If you only invest in what converts, you’re undervaluing what works

To make smart marketing decisions, we must understand how people move from first interaction to final conversion. But too often, what gets measured most easily drives the strategy.

That usually means prioritizing the bottom of the funnel — where conversions happen — at the expense of the stages that make those conversions possible in the first place.

The standard funnel, misunderstood

The standard marketing funnel has three general stages: 

• Awareness.
• Consideration.
• Conversion. 

It’s called a funnel because the audience narrows at each stage. Not everyone who becomes aware of a brand will consider it — and not everyone who considers it will convert. But everyone who does convert had to start with awareness and move through consideration. Each stage plays a distinct role in getting them there.

Over the years, however, many marketing analytics tools have trained us to place most — if not all — of the value on last-touch channels at the bottom of the funnel. Think of it like a restaurant. There’s:

• A host who seats guests.
• A runner who fills water glasses.
• A cook who prepares the food.
• A server who takes orders and payments. 

Each role contributes to the dining experience, but only the server handles the transaction. If we looked only at last-touch data, 100% of the revenue would be attributed to the server. That’s not necessarily a problem — until it informs how we staff the restaurant.

If we hired based solely on last-touch revenue, we’d only bring on more servers. But those servers won’t have much to do without enough cooks to make the food or hosts to seat the guests. This is the same issue we run into in marketing when we focus only on conversion channels.

Dig deeper: Why full-funnel marketing is key to profitability

Proving impact doesn’t guarantee good strategy

Many marketers say they can invest in the upper funnel if they can prove how it impacts the bottom line. And while that’s technically possible, the data is often misunderstood or misapplied.

Back to the restaurant analogy. Imagine we calculate that the runner filling water glasses contributes $0.25 in revenue per guest. Leadership accepts the number, and all seems fine. But the next month, they decide to serve each guest four glasses to increase that figure to $1. 

When overall revenue doesn’t budge, they scrap the water service entirely to see if it makes a difference. The calculation was correct — but not meaningful. It didn’t support better decisions. It just created more confusion.

Quantifying the full funnel’s impact

Proving the impact of early-stage marketing isn’t about guessing or relying on weak proxies. It requires mapping the full user journey, tracking how each touchpoint influences the next and assigning the right KPIs to each stage.

Map the actual user journey

The first step to quantifying the impact of each channel is to build a user journey map. This outlines how people move through your marketing touchpoints to conversion. A typical journey might look like this:

• Awareness: Display, video, earned.
• Consideration: Social, search.
• Conversion: Website.

Determining the intended path isn’t enough. You also need to confirm whether users follow it. While some people will move back and forth between channels, your focus should be on how the majority (or plurality) progress through the funnel.

Account for time to convert

Another key aspect of the user journey is understanding how long it typically takes someone to move from first touchpoint to conversion. Some offerings naturally require longer sales cycles. 

For example, buying a car might take months and involve many touchpoints. In contrast, a bottle of salad dressing might go from awareness to purchase in seconds.

This matters for several reasons: 

• Longer cycles demand more resources: They require more attention, content and often higher marketing costs. Reducing the time to convert should be a sustained effort.
• It helps you anticipate delayed results: If you need to cut or reduce upper-funnel activity, knowing your typical timeline helps estimate when the impact will show up in conversion metrics.
• It prevents flawed conclusions: Because the effects of upper-funnel tactics aren’t immediate, teams often assume they’re not working — when they may take longer to influence the bottom line.

Dig deeper: Beyond the funnel: A new approach to content marketing

Measure the relationships between channels

Once you understand the user journey, the next step is to calculate the relationships between channels. Starting with your conversion metric, halo analyses can help reveal how upstream channels influence downstream ones.

For example, you might measure the effect of display ads on traffic attributed to social or search. This is important because most web analytics tools don’t capture the full contribution of upper-funnel channels like display.

If you’re unaware of that hidden influence, you might wrongly conclude that social or search did all the work — when in reality, display helped drive those interactions.

Test for incrementality

Once you’ve calculated the relationships between channels, the next step is to run incrementality tests. These answer a common marketing question: How many more conversions will I get if I invest X more dollars in channel Y?

Returning to the restaurant analogy, this is like figuring out how much more revenue we’d generate by hiring another cook or host — not just another server.

In marketing, this kind of insight is essential for building a well-balanced mix that makes the most of your budget.

Dig deeper: What your attribution model isn’t telling you

Set KPIs that match the funnel stage

Channel relationships also help you identify the right KPIs for each stage of the funnel — especially the upper funnel. For example, expecting a display ad to drive full-funnel conversions is unrealistic. Someone might click a display ad for a $5,000 designer bag and immediately buy it, but that would be rare.

Once you’ve mapped how channels influence one another, you can measure more appropriate relationships. For instance, you might track how display clicks lead to branded search activity. If that connection is strong, you might then look at how branded search leads to engaged website visits and how those visits ultimately convert.

With that data in hand, you can assign meaningful KPIs to each stage:

• Display ads can be held accountable for driving clicks and branded search.
• Branded search can be evaluated based on engaged site visits.
• The website remains responsible for driving conversions.

Each level of the funnel supports the next. While not every stage drives conversions directly, they all contribute to the final outcome.

Make what’s hard to measure your advantage

It’s easy to default to channels that show immediate returns, especially when most data tools make it simple to track bottom-line impact. Of course, if a channel isn’t contributing, it should be cut. But the further up the funnel a channel sits, the harder it is to prove its value — unless you take the time to map the relationships and assign the right metrics to each stage.

That’s precisely why upper-funnel measurement offers a competitive edge. Because it’s harder to quantify, many of your competitors don’t do it. But if you’re willing to do the work, you’ll uncover insights they’re missing and make your budget go further in the process.

Think of it as a hidden opportunity. The payoff isn’t just better attribution — it’s better strategy.

Dig deeper: Orchestrating empathy where your funnel falls short