@blvckledge: top of funnel keywords is goin...

top of funnel keywords is going to make millions for a lot of brands in 2026

instead of paying $5 per click for transactional terms, you target $0.10 searches that everyone writes off as “low-intent.”

here’s the full playbook:

we're getting $0.10 clicks because we've found a traffic opportunity that most brands ignore.

99% of them compete over MOF and BOF searches on Google.

“protein powder”
“running shoes”
“collagen powder”
“women’s skirt”

these are crowded, competitive, and super expensive

meanwhile, no one even considers bidding on TOF queries.

- "how to lose weight"
- "what causes bloating"
- "best way to get more protein"
- "natural ways to lower blood pressure"
- "how to improve gut health"

these queries have five to ten times the search volume, and they cost a fraction of what bottom funnel terms do.

we’re helping our clients go after keywords in the 50k to 250k monthly search range, paying under $0.5 cpc

here’s the play:

start by listing 10+ pain points, problems, or outcomes your product addresses.

every single one of those can be an angle the market is searching for.

go to your search term report, filter for “contains” and drop in these identifiers:

"How to"
"Best"
"Tips"
"Guide"
"Benefits"
"Side effects"
"What is"
"When to"

you'll see relevant terms that you could leverage.

then go to keyword planner to find and validate more searches

what you’re hunting for are:

- problem searches (“how to fix X,” “what causes X,” “why do i have X,” etc)
- solution searches (“best way to X,” “natural ways to,” “tips for X,” etc)
- educational searches (“benefits of,” “signs of x,” “X explained,” etc)

once you have those, build advertorials & listicles around the topic.

then launch two campaigns.

first, set up a standard search campaign

set initial budget to be 2-3x your average prospecting CPA

start with phrase and exact match only around the terms you just researched.

exclude every brand variation from this campaign.

pin 3-4 headlines in position 1 with your keywords

write ad copy to match informational intent. it should read like an article, not a page promoting a product

start with manual CPC/Maximize clicks to gather data

switch to Maximize Conversion once you hit 15 conversions/month

switch to target CPA once you hit 30 conversions/month

switch to target ROAS once you hit 50 conversions/month

increase budget by 20% every 3-4 days if performance holds

after that, layer in a dynamic search ads campaign with brand terms added as negatives.

optimize your seo meta titles as they’ll be pulled as headlines

set URL rules to strictly target your advertorial/listicle pages:

- "URL contains /blog/"
- "URL contains /guides/"
- "URL contains /articles/"
- "Specific URL: yoursite.com/how-to-improve…"

once this campaign is live, pay close attention to:

- what searches triggered your ads
- which page was served
- what headline was used

then tighten everything based on this data

this is one of the cheapest and most scalable ways to acquire new customers right now.

we’ve used this exact setup to help brands push into seven and eight figures.

so take this post, see how you can apply it for your brand and test it on your account.

and if you need our help setting it up, my dms are open

want to see the landing pages we use for this strategy?

we put them inside a swipe file of our best-performing LPs for Google Ads right now

grab them here:

resources.echelonn.io/most-profitabl…