Is TOFU Content Dead in The Age of AI?

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You can barely go a day without hearing about AI in content.

And that’s because of a single reason:

AI has disrupted content marketing.

And one of AI’s biggest victims is top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) content.

How does AI affect TOFU content? Should we stop creating TOFU content altogether?

In a moment, I’ll answer these questions based on my experience writing for this blog and clients.

Let’s dive in.

Why do businesses create TOFU content?

Businesses create TOFU content to achieve marketing goals, including:

Brand awareness

When people want to buy, they buy from brands they already know. 

Because of this, brands create TOFU content to help and create a positive impression on buyers early in the buyer’s journey.

Organic traffic

A large number of TOFU content pieces are around topics that attract thousands of search volume monthly. So, businesses invest in TOFU content to drive thousands of searchers to their websites.

For example, here’s Semrush data for “what is seo:”

Visitors from these searches can then visit other pages, including features pages to see what your product offers.

Lead generation

Many websites have lead generation forms to acquire leads. Sometimes, they sweeten the deal with lead magnets. 

Since TOFU content brings many people to the website, businesses have more opportunities to acquire leads.

Here’s a lead magnet in a HubSpot blog post:

Businesses can then nurture generated leads over time to convert them into customers.

Now, the million-dollar question is, does TOFU content still work effectively in achieving these goals?

In a moment, I’ll explore the changes AI has brought to content marketing and how your business should approach TOFU content.

How has AI disrupted TOFU content?

Here are two ways AI has disrupted TOFU content:

AI can create passable TOFU content

While AI can’t create mind-blowing content yet, it has a high chance of creating passable TOFU content

Why? 

TOFU content is more common, increasing the possibility that AI was trained on a lot of TOFU content. 

Then, people creating TOFU content say similar things about a topic, which helps AI summarize the common points. 

Here’s ChatGPT’s answer to “what is SEO:”

AI is good at aggregating content pieces and summarizing them, that is creating consensus content.

AI can cannibalize traffic to TOFU content

Because AI can summarize the main points of most TOFU content pieces, it will cannibalize traffic to those pages.

How? 

People who need short and straight answers can pop their questions to ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, or any other LLMs. And if they get a good answer, that’s a visit lost by a blog post to AI.

But even when people ask their questions on Google, they can see summaries from Google AI Overviews. If the summary makes sense to them, they’ll leave Google without clicking any of the website links.

Here’s the top of Google search results for “what is seo:”

So, a TOFU content page can maintain its position on the SERPs for a term and still get less organic traffic.

Nowadays, when discussing topics to write for clients, one of the factors I consider is whether AI can meet the search intent of the topic.

For example, AI can meet the search intent for “how to change WordPress tagline.” After seeing the instructions from AI Overviews, the searcher doesn’t need to click any of the search results.

Why create content for such a topic if your aim is to attract organic traffic?

If AI can create passable TOFU content and already cannibalizes traffic to existing pages, should we tear the TOFU content strategy sheet and throw it in the bin? 

Should you still create TOFU content?

Short answer: yes.

But there’s a lot of nuances attached to it these days.

If you’re creating TOFU content today, you have to adapt it to the current reality and your audience’s higher expectations.

Here are four shifts that can help your TOFU content achieve its goals:

Create educational content for audience not SEO

Many marketers see TOFU content as an SEO play, and the reason is simple: TOFU content can attract thousands of visitors because of the number of people searching for these terms.

So, if a website is able to rank for these terms, it has a pipe channeling thousands of visitors to its pages every month.

But some authoritative websites took this to the extreme. 

Websites like HubSpot created content for topics like how to create a shrug emoji and how to get Bitcoins, which are irrelevant topics to its products.

Now that AI has cannibalized this traffic strategy, it’s still no reason to stop creating TOFU content. But the mentality has to change.

TOFU content should be created with the intent to serve the reader. And it has to be relevant to your product.

For example, if you run a social media management tool, you can create content about social media management, which is TOFU content. But you’re doing it to educate your audience rather than just attract visitors through SEO.

Incorporate information gain into TOFU content

If you’re going to repeat what everyone has already said, what’s the point of creating the content?

It will be a waste of your time and the reader’s.

And Google also thinks this way. In Google patent for contextual estimation of link information gain, it says:

“An information gain score for a given document is indicative of additional information that is included in the document beyond information contained in documents that were previously viewed by the user.”

Information gain is even more vital for TOFU content because they tend to be similar.

Information gain lets you add more knowledge to the topic and stand out to your readers.

But how do you go about it?

Four ways to add information gain into your TOFU content include:

Exploring your personal experience to make important points. Your experience is unique to you, and it differentiates your content from similar pages.

For example, Ahrefs drew from its experience hosting the Ahrefs Evolve to create an event marketing guide on the Ahrefs blog.

Doing research and incorporating results into your content. Semrush featured the results of its AI marketing survey in its AI marketing guide.

Interviewing subject matter experts (SMEs) for new insights. Because of their experience and processes, SMEs can deliver unique information. 

To write a blog post about social media collaboration, I reached out to social media managers who have daily experience about the topic.

This helped to draw out insights about the topic.

Explore an uncommon angle. Challenge a common tactic that doesn’t work like before.

In a Masterful (formerly Copyhackers) blog post about long Facebook ads, Sarah Sal went against a common conception: people don’t read long ads on Facebook.

These help you add new information that readers won’t find in other content pieces about the topic.

Today, one of my major targets when writing for clients is to add information gain, whether it’s TOFU content or content at other stages of the buyer’s journey.

That’s the current reality of writing effective content.

However, keep in mind that your content shouldn’t be totally different from other content pieces about the topic (unless you’re writing thought leadership content). 

Shoot for a 20 to 40% difference from other content pieces. Anything above that, and you may confuse Google about the quality of your content. If you’re too different from top authorities on a topic, Google may assume your content is unreliable. 

Repurpose TOFU content for other platforms

Years ago, businesses saw blogs as their major TOFU content play. 

But today, many of your potential buyers don’t read blogs like before.

And to reach them, you have to go where they are.

Where?

LinkedIn, YouTube, podcasts, and offline events.

If you have high-performing blog posts, create YouTube videos about those topics to reach more people on YouTube. Also, embed that video in blog posts for visitors who prefer video.

Here’s Learn With Shopify’s YouTube channel featuring several marketing videos:

You can also invite industry experts to your podcasts to discuss topics relevant to your industry and product. These visitors will also promote your podcast, which means more brand awareness.

Moz runs MozPod with Chima, which brings SEO experts and business owners to discuss unique insights about their processes.

Another great place to promote your business is the social media platform for professionals: LinkedIn. 

But since people generally trust other people more than company pages, encourage employees to publish posts about your business. Through employee advocacy, they can show how they use your product or what a new feature means for users.

This way, it’s easy to educate customers on LinkedIn about product use cases and increase awareness. Even if you work with freelancers, you can ask for this as part of the content package (it may come at extra costs).

This makes sense since most people on LinkedIn have connections in their industry. So, many potential buyers are in their connections.

Ahrefs employees regularly post about the product on LinkedIn. And these posts reach more people than the official company account.

Here’s a post by Ryan Law, head of content marketing at Ahrefs, explaining useful Ahrefs features for content marketers:

Today, you have to repurpose your TOFU content to reach people who spend time on other marketing platforms.

Focus more on MOFU and BOFU content

There’s one reason to focus on middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) and bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) content:

They get you closer to acquiring leads and customers.

And they achieve these in many ways.

First, people looking for MOFU and BOFU content are closer to becoming customers than people at the TOFU stage. Someone searching “what is SEO” is far away from buying an SEO tool.

Second, it’s easier to execute product-led content in these content pieces. You can naturally show your product and how it helps prospects.

Third, people searching for MOFU and BOFU topics often want human perspectives. For example, someone searching “how to do keyword research” won’t trust AI Overviews to teach them.

So, they’ll visit your blog to see the process (and how they can use your tool for it).

If I’m writing (or creating content strategy) for a SaaS client with a new blog, I’d focus on BOFU and MOFU content.

Because people looking for this content are already in the market for the product I sell.

It’s better to attract these people first than people far away from conversions.

How do you create MOFU and BOFU pieces?

Research MOFU and BOFU topics that your ideal buyers want more information about. You can get these topics from customer interactions, keyword research tools, and forums.

Then, prioritize topics according to their value for your business.

Focus on content pieces that let you show expertise and contribute to your business’s bottom line.

Once you exhaust MOFU and BOFU topics, explore TOFU topics.

Conclusion

TOFU content is not dead and will never be dead.

Why?

There will always be a need to educate new people in your industry.

But TOFU content needs to evolve with the times. It needs to focus more on helping your audience.

Businesses that can achieve this will continue to build trust with their audience. And the audience that receives value to solve problems will likely try your product when they need it.

If you need TOFU content that builds trust and helps readers solve critical problems, reach out to me about your needs.