TOFU, MOFU, BOFU: why a single video cannot sell

Advertisers almost always call us with the same sentence: ‘I made a video, I put money behind it, and nothing happened.’ Nine times out of ten, the video was not bad. It was on its own.

An ad does not take someone from not knowing you to buying. It moves them forward one notch. If you only have one notch, everyone stays where they are.

The three stages, in one sentence each

TOFU, MOFU and BOFU divide the funnel into three moments. The terms stand for top, middle and bottom of funnel. Behind the acronyms there is only one question: what does the person already know about you at the moment your video appears?

A BOFU video shown to someone who does not know you sells nothing. It irritates.

TOFU — the video that stops the thumb

At the top of the funnel, your competitor is not the other brand. It is the viewer's thumb. You have one or two seconds before they scroll on, and they did not ask for anything.

So a TOFU video never talks about you. It talks about a problem the person recognises immediately, or it shows something they are not used to seeing. The brand name may only appear at the end, and sometimes not at all.

• Length: 8 to 15 seconds. Beyond that, attention drops sharply.
• The hook lands in the first 2 seconds, with no logo and no introduction.
• No industry jargon: the person does not yet know what you are talking about.
• One message only. Two messages in a TOFU video means no message.

This is the stage where volume matters most. A hook that works cannot be guessed, it has to be found — and finding it means testing several. That is why our monthly plans include four videos rather than one: four different angles on the same product, of which usually only one really stands out.

MOFU — the video that proves

In the middle, the person has already seen you. They do not need to be surprised, they need to be reassured. This is the most frequently forgotten stage, and the one where the most sales are lost: the prospect understands the problem but does not yet know why it should be you rather than someone else.

• A real demonstration of the product or service, filmed without effects.
• Behind the scenes, method, workshop: whatever shows that you know your trade.
• A customer testimonial, if and only if the customer is real and named.
• An honest comparison: what you do, and what you do not do.

The format gets longer: 20 to 45 seconds. Here we accept that the person will watch for longer, because they have already shown an interest. The targeting changes too: we are no longer addressing a cold audience, but people who have seen the TOFU video, visited the website or engaged with the account.

BOFU — the video that prompts action

At the bottom, the person is ready. They compare, they calculate, they put it off. Your video now has only one job: to remove the last reason not to go ahead.

• The offer is stated clearly, with its price or its entry condition.
• The guarantee, the timeframe or the option to cancel is shown, not implied.
• A single call to action, repeated. Not three options.
• Short again: 10 to 20 seconds is enough.

This is the least creative and most profitable stage. The cost per acquisition is almost always the lowest in the account — which leads many advertisers to invest only there. That is a short-term mistake: without TOFU, the BOFU audience runs dry within a few weeks and the cost soars.

How we split production

Across four videos a month, our starting split is as follows. It then shifts according to what the numbers say.

Two TOFU videos because that is the stage where we are still searching. One MOFU and one BOFU because those two, once found, can be reused for months: a good proof video hardly wears out, whereas a hook wears out in three to six weeks.

Hooks wear out. Proof does not. That is why we produce more for the top of the funnel than for the bottom.

The order in which we build

Counter-intuitively, we do not start at the top. We start at the bottom.

Opening with TOFU is like pouring water into a pipe that has not been connected yet. You are paying for attention that nothing captures.

The three mistakes we see most often

• A single video pushed to everyone. It is bound to be too vague for the bottom and too salesy for the top.
• The entire budget on BOFU. Results are excellent for three weeks, then the cost per lead doubles for no apparent reason: the audience has simply been exhausted.
• Changing videos too quickly. A hook needs a few thousand impressions before it tells you anything. Cutting it after two days means never learning anything.

What it looks like in practice

The first month is used to set up the three stages and find the hook. The following months are used to replace what wears out — which, almost always, means the top of the funnel. That is exactly the rhythm of our monthly plans: four videos, spread across the three stages, and managed distribution that decides where every euro goes. For an example of a creative designed to feed a complete acquisition funnel, see the Sculpt Body Marrakech case study.