There Are Three Types Of Content. Most Owners Run One. That's The Whole Problem.

Manual marketing had a good run.

But the teams winning right now aren't briefing, approving, and repeating. They're directing AI agents that execute the whole strategy for them.

The Agentic Marketing Summit (May 4–8) is a free, five-day event that shows you exactly how it works in practice. Not theory. Not a PDF checklist. Step-by-step insight to help you become an expert in AI marketing agents.

Hosted by 3x Inc 5000 founder Manick Bhan alongside the sharpest minds in the marketing world today.

The era of doing it yourself is over!

Join Free Today!

Three business owners. Same niche. Same expertise. Same offer.

One has 50,000 followers and is broke.

One has 5,000 followers and pays themselves $30k a month.

One has no followers and a $400k a year consulting practice.

The followers aren't the variable.

Tips don't sell strangers and stories don't sell anyone.

You need both. And a third piece. Most owners run one of the three forever and wonder why nothing works the way it should.

Think Big Minute #12

Three letters that fix this. TOFU, MOFU, BOFU.

TOFU is Top of Funnel. The job is attention. Strangers scrolling. They don't know you, don't trust you, aren't shopping. You have about 1.5 seconds before they scroll past. The job is to stop the scroll.

MOFU is Middle of Funnel. The job is trust. Warm audience. They've seen a few pieces from you. They're starting to think you might know what you're doing. The job is to prove you do.

BOFU is Bottom of Funnel. The job is conversion. People who already trust you and have the problem you solve. The job is to give them the reason to act now.

Stories are TOFU.

Tips are MOFU.

Offers are BOFU.

I ran MOFU at strangers for years and wondered why nothing was growing.

Here's what most owners get wrong.

The tip post feels like the most valuable thing you can publish. You're giving away expertise. Showing your work. By every internal measure it's the strongest piece you could ship.

A stranger doesn't care.

They don't have the context to know your tip is good. They don't know who you are. They don't know if your advice has worked for anyone. They don't know if you've ever done the thing you're claiming to teach.

The tip lands like someone walking up to you in a parking lot to give you investment advice.

Doesn't matter if the advice is right. The frame is wrong.

Stories work on the same stranger because stories don't need trust to consume. You don't have to know who I am to follow me through a scene. The story slips past the trust barrier because it isn't asking to cross it.

Then the tip works once they've been around. The trust is there. The tip is the payoff. They asked for it.

Then the offer works once the trust has been paid back enough times that buying feels like the obvious next step.

Here's the part most operators get wrong.

TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU are not different channels.

Same channels. Different content types. On every one.

Your LinkedIn needs all three. Your email list needs all three. Your YouTube needs all three. Your community needs all three.

What changes is the ratio.

I lived this for years before I figured it out. Here's how to actually run all three.

Stories. Founder lessons. Wide interest takes. Lessons hidden inside scenes. The stuff a stranger will stop scrolling for.

You're not selling here. You're not even teaching here. You're earning the right to do either of those things later.

But TOFU isn't only social. Your email list needs it too. The people who joined six months ago and forgot who you are need a story to bring them back. Your YouTube long form needs a hook that works on someone who clicked by accident. Every channel has cold audience inside it. Every channel needs some TOFU.

Measure TOFU on reach, follows, opt ins. Not sales. Measure it on sales and you'll kill the only thing actually growing your audience.

Tactics. Frameworks. Breakdowns. The "how I actually do this" content. The thing that proves you know your space.

This is where the expertise becomes an asset instead of a stranger handing out unsolicited advice. They've heard your story. Now you're showing the work behind it.

MOFU on social is the post that says "here's what I learned from that story I told you yesterday." MOFU in email is the breakdown of how a system you run actually works. MOFU on YouTube is the in depth teach.

Measure MOFU on engagement, replies, time spent, repeat consumption.

This is where you tell people what you sell, what it costs, who it's for, and how to start.

Operators tend to land in one of two camps on this one. Some never run BOFU at all. They post 100 free tips and feel weird asking for the sale once. They're broke.

The other camp runs nothing but BOFU. Pitch, pitch, pitch, link, link, link. They have an offer for every season, a sale every Friday, a discount code in every post. Their list is dead, their social is ignored, and they wonder why the same playbook that worked in 2018 stopped working.

Both are wrong. Both for the same reason. They picked one job and called it a strategy.

If you don't tell people what you sell, they don't buy it. There is no version of this where the audience figures out the offer on their own. You have to make it.

If all you do is tell people what you sell, they tune out. There's no relationship to convert because you never built one.

BOFU is the LinkedIn post that says "I'm taking on 3 new clients this month, here's what we do, here's the link." BOFU is the email that says "we have 12 spots open, this is what they cost, reply if you want one." BOFU is the YouTube video that's a product demo and a price.

People will tell you BOFU posts kill engagement. They're right. They also pay the team.

Roughly 1 in 5 emails to the list. 1 in 8 social posts. Regular pitches inside the community. A sales page that's actually findable. Calls to action that say what to do and how much.

Measure BOFU on revenue. Only revenue. Not opens. Not clicks. Revenue.

The mix per channel is the part nobody talks about.

Social. 70% TOFU, 20% MOFU, 10% BOFU. Strangers heavy.

Email list. 40% TOFU, 40% MOFU, 20% BOFU. Already warm. Can take more teaching and selling.

YouTube long form. 50% TOFU, 30% MOFU, 20% BOFU. Hook them cold, teach them, sell them, all in the same video sometimes.

Community or paid group. 20% TOFU, 50% MOFU, 30% BOFU. They paid to be there. Skip the warmup.

The numbers aren't gospel. The point is every channel needs all three. Just at different ratios.

The bridge is the whole game.

TOFU's job ends when a stranger pays attention. MOFU's job ends when attention turns into trust. BOFU's job ends when trust turns into a sale.

Run only TOFU. You grow an audience that doesn't buy.

Run only MOFU. You teach the same 12 people forever.

Run only BOFU. You sell to nobody because nobody trusts you yet.

Most operators run one or two of the three. The missing piece is what's holding them back. Some are missing BOFU and "doing well online" and broke. Some are missing TOFU and have a list that's slowly dying because nobody new ever joins it. Some are missing MOFU and have a cold audience and a hard pitch and nothing in between.

Find which one you're missing. That's the work.

Entertainment isn't a lower form of content than education. Selling isn't a lower form than either.

Three jobs. They run together. The business that runs all three on every channel beats the business with the better product almost every time.

If you're posting and not getting the result you want, look at your mix.

You're probably running one type of content at every audience and calling the whole thing a content strategy.

Tell stories. Teach what you know. Sell what you do.

Three jobs. Every channel. Different mix.

Think Big.

Costs rise. Clients delay. Pressure builds.

The Survival Hub gives you practical ways to respond from cutting costs to tightening operations and staying on top of revenue.

Built to help you take control when things feel uncertain.

Visit BELAY’s Survival Hub

AI agents already outnumber human visitors to your docs — now you can track them.

See your AI traffic!