Full-Funnel Marketing: From Fantasy to Real World Results

Full-funnel marketing refers to the practice of targeting customers at every stage of their buying journey — from awareness to consideration to conversion — using tailored content and tactics to guide them toward a purchase. The concept of the marketing funnel has been around since long before the internet, originally being developed by E. St. Elmo Lewis in 1898. Addressing the different parts of the funnel with bespoke tools and tactics has effectively served generations of businesses advertising and selling to consumers.

These days, though, this straightforward concept of a user journey has stopped applying to many buying cycles. There’s a lot more complexity in marketing now, so a linear, staggered funnel doesn’t necessarily ring true for sophisticated digital marketers. User journeys today vary widely depending on the person, the product, the channels they use, the transaction type, and more: Sure, it could look like a funnel, but it could equally look like a web of interactions on the way to a purchase.

Actually being effective across the entire range of customers’ actions has become much harder in this busy digital landscape, where users are constantly bombarded with messages and businesses have so many channel and tactic options to choose from.

I’ve talked with advertisers across industries and verticals about where they feel full-funnel marketing is still relevant, and where it’s struggling to continue being effective. I’ve seen firsthand how appealing the promise of full-funnel marketing is, but I’ve also seen how rarely it actually delivers without the right structure, partners, and expectations to support it. In this post, I’ll dig into what makes full-funnel marketing so challenging these days, and how savvy marketers can approach the buyer’s journey more effectively.

What Is Full-Funnel Marketing?

At its core, full-funnel marketing is a framework that recognizes that consumers don’t make purchase decisions instantly. Instead, they move through stages, first becoming aware of a need or a product, considering various options, and eventually making a decision to buy. Full-funnel marketing aims to tailor content, media tactics, and messaging to all of these distinct phases, guiding users gradually down the funnel toward a conversion.

What this means in practice is that marketers use different creative strategies, tactics, and platform tools for each stage of the funnel, with different KPIs for each:

• Upper Funnel (Awareness): Reaches broad audiences with brand storytelling, video, and display ads to build recognition and interest.
• Mid-Funnel (Consideration): Uses more targeted messaging, retargeting, and educational content to inform and nurture prospects.
• Lower Funnel (Conversion): Uses performance-focused tactics like search ads, product retargeting, or direct response campaigns to drive action.

Why Full-Funnel Marketing Is So Hard to Get Right

The funnel may have been simple and straightforward in the days before online marketing, but for advertisers and marketing teams in the digital era, the funnel has become ever more fragmented. The new reality is that most advertisers struggle to execute full-funnel marketing successfully, especially in digital environments where consumers are continually moving across devices and channels. There are a few key reasons why:

Fragmented Platforms and Data

Upper-funnel campaigns might live in a brand-focused DSP, mid-funnel engagement might happen via social media or email platforms, and lower-funnel action might take place in ecommerce or search tools. Stitching these efforts together across platforms is technically and operationally complex.

Creative and Measurement Misalignment

Each stage of the funnel requires a different type of creative and a different KPI, yet many advertisers use a one-size-fits-all approach to creative, or they measure all campaigns with the same success metric (like ROAS), regardless of where they fall in the funnel.

Budget Allocation Challenges

It’s often difficult to justify upper- and mid-funnel investments because they don’t drive immediate conversions. This leads to over-indexing on lower funnel tactics, which can deliver short-term gains at the expense of long-term growth.

Vendor Over-Promise

Many platforms and partners promise full-funnel solutions, but fall short on delivery. Generalist platforms keep businesses from truly addressing the entire funnel appropriately. Which brings me to the most important part of this topic…

Generalist, Full-Funnel Platforms Can’t Get the Job Done Anymore

In recent years, demand-side platforms (DSPs) and some ad tech vendors have positioned themselves as full-funnel solutions. Indeed, many of them offer features for campaign deployment right across the awareness, consideration, and conversion stages. But the problem is that, due to the complex nature of full-funnel marketing, addressing all stages of the funnel is in no way the same as being excellent at each of them.

To be truly effective at any single stage of the funnel requires:

• Deep expertise in the media channels that work best at that stage.
• Purpose-built technology to optimize for the relevant KPIs.
• Creative tools to match the mindset and intent of the audience.

Achieving this across all funnel stages demands significant investment, specialization, and focus — something few generalist vendors can realistically offer. What you end up with instead are platforms that do a passable job at everything, but don’t drive exceptional results anywhere.

What’s really problematic is that these platforms lack the technology to actually move a consumer from one stage of the funnel to the next. They may serve ads at multiple stages, but can’t orchestrate a sequence that actively progresses a user from passive awareness, to engaged consideration, to being ready to buy.

Why Best-Of-Breed Can Be a More Suitable Approach

As I’ve talked with advertisers and explored the various technology options available, I’ve come to realize that businesses trying to address the whole funnel would be better served by assembling a best-of-breed stack — that is, a curated set of specialized partners, each optimized for a specific stage of the funnel, united by a shared understanding of how to pass the baton downstream.

As an example, a company advertising throughout the entire funnel might assemble a stack that looks like this:

• A brand awareness vendor specializing in CTV or premium video, with advanced reach and frequency tools.
• A mid-funnel vendor focusing on content marketing or engagement of target audiences, prospecting based on purchase intent signals, and retargeting capabilities.
• A conversion vendor offering granular performance optimization, real-time bidding for e-commerce, or advanced attribution modeling.

No less important to the specialization in each stage or type of interaction, is the ability to connect between them, and actually drive potential customers towards a sale. Even within some of the larger platforms, these stages remain siloed and disconnected. When savvy marketers are able to make these best in class vendors and platforms work together, the business achieves:

• Superior performance at each stage, designed by experts who live and breathe that segment.
• More agile measurement and optimization strategies that respect the nuance of each funnel stage.
• Greater transparency and control over spend, targeting, and outcomes.

Naturally, this approach requires more coordination and strategy, but for brands committed to long-term growth, the payoff is well worth it. In Taboola’s experience with thousands of clients, the advertisers who take the time to map their funnel, define stage-specific goals, and match them with the right tools, consistently outperform those who lean on a single, full-service vendor.

Tips for a Successful Full-Funnel Experience

If you’re an advertiser or agency leader trying to make full-funnel marketing work, here are a few guiding principles:

Start With the Customer Journey

Map out how your target customers move from awareness to action. Which channels do they use? What content do they engage with? What motivates them to convert?

Set Clear, Stage-Specific KPIs

Don’t measure awareness campaigns by conversions: Be sure to use appropriate metrics like brand lift, viewability, or engagement rate. Then, ladder these into mid- and lower-funnel KPIs like CTR, CPA, and ROAS.

Pick Partners With Purpose

Choose vendors who specialize in a particular stage, and who have proven results in your industry. Ask how their offering integrates into the broader journey.

Make the Connection

Make sure that the platforms chosen allow you to connect the dots and actually shift people “down the funnel.” Also, your CRM, analytics tools, and ad platforms should all talk to each other: This is key to understanding user progression and making real-time optimizations.

Test, Learn, and Iterate

Full-funnel marketing will always require tweaking and optimizing as you go, so build a feedback loop where performance data informs creative, targeting, and media spend decisions.

Key Takeaways

More than a century after its invention, full-funnel marketing still definitely plays a role for advertisers, but there’s an awful lot more complexity to contend with now. It’s not just checking boxes: It takes real understanding of the way consumer behavior flows from one moment to the next — how real people move, in real time, down a complex, nonlinear path to purchase.

Success in full-funnel marketing, then, depends not just on addressing each stage, but on creating momentum between them, so consider your audience, what their path looks like, and craft a journey with the right tools and KPIs to build your funnel from top to bottom.

The future of marketing isn’t about mastering the funnel in segments. It’s about engineering meaningful movement through it, turning fragmented touches into a cohesive, compelling journey that truly converts.