Here's how most people think about funnels:
- Top of funnel (TOFU): People who are problem-aware but don't know about specific solutions or brands yet.
- Middle of funnel (MOFU): People who are solution-aware and comparing different approaches.
- Bottom of funnel (BOFU): People who are ready to buy, comparing specific brands or platforms.
This makes perfect sense in a search context because search has explicit intent baked into every query.
Someone searching "how to improve my marketing performance" is top of funnel: they know something's wrong, but they don't know what the fix is yet.
Someone searching "how to hire a marketing freelancer" is middle of funnel: they've identified a solution (hire someone), they're just figuring out how to do it.
Someone searching "best places to hire freelancers" is bottom of funnel: they're comparing specific platforms.
For example, someone searching "Demand Curve matchmaking" is as bottom-of-funnel as it gets: they know exactly what they want and who they want it from.
You can segment these people cleanly because their search query tells you their intent.
But social ads don't work this way.
Social ads have no reliable intent signal
When you run ads on Meta, LinkedIn, or TikTok, you're not targeting intent. You're targeting demographics and psychographics.
You can target "founders of SaaS companies with 10-50 employees." You can target "people interested in marketing and growth." You can even build lookalike audiences based on your best customers.
But none of that tells you intent.
A founder scrolling LinkedIn might be actively looking to hire a marketer right now. Or they might have hired someone last week. Or they might be three months away from even thinking about it.
You have no idea. The platform has no idea. The founder might not even know yet.
So when we talk about "top of funnel" and "bottom of funnel" in social ads, we're really just making educated guesses based on weak proxies:
"Top of funnel" on social = broad cold audiences. People who've never heard of you. Could be millions of people. Some have high intent right now. Most don't.
"Middle of funnel" on social = lookalikes or engaged audiences. People who share characteristics with your customers, or people who've engaged with your content. Still no real intent signal—they just look like people who might care.
"Bottom of funnel" on social = retargeting. People who've visited your site, watched a video, or engaged with your brand in some way. They're brand-aware, but that doesn't mean they're ready to buy. They might have clicked out of curiosity. They might be researching for six months from now.
The funnel stages we use in social ads are mostly a labeling convention, not a reflection of actual buyer readiness.
Why this breaks traditional funnel thinking
Most founders build funnels like this:
- Run top-of-funnel ads to build awareness
- Capture emails or leads
- Nurture them through a sequence
- Push them to convert with retargeting
This works great when you have intent signals (like search). You know someone searching "best CRM for startups" is actively evaluating, so you can build a nurture flow that matches that timeline.
But in social ads, you're spraying a broad audience where:
- 1% might have high intent right now and will convert immediately
- 10-20% might have moderate intent and will convert after a few touches
- The remaining 80-90% are anywhere from "vaguely interested" to "won't need this for a year"
If you try to nurture all of them the same way, you're either:
- Over-nurturing the 1% who were ready to buy anyway (annoying them)
- Under-nurturing the 80% who need way more time (losing them before they're ready)
Traditional funnel logic assumes people move linearly through stages. Social ads assume people are scattered randomly across a timeline you can't see.
What actually happens when someone sees your social ad
Let's say you run a cold ad to a broad audience of 100,000 founders.
Scenario 1: High intent right now (1-2%)
They see your ad. They already have the problem, they're already looking for a solution, and your ad happens to show up at the right time. They click, they sign up or buy. Done. Ads worked.
Scenario 2: Moderate intent, needs a few touches (10-20%)
They see your ad. They're interested, but they want to make sure you're legit. They visit your site, maybe read a case study, see a retargeting ad a few days later, then convert. Ads worked, but it took multiple touches.
Scenario 3: Low or future intent (80-90%)
They see your ad. Maybe they click, maybe they don't. They're not ready to buy right now. Maybe they'll need this in three months, maybe never. If you retarget them aggressively, you're wasting money. If you don't stay in front of them at all, they'll forget you exist by the time they are ready.
The key insight: You can't predict which scenario someone falls into when they first see your ad.
All you can do is:
- Put a strong ad in front of a broad audience
- Let the high-intent people self-select and convert
- Retarget everyone else and let time sort it out
Why "just get the ad out there" is often the best strategy
Here's what a lot of founders get wrong: they try to build elaborate nurture sequences before they even know if the core offer resonates.
They spend weeks building a 7-email drip campaign, a lead magnet funnel, and a retargeting strategy for three different audience segments.
But it's all wasted energy if your top-of-funnel ad isn't good enough to convert the 1-2% of people with high intent right now. No amount of nurturing will fix it.
The highest-leverage move is to nail the top-of-funnel ad first.
If the ad is strong:
- High-intent people will convert immediately
- Moderate-intent people will engage, visit your site, and convert after a few touches
- Low-intent people will ignore it or file it away for later
If the ad is weak:
- High-intent people won't convert because the message didn't land
- You'll attract the wrong audience
- Your retargeting pool will be full of people who were never going to buy anyway
So the play is: Get a really good ad out there. Let the market tell you who has intent. Then retarget everyone else until their intent grows.
You're not nurturing people through a funnel. You're staying visible while their timeline catches up to your offer.
How to think about "funnel stages" in social ads
If we accept that social ads don't have reliable intent signals, here's a better mental model:
Top of funnel = Broad testing ground
Goal: Find out if your message resonates with anyone, and see who raises their hand.
Audience: Cold, broad, or interest-based. Could be millions of people.
What success looks like: A small percentage converts immediately. A larger percentage engages (clicks, visits, watches). You're gathering signal, not driving mass conversions.
Common mistake: Expecting high conversion rates. You're fishing in the ocean here—most people aren't ready.
Middle of funnel = Engaged but not ready
Goal: Stay in front of people who showed interest but didn't convert.
Audience: Lookalikes based on your best customers, or people who engaged with your content but didn't take action.
What success looks like: Slightly better conversion rates than cold traffic, but still mostly gathering future buyers.
Common mistake: Treating this like "warm leads." They're not warm—they're just statistically similar to people who bought. Most still have no intent.
Bottom of funnel = Brand-aware, waiting for the right moment
Goal: Convert people who already know you exist and are waiting for the right time.
Audience: Website visitors, video viewers, people who clicked an ad but didn't convert.
What success looks like: Higher conversion rates, but on a longer timeline. Some convert fast, others take months.
Common mistake: Assuming everyone in retargeting is "ready to buy." They're not. They're just brand-aware. You're playing a waiting game.
What this means for how you build your funnel
Here's how to structure your social ads strategy when you accept that intent is invisible:
1. Test multiple top-of-funnel concepts, but keep the funnel simple
Don't build a complex funnel yet. Instead, test 5-10 different ad concepts with different hooks, angles, and value props. Run them to broad audiences.
Your goal isn't to find "the one perfect ad." It's to see which messages resonate enough that high-intent people convert immediately. You're looking for signal.
If one or two ads start converting 1-2% of cold traffic and the unit economics work, you have something. If nothing converts, you need to keep testing different angles. No amount of funnel complexity will outwork bad messaging.
The key insight: Don't build elaborate nurture sequences before you know what messaging actually works. Test at the top first.
2. Install a simple retargeting layer
Once you have traffic from your top-of-funnel tests, set up basic retargeting for people who visited your site but didn't convert.
Don't overcomplicate it. Just show them your best-performing ads again, maybe with social proof or a slightly different angle. You're reminding them you exist, not trying to "nurture" them through some elaborate sequence.
3. Let time do the work
Some people will convert in 24 hours. Others will take three months. You can't control the timeline, you can only stay visible.
Keep testing and running cold ads to feed the top of the funnel. Keep retargeting people who showed interest. Let the high-intent people convert when they're ready.
4. Add complexity only when you have signal
Once you know which messages resonate (based on which ads actually drive conversions), then you can build:
- A lead magnet to capture emails from people who aren't ready to buy yet
- A short email sequence (3-5 emails) that reinforces the value prop
- Segmented retargeting based on which pages people visited or which content they engaged with
But don't spend too much time and resources on this stuff upfront. Wait until you have proof that people actually care about your messaging.
A quick diagnostic: Is your funnel too complex for social ads?
Answer these questions:
- Do you have a lead magnet or email sequence before someone can see your core offer? If yes, you might be over-gating. High-intent people don't want to jump through hoops, they just want to buy.
- Are you running multiple campaigns targeting "different funnel stages" but seeing similar performance across all of them? That's a sign that your audience segmentation isn't actually correlated with intent. Simplify.
- Are you nurturing people for weeks or months before asking for a conversion? That works on search. On social, most people either convert fast or need way more time than your sequence allows for. You're better off staying visible with retargeting than trying to "nurture" them through an artificial timeline.
- Are you frustrated that your "bottom of funnel" retargeting audience isn't converting at the rates you expected? That's because they're not actually bottom of funnel, they're just brand-aware. Lower your expectations and lengthen your timeline.
Want help building a funnel that actually matches how social ads work?
Inside the Growth Program, we walk through frameworks like this one and help you build a funnel that fits your channel, not some generic template.
You'll learn:
- How to structure your ad strategy based on the channel you're using (search vs social vs cold email)
- When to add complexity (lead magnets, nurture sequences) and when to keep it simple
- How to measure success when intent is invisible and timelines are unpredictable
You can try the full program free for 7 days.
If you're tired of building complex funnels that don't match how people actually buy, this is worth a look.
👉 Check out the Growth Program here
Joey Noble
Demand Curve Creative Strategist
No comments:
Post a Comment