Audience-Aligned Top-of-Funnel Media
Create media that attracts the people most likely to join your business ecosystem
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 94%
Audience-Aligned Top-of-Funnel Media starts with the people the business ultimately needs to reach, then designs a show, podcast, or content property around their interests. The media provides broad awareness, but its subject, guests, and insights remain connected to the company's market and expertise. Genuine creator interest is an important input because it makes sustained interviewing and narrative-building more likely. The output is not merely a collection of leads; it is an invitation for relevant people to follow the journey, recognize the brand, and eventually enter its learning or commercial ecosystem. By making the media valuable on its own, the company earns attention before requesting a transaction while avoiding the common trap of becoming famous to an audience that will never participate.
Origin
Extracted from The Jasmine Star Show as Marcus Murphy described The Dig as a talk show and awareness vehicle connected to Five's athletic and business-learning audiences.
Core principles
- 01Attention initiatives should connect directly to business strategy
- 02Media should aggregate relevant potential customers and community members
- 03The creator's genuine curiosity sustains consistent production
- 04Useful content can invite participation before asking for a purchase
How to run it
- 1
Define the audience avatars
Identify the buyers, users, partners, and community members the business needs to attract. Distinguish each audience's interests and reasons for engaging.
Pro tip Prioritize relevance over the theoretical size of the audience.
Watch out Broad targeting can produce attention without commercial value.
- 2
Design a valuable media premise
Create a recurring concept that gives the target audience useful information or compelling access. Make the premise strong enough to stand independently of product promotion.
Pro tip Build around a question the creator genuinely wants to explore repeatedly.
Watch out A disguised advertisement will struggle to earn trust.
- 3
Tie the premise to positioning
Select topics, guests, and narratives that naturally reinforce what the company wants to be known for. Keep the association understandable without forcing product mentions.
Pro tip Use guests who embody the expertise or outcomes the brand supports.
Watch out Trending subjects can dilute positioning when they attract the wrong audience.
- 4
Create the invitation
Give viewers a way to join the journey through a community, subscription, event, or learning environment. Frame participation as the next useful step rather than an immediate sales demand.
Pro tip Match the invitation to the content the audience just consumed.
Watch out Do not measure success only by direct purchases from each episode.
- 5
Measure audience fit
Track who engages, what they consume next, and whether the media improves recognition among priority audiences. Adjust topics when reach grows but relevance falls.
Pro tip Combine reach metrics with audience quality and downstream participation.
Watch out Large view counts can conceal weak strategic alignment.
In the wild
A company serving athletic organizations launches a talk show featuring elite athletes and performers. Interviews uncover the unseen preparation, business systems, investments, and personal foundations behind visible success. Athletic departments encounter a credible brand, while entrepreneurs and fans discover a learning community built around the same expertise.
→ One media property builds recognition among institutional buyers and attracts individual learners into the wider platform.
Common mistakes
Getting famous to the wrong people
High reach is strategically weak when viewers have no connection to the company's buyers, users, or community.
Launching media without a business link
A show can consume significant resources while producing no meaningful awareness or participation for the company.
Sacrificing audience value for promotion
People will not keep watching content that exists mainly to advertise the underlying product.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for founder-led companies that can educate or entertain a clearly defined customer and community audience.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for organizations unwilling to invest consistently in media or associate a visible personality with the brand.
From the transcript
“I think every single company needs a top of funnel awareness play, right? Because attention is hard to get.”
“it should be tied in directly to aggregating an audience of potential avatars, but also just the brand recognition as well.”
“You want to get famous for people who will buy from you, right?”
From the episode
Being Ok When You Don’t Know What’s Next With Marcus Murphy