TOFUTop of Funnel
TOFU is the awareness stage of the marketing funnel: cold prospecting to people who don't yet know your brand.
What does TOFU actually mean?
Top of Funnel (TOFU) refers to the awareness stage of the buyer journey, the first time a prospect encounters your brand. TOFU campaigns target cold audiences that have never visited your website or engaged with your content.
TOFU creative leans on hooks and brand introduction rather than urgency or social proof. Direct-response language ('Buy now') underperforms here because the audience hasn't formed enough trust to act. Instead, TOFU creative earns attention with strong hooks, builds curiosity, and delivers a soft CTA, usually a click-through to a landing page or product page.
Most performance budgets allocate 60-70% of paid-social spend to TOFU because it feeds the rest of the funnel. Without consistent TOFU spend, retargeting (BOFU) audiences shrink and overall ROAS declines even as retargeting campaigns appear to be performing well.
Example
A new DTC supplement brand spends $30K/mo on Meta. $20K (~67%) goes to TOFU campaigns targeting cold lookalikes; $10K goes to retargeting and brand-search. Without the TOFU spend, the retargeting pool would dry up within 30 days.
When it matters
TOFU is the most expensive but most strategic spend. Cutting it shrinks the entire funnel; over-investing in BOFU is the most common attribution mistake.
Related terms
MOFU
MOFU is the consideration stage: users who have engaged with your brand but haven't yet purchased.
BOFU
BOFU is the conversion stage: high-intent audiences ready to purchase, served retargeting and DPA ads.
Lookalike audience
A lookalike audience targets new users who resemble an existing source list, typically your customers or your high-LTV cohort.
Retargeting
Retargeting serves ads to users who have already interacted with your brand: visited the site, watched a video, or added to cart.
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