What’s the Right Content Mix for B2B SaaS? Benchmarks for Top, Mid, and Bottom Funnel

Summary

Explore the ideal balance for top, middle, and bottom-funnel content, and gain insights to steer your marketing efforts in the right direction. Read on for a practical guide to optimizing your content mix and setting the stage for marketing success.

By Brittany Lieu, Marketing Consultant at Heinz Marketing

A client recently asked me, “How much time and effort should we be investing in top-of-funnel content?”

My response: “No less than you are investing in mid and lower-funnel content.”

Although it is not the direct catalyst to conversion, top-of-funnel content plays a pivotal role in sparking interest and guiding consideration at the beginning of your prospect’s buying journey.

Reflecting on this conversation made me think. Is there a golden ratio of top, middle, and bottom funnel content?

Before we answer this question, let’s define what top-of-funnel (TOFU) content is and isn’t.

What Is Top-of-Funnel Content?

Top of funnel refers to the earliest stage of the customer journey. Content created in alignment with this stage is meant to resonate with prospects that are pain or problem-aware. 

A good way I like to think of it is, top of funnel content is what prospects are consuming as they loosen from the status quo and start to commit to change. In the world of search, these prospects would likely fall in the informational intent bucket of all the search intent types below. 

Types of Search Intent:

• Navigational Intent: users are looking to find a specific page
• Informational Intent: uses want to learn more about a specific topic or idea
• Commercial Intent: users are actively researching before making a purchase decision
• Transactional Intent: users are ready to make the purchase or specific action

What does this mean? Prospects are ready to learn what your brand has to share. At this stage of the funnel or customer journey, your goal should be to create visibility and establish credibility as an expert voice in your respective industry. 

Top-of-funnel content IS:

• Informative and educational, providing value without requiring immediate commitment 
• Positioned to address pain points or challenges faced by your target audience
• Come in a variety of format types to speak to every key buyer personas

Top-of-funnel content is NOT:

• Overly promotional or sales-pitchy
• Brand or product-centric, avoid mention of specific offerings 
• Gated or limited in access, avoid creating hurdles like form fills to access the content
  

At this stage, the goal is trust and relevance, not conversion.

The Real Content Mix: What the Data Shows

For years, marketers have floated frameworks like the 40-40-20 rule, suggesting 40% top-of-funnel content, 40% middle-funnel, and 20% bottom-funnel.

But recent benchmark data tells a more interesting story.

According to the 2026 B2B SaaS Content and Website Performance Benchmarks, most teams already overweight the top of the funnel:

• 31% awareness content
• 25% consideration
• 24% decision
• 20% post-purchase

At first glance, this seems reasonable. But when researchers compared high-performing companies with low-performing ones, a pattern emerged.

Low-performing teams skew heavily toward awareness: 39% awareness content

This often results in a large volume of traffic with limited conversion impact because there isn’t enough content guiding buyers through later stages of the journey.

High-performing teams, by contrast, distribute their content more evenly:

• ~30% awareness
• 24% consideration
• 25% decision
• 21% post-purchase

The takeaway is clear:

Successful content strategies aren’t top-heavy. They’re balanced across the entire buyer journey.

Finding the Right Balance

So how much top-of-funnel content is enough?

The data suggests a simple rule of thumb:

Aim for roughly 30% awareness content within a balanced full-funnel strategy.

Think of your content strategy less like a funnel and more like a system that supports buyers from first insight through final decision.

A healthy content mix might look something like this:

• 30% awareness: thought leadership, industry insights, problem education
• 25% consideration: frameworks, solution education, category guidance
• 25% decision: comparisons, case studies, ROI validation
• 20% post-purchase: onboarding, adoption, and customer expansion

In summary, finding the right mix of top, middle, and bottom-funnel content is like creating a recipe – it’s all about balance. While top-of-funnel content may not be the grand finale with prospects, think of it as the friendly usher at the beginning of your customer’s journey. As we close, remember to give that top-of-funnel content the attention it deserves to set the stage for marketing success.

Curious about how we help B2B brands create effective content? Connect with one of our experts today.