Should we keep funding mid-funnel media?
No. Ditch the separate consideration portion of your media plan.
Consideration is real. People consider brands. You can measure consideration. Your brand might have a consideration problem. That still does not mean you need a third media bucket. Brand and conversion media should already be doing that job.
Brand and conversion already cover it.
You should never make a brand ad that is only "awareness." Brand should build salience — emotion-tied memory structures around buying situations — which by definition, cause consumers to consider you in the right moments.
On the other side of the plan, conversion should outline features, benefits, and the reasons to buy right now, causing people to consider you.
So all content and creative across the entire plan should create consideration, but a separate "middle piece" of the media plan is a distraction and waste of money.
Media is bad at finding "consideration" anyway
The mechanisms to identify someone in a consideration phase, versus brand or conversion, are not really there. We have people who are showing interest/buying signals (searches, content consumption, etc.) and we have people who are not (broad brand audiences). Taking that first bucket and trying to decide that some over-engineered subset are in a considering phase while others are in a buying phase is a fools errand. Plus, digital audience data isn't as strong as you might think (Neumann, Tucker & Whitfield, Truthset via AdAge).
The costs are the real reason to ditch mid-funnel media though
It is extremely expensive in that mid-funnel media:
- Fragments your media plan — the plan gets like 50% larger when you add a third component. (2 funnel stages > 3 funnel stages)
- Fragments your time spent managing, reporting on, and justifying that extra 50%.
- Fragments data signals, meaning the algorithms have less signal to optimize your campaigns off of because there are 50% more campaigns.
- Fragments measurement because most people break out consideration so they can add new metrics to their measurement plan. This is both a worthless distraction and it decreases the econometric measurability of the plan (again, more tactics, less data for each).
- Causes teams to start buying junk metrics like clicks (few exceptions: e.g. paid search, native advertising)
- Erodes executive trust. (see below)
The CEO and CFO problem
CEOs and CFOs do not know how to interpret the consideration portion of a media plan or what it actually did. Further, it's unnecessary complexity that isn't connected to business value. We need to be simplifying things for our top execs, not making them more complicated.
What to fund instead
This usually comes from people who are tied to "tracked" outcomes and need to add revenue to their contribution, even if it's at a loss (tracked ROAS <$1). To them, all brand media is cost with zero return because they cannot measure it, but in reality they should fix their measurement so they can invest in brand media to build salience and conversion to close the deal.
No middle fiction.
FAQ
What about considered, long-cycle purchases?
How bout I answer your question with another question, Hansel: How do you know when a user is in the beginning, middle or end of that long cycle? Do people never make one last broad consideration-looking search right before they make a final purchase? We're splitting hairs here and you should revisit the costs above to see if you think it's worth it. People showing interest or buying signals should be getting both the brand campaigns and the conversion campaigns. What more can consideration offer them? If you have an answer to that question, it may be a gap in your brand or conversion efforts. I'm not presuming to be all knowing on this topic. You may have a legitimate case, but in 15 years, I haven't seen one. A better play, if you have long sales cycles, is to build your email list and take people by the hand through their consideration phase because paid media is not the right tool.
What if brand tracking shows a consideration problem?
Focus on your messaging first and then explore how it is showing up in brand and conversion media. Do not assume a third media bucket is the cure.
Can we keep a small mid-funnel test?
I don't see any reason to, unless you have a very specific, and rare, situation, but I'm not sure what that is. See "What about considered, long-cycle purchases?"
What replaces the consideration line?
Nothing. Your media plan needs two parts: Brand salience. Conversion.