The Influencer Marketing Funnel: A D2C Brand's Guide to Every Stage

Creator programs touch every stage of the funnel, from awareness to repeat purchase, once you match the right play to each one. Seven experts map the stages below.

Key Takeaways:

• Creator programs touch every funnel stage: awareness at the top, consideration in the middle, conversion at the bottom; silo them and you can't prove their value.
• Match the program to the stage: no single creator program covers the whole funnel, so combine them deliberately.
• Reuse influencer content across touchpoints (ads, email, site) to multiply the return on every partnership.

The Role of Creator Programs in Your Marketing Strategy

Influencer marketing is an increasingly important part of the marketing mix for D2C brands. But what does this actually mean in practice?
It’s no longer the new kid on the block, but influencer marketing (and by extension, influencer marketers) are still fighting for credibility within brands’ wider marketing efforts.
Why? Because to get the buy-in to double down on influencer marketing, you have to articulate how creator programs will contribute to wider marketing and business goals. When creator programs are put in a silo, it’s impossible to demonstrate their full value.
By approaching creator programs in a more holistic way, it’s far easier to demonstrate how creator programs touch every stage of marketing, from awareness through to conversion:

Influencer marketing and the marketing funnel

To understand where influencers and creator programs fit into your marketing strategy, we need to bust out a framework you’ve probably seen hundreds of times— the marketing funnel.
While the marketing funnel shouldn’t be taken too literally (we all know the buyer’s journey in chaos these days!) it’s a very useful exercise for understanding how different types of creator programs map onto the different stages of the customer journey.

The marketing funnel segments the buyer’s journey into three key phases— awareness, consideration, and conversion. These are also referred to as top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel. Your messaging during each stage in the funnel needs to be closely tailored to consumer’s needs at that point in time.

At the awareness stage, marketing tactics focus on generating brand awareness and attracting new prospects. During consideration, brands need to educate potential customers and build trust, while conversion tactics are all about driving prospects to hit ‘purchase.’

Creator programs and brand awareness

During that top of funnel stage, brands need to get in front of as many relevant eyes as possible. so they can introduce their product and begin nurturing them into considering a purchase.
Note that ‘relevant’ is the keyword here; creator programs have a massive edge over traditional advertising because brands can select creators that have audiences they want to get in front of. This could be particular demographics i.e. stay at home moms, or communities that revolve about certain interests, such as beauty or fitness.

In sum, influencers offer brands a way to reach new audiences and test their product’s appeal amongst communities or niches they might not have targeted before, or dip their toe in the water of a new domestic or overseas market.
Note that certain types of creator programs are more suited to raising brand awareness than others. Ambassador programs and paid partnerships with high-profile influencers offer the best opportunities to increase reach by leveraging values-driven content to connect with audiences.

Driving activity down the funnel

In the early days of influencer marketing, most partnerships were brand awareness-oriented. Tactics and toolkits hadn’t evolved to manage campaigns at a more granular level and attribute conversions to specific actions taken by creators, like sharing a promotional offer and a link to a brand’s website.

Today, influencer playbooks look very different. The rise of affiliate programs (and software solutions to manage them effectively) have transformed how brands are approaching creator partnerships, making it possible to set very specific KPIs or website traffic or direct-response conversions.

The goal of affiliate programs is to drive purchases by partnering with creators who have highly engaged communities. Equipping them with unique discount codes and referral links enables much stronger attribution, so you can see which creators and which types of content are sending prospects to your website and encouraging purchases.

Putting it all together

There’s no single creator program that will impact each stage of the marketing funnel equally. So, when you’re building an influencer program, you need to really intentional in what your goals are.
As brands evolve their programs, thinking through how to best leverage their influencer partnerships becomes key.

Leveraging influencer content across multiple touchpoints

Let’s step outside of the marketing funnel for a second. Thinking in terms of awareness and conversion is useful, but the funnel framework doesn’t capture all the ways that influencer content can be repurposed and distributed across your marketing channels.
UGC is immensely valuable in leveraging the relationship between the creator and their audience, helping to put potential customers in the position of using the product and how it’s going to make them feel. Other owned channels, such as email, blogs, and podcasts, are also fantastic places to share social proof and build credibility with different audiences.

And those are just the organic applications of influencer content—the use of UGC in paid media and ads is a whole other strategy altogether.
It goes without saying: If you want to use influencer content outside of a particular platform, you MUST negotiate for these additional use cases and include it within your contracts.