Content Funnel by Audience Depth
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- —
This content-planning framework assigns different jobs to content at the top, middle, and bottom of an audience funnel. Top-of-funnel material addresses broad themes that can reach many people. Middle-of-funnel material covers more specific business lessons for an interested subset. Bottom-of-funnel content becomes highly technical or niche and is judged by whether it reaches the right people rather than by raw view count. The mechanism resolves the tension between reach and specificity: not every publication must attract a mass audience, because narrowly relevant content can establish expertise and prompt valuable action from qualified readers. A balanced creator deliberately produces for all three depths instead of forcing every idea to maximize views.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Create broad discovery content
Use widely relevant themes such as work, family, or life to reach people who do not yet know your specialized work.
Pro tip Judge this layer primarily by reach and discovery.
Watch out Broad attention alone may not establish the expertise needed for a high-value offer.
- 2
Publish applied lessons
Share business or professional insights that remain broadly useful but require more interest than the discovery layer.
Pro tip Use this layer to connect general interest with your specialized field.
- 3
Serve the qualified niche
Publish detailed material for people facing the exact problems addressed by your product, service, or expertise.
Pro tip Include the depth that experienced practitioners need, even when the topic appears too narrow for mass distribution.
Watch out Do not discard valuable specialist content merely because it cannot generate mainstream numbers.
- 4
Use layer-appropriate metrics
Measure broad content by reach and niche content by the relevance and potential value of the people it reaches.
Pro tip A thousand qualified readers can be more valuable than a much larger casual audience.
Watch out Applying the same view target to every layer distorts the content portfolio.
In the wild
Nathan described Nick Huber using broad posts about life, work, and family for discovery, business lessons in the middle, and detailed real-estate tax and depreciation threads for the smaller group likely to invest or hire one of his companies.
→ Low-reach specialist material could still reach the people most valuable to the business.
Common mistakes
Demanding mass reach from every post
Specialist material may create more business value despite attracting fewer total readers.
Publishing only niche material
Without discovery content, too few new people may enter the audience.
Publishing only broad material
Large reach without depth may fail to demonstrate expertise or serve qualified prospects.
From the transcript
“he'll have these top of funnel tweets that are about life and work and family”
“further down you know the middle of the funnel he's thinking about um okay what can I share about business”
“if it gets a thousand views from the right people that's insanely valuable”
From the episode
How Writing Online Will Make You A Millionaire - Nathan Barry (Founder of Convertkit)
Nathan Barry (Founder of Convertkit)