Mid-Funnel Journey 101

While the top and the bottom of the mid-funnel journey are relatively easier concepts to grasp, the middle of the funnel encapsulates a breadth of marketing touchpoints and objectives that in aggregate aim to develop a user’s understanding and consideration for the brand. And as such, evaluating activity and optimizing investment is much more complex in the mid funnel compared to anywhere else in the acquisition journey.

In this week’s article, Jerome Velasquez, Product & Solutions Director, explores the importance of the middle funnel and proposes ways for its measurement.

What is the mid-funnel?

The mid-funnel is the stage of the acquisition journey where audiences who have been made aware of the brand or have shown initial interest or consideration but have not converted reside. Consumers here are actively seeking information, comparing options, and assessing value propositions. Advertising’s role in this step is to nurture the relationship with the prospect through delivering informative content that builds confidence and trust with the brand. It is also to reinforce memory structures about a product or a service that they’ve recently been made aware of.

Effective mid-funnel activity

Crafting effective campaigns in the mid-funnel requires understanding that users here have moved beyond the initial curiosity sparked by awareness campaigns and are now primed for deeper interaction. This means that effective communication must include elements of:

• Content personalization driven by effective user segmentation to address specific concerns, evaluation criteria, and/or information gaps of each segment
• Educational content that empower consumers with valuable information that aids their decision-making process.
• Allowing interactivity and/or engagement e.g. social channels, demo, etc.
• Social proofs and competitor comparisons to highlight unique value proposition.
• Consistency in messaging within the mid-funnel across all channels to ensure that the deeper messaging here is not lost in translation

Measuring effectively

When evaluating the mid-funnel, it is not enough to successfully incorporate elements of an effective campaign. You must also set up your campaign with measurement in mind. Because of its wide scope, the mid-funnel must be optimized against its own set of measures. Moreover because the mid-funnel is responsible for the majority of the diversity in marketing communication messaging and channels, we must allow for a wider range of measures which can be vast in comparison to the single measures of conversions at the bottom of the funnel or reach at the top of the funnel. Effective measurement in this funnel step must go beyond cost per click or page lands, and it should include the following as applicable to the medium:

• Engagement metrics such as time on site, bounces
• Content consumption volume and quality such as percentage of video viewed, documents downloaded, scroll depth on content pages, webinar attendance
• Social engagement such as shares, comments and replies
• Attribution signals particularly relating to assists on conversions

Given this breadth of measures, media selection and evaluation relies on which measures most resonate to or which most likely lead users down the funnel to the final goal or conversion of the campaign event.

Ignoring the mid-funnel allows opportunities for the brand to fall out of consideration and top of mind awareness for a significant base of users. Therefore we must always keep this phase in mind in our comms strategy. And when doing so, we have to be more mindful with how tricky measuring this can be. Get in touch with an ADMATICian today to understand how we can help you get started with effective measurement of the mid-funnel.