Read time: 5 minutes

Welcome back to our mini-series on raising from a point of strength! In the previous lesson, we delved into the importance of a solid Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and how to break it down into actionable components. Today, we're diving headfirst into the top of the funnel (ToFu) to explore how you can effectively find and attract leads.

If you've ever wondered where your startup's next customers will come from, this lesson is for you. We'll equip you with strategies and insights to ensure your ToFu efforts not only capture leads but also align with your overall GTM strategy for maximum impact.

Before we officially founded Bedrokk, we wanted to validate that there was, in fact, a real problem in the market, so we sent surveys to 20+ early-stage startup founders to understand what their main challenges were when it came to business traction - we weren’t surprised to see that at least 50% of them struggled with finding leads, and if we learned anything from the last lesson is that without any leads coming into the funnel well, you can’t make any business.

Funnily enough, only 12.5% mentioned that they had trouble defining their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) - where actually defining your ICP is a critical part of finding leads for your business, since without it, you will have the wrong messaging on your website or you will look in the wrong areas for your leads and worst case scenario, both.

Let’s learn how to develop a bulletproof Top of the Funnel (ToFu) strategy that will help your startup never run out of leads again!

“Traffic is not created, it already exists”

A big misconception when it comes to ToFu is that founders (and people) think that traffic and leads are “created” when in reality they already exist and all you need to do is find them, hook them, sell them on the story, and turn them into potential customers so they will eventually pay for your product/services. It’s simple, but, not easy to implement.

Here are the five key elements that you need to know before implementing your strategy:

1. Creating your customers

   Since at the end of the day, we’re selling to people, there are ultimately two things that will make them buy → a. They are moving away from pain or b. moving towards pleasure. Your ICP should be within at least one of these two categories, so the best way to define your ICP is by putting yourself in their shoes and writing down what is it that they think or say that will make them move away from pain or move towards pleasure.
   

2. Searcher vs Scroller

   Once you have defined your ICP, the next step is to define the kind of lead and have a different flow for the leads that are actively searching for your solution vs. the leads that are scrolling through and you need to plant the seed.

3. Where do they congregate

   This is a very important part since this will help you identify where you can find your ICP, for this you can ask questions like: what are the top websites they visit? What forums or message boards are they part of? What FB groups are they part of? Which influencers do they follow on social media? What podcasts do they listen to? What newsletters are they subscribed to? What blogs do they read? What channels do they follow on YT? What keywords are they searching in Google?

4. Adding up the traffic

   Now that you’ve identified where your potential leads are congregating you can then add up all the traffic to understand the potential number of leads that you could reach if you were to put your product/service in front of them.

5. How can we get our message in front of them

   Now it’s a matter of understanding how can you capture their attention with a captivating hook to then share a compelling story that will get them excited enough to try your product/solution and get them into the next part of the funnel.