The brand's media strategy prioritizes top-of-funnel entertainment to build massive, broad awareness. This continually fills the pipeline with new audiences, which makes lower-funnel, conversion-focused tactics like retargeting cheaper and more effective than chasing a limited pool of in-market buyers.

Apply the traditional marketing funnel framework to your social media strategy. Posts can be categorized as top-of-funnel (broad, motivational), middle-of-funnel (tactical, educational), or bottom-of-funnel (direct calls-to-action for demos or calls). This provides a simple yet effective structure for nurturing an audience.

Effective content exists at the extremes: either massive, high-production efforts like MrBeast or raw, authentic, phone-shot videos. The middle-tier—a professionally shot video from a conference room—lacks the polish of the high end and the authenticity of the low end, and therefore fails to resonate.

Companies should allocate a significant budget (e.g., 20%) to creating organic mid-funnel social content. Content that performs well organically should then receive media dollars for top-of-funnel (brand) and bottom-of-funnel (performance) campaigns, eliminating guesswork and waste.

The "How Italian Are You" series focused on community engagement, not immediate conversion. This top-of-funnel content created a brand-aware audience that was later retargeted with conversion-driven ads, proving brand-building can be more effective than constant sales pitches.

Modern content must serve three functions: driving immediate demand, building long-term influence to stay top-of-mind, and generating organic impressions that have an "equivalent value" to what the paid media team would otherwise have to buy. Most teams only focus on one or two.

While certain content formats (like text-only posts on LinkedIn) may currently win algorithmically, relying on them exclusively makes you one-dimensional. Deliberately mix in formats like video that build deeper brand equity, even if they underperform on short-term engagement metrics.

Unlike the traditional view of content as either top-funnel (brand) or bottom-funnel (conversion), HubSpot strategically positions its media like The Hustle in the "mid-funnel." This allows a single asset to generate broad brand awareness while simultaneously converting high-quality sales leads.

Instead of repurposing all content, identify the specific bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) pieces that already convert well. Turn these assets into multiple formats (e.g., blog into a YouTube video) and cross-link them. This creates a powerful, self-reinforcing ecosystem around your most valuable, lead-generating content.