BOFU, MOFU, TOFU

TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU label content by where it sits in the buyer journey. Top-of-funnel is awareness content for people with a problem but no solution in mind ("what is merchant cash advance"). Middle-of-funnel is consideration content for people comparing approaches ("MCA vs business line of credit"). Bottom-of-funnel is decision content for people ready to act ("best MCA broker for restaurants", "MCA application requirements").

The elite sequencing is BOFU-first. Most content programs start at the top because the volume is biggest, then never reach the bottom where the revenue is. Reversing that, attacking the high-intent, lower-volume transactional and comparison queries first, produces revenue faster and builds the topical credibility to then climb the funnel. The bottom of the funnel is also where competitors are often weakest, because everyone is fighting over the head terms at the top.

For the AI surfaces, the funnel framing still holds but the citation dynamics differ by stage: informational TOFU questions are most likely to be answered in an AI Overview (so the value is in being the named source), while BOFU comparison and recommendation queries are where being the brand a model names directly translates to demand. We prioritize the audit's content recommendations BOFU-first by default.