated content
• Product demos (useful for both ToFu and mid-funnel stages)

Promote Valuable Content

At this stage, your primary goal is brand awareness. But don’t stop there. Ask yourself:

• Can we collect an email address?
• Can we encourage content sharing?
• Can we spark meaningful conversations?
• Can we guide prospects toward a try-or-buy scenario?

Promote a mix of product pages, offers, blog content, and more. The key is to test and iterate based on your audience’s engagement.

Tools and templates

Practical resources are highly effective in capturing top-of-funnel leads. HubSpot’s Website Grader is a great example—a simple tool that delivers value while collecting lead information.

Consider developing assets such as:

• Website widgets or plugins
• Pre-designed templates
• Calculators or assessments
• These tools provide value upfront and encourage engagement.

How-to’s

Prospects often search for answers to specific problems. Creating helpful, instructional content builds authority and encourages deeper engagement.

Examples:

• How to build an effective lead generation funnel
• How to align marketing goals with sales strategy
• This content type consistently performs well at the top of the funnel.

Infographics

Netizens love visual content. Infographics have proven to have enormous staying power as click magnets, making them an ideal top-of-the-funnel content play.

The behavior of social media enthusiasts has proven time and again, infographics do very well for inspiring social shares, earning backlinks, and republication. 

Account-based Marketing

Account-based marketing (ABM) strategies vary dramatically from company to company depending on your business and target audiences. The execution strategy outlined below focuses on ToFu ABM content execution best practices for B2B acquisition and expansion marketing.

In account-based marketing, it’s easy to over-invest in highly personalized content that delivers only small gains. To stay efficient, choose carefully which content needs personalization, how often it should be updated, and track ROI to make sure your efforts lead to meaningful results without wasting resources.

Learn how Callbox’s ABM delivered conversions for a Lab Equipment Firm targeting APAC for sales expansion.

Keep it Flowing

Once you have tactics like these in place, you’ll be well-positioned to keep your funnel full of new leads. And, once you can do that, you can keep your funnel flowing with acceleration activities like nurture campaigns that are designed to strengthen relationships and turn those leads into customers.

Related: How to Effectively Engage Top-of-Funnel Leads as a Sales Rep

Measuring Success at the Top of the Funnel

Implementing a solid top-of-funnel marketing strategy is just the start. To get the most out of your content and outreach, you need to track the right metrics that reflect early-stage success, not just closed deals.

Here are the key metrics to monitor in your ToFu leads performance:

• Content engagement: Are people watching your videos, downloading your guides, or spending time on your site?
• Email opt-ins / form fills: Are prospects sharing their info in exchange for value?
• Social shares and mentions: Is your content sparking interest and conversation?
• Traffic quality: Are you attracting the right B2B decision-makers, or just inflating vanity numbers?

Understanding how these metrics connect to your overall sales funnel strategy helps you see what’s working, improve your conversion funnel, and keep driving progress at every stage of the marketing and sales process.

Aligning Sales and Marketing for Funnel Success

Even the best top-of-funnel content can fall flat if there’s no coordination between marketing and sales. Alignment ensures leads move seamlessly from awareness to conversion, without friction or wasted effort.

To do this:

• Create shared goals: Align on marketing goals like MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) and how they feed into the sales process.
• Define lead stages: Use clear criteria to identify where a lead is in the sales funnel and when to pass them to sales.
• Use the same tools: Sync your CRM, automation platforms, and reporting dashboards for better visibility and communication.

For B2B companies, especially those operating in APAC or running account-based marketing services, this alignment is crucial to unlocking long-term growth. It ensures both teams are working toward the same outcome—moving leads through a smart, integrated b2b marketing funnel.

Start Strong, Stay Ahead with Top of Funnel Marketing

When done right, top-of-funnel marketing creates scalable momentum for your business. It introduces your brand to the right audiences, builds trust, and delivers a steady stream of qualified prospects into your marketing and sales funnel.

B2B is getting more competitive than ever, and that’s precisely why you can’t afford to ignore the top of your funnel. With the right mix of content, tools, alignment, and partnering with a trusted B2B marketing agency, you’ll not only get leads, you’ll build a reliable, repeatable system for long-term growth.