The Missing Middle 

Most businesses don’t have a marketing problem. They have a mid-funnel marketing problem.

Every audience breaks down into three groups:

People who know you: they’ve seen your ad or visited your site once.

People who get you: they understand what you stand for and how you can help.

People who buy from you: they’ve crossed the line of trust.

Most marketing energy goes to the first and third groups. Lead generation gets the headlines. Sales enablement gets the pressure. But the real growth opportunity sits quietly in the middle.

The question you should be asking is “What moves someone from knowing you… to getting you… to buying from you?”

Assess your marketing. My bet is you’ll see that little or no effort is expended on the middle of the buyer’s journey. The getting. This is a mistake because the middle is where trust forms. And trust is what converts.

Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm became required reading in Silicon Valley for a reason. It showed how different customers adopt products in different ways depending on their position on the diffusion of innovation curve, and how most startups die in the gap between early adopters and the early majority. 

The same thinking can be applied to the buyer’s journey and the hidden middle. Just like Moore’s customers, your prospects aren’t all in the same place. Some barely know you exist. Others are ready to buy. But most are stuck somewhere in between, trying to figure out if you’re worth their trust.

Let’s explores why that middle is so critical, why it’s often invisible in our metrics, and what you can do to close that gap once and for all.

Why the Middle Is Ignored

For decades, businesses could afford to skip the middle. It has always been there, but for Boomers and GenX, who made decisions based on authority, reputation, and brand familiarity, it wasn’t vital. If you looked credible, you got the sale. Simple.

Millennials and Gen Z changed the rules.

They don’t buy based on promises. They buy based on proof. They expect to experience your credibility before committing.

This group researches, compares, and reads reviews. They watch how you behave online before they believe your words. 

“Watch what they do, not what they say.” ~ Rachel Madow

That looping, non-linear behavior makes the mid-funnel essential, and it makes marketing based on the old model dangerously incomplete.

The straight line from awareness to purchase? It’s gone.

The Mis-Measured Marketing Trap

A CMO recently shared a story on LinkedIn that perfectly illustrates the problem.

Her CEO was furious. The CMO had just cut Google Ads spend by 80%. “Are you crazy?” the CEO demanded. “Google’s showing us an 8X ROAS!”

But here’s what happened next: revenue didn’t drop. New customer acquisition stayed flat.

Turns out, Google was capturing branded search demand that already existed, not new growth. People were already looking for the company. Google just happened to be there when they typed the name.

Then the CMO tried something else. She cut Meta spend.

Revenue fell. Hard. And here’s what else she saw—brand search volume dropped too.

Meta was creating demand. Google was harvesting it.

The lesson? Most marketing dashboards measure the harvest, not the cultivation. They credit the channel that touches the buyer last, not the one that made the buyer interested in the first place.

This is the blind spot that’s hiding the importance of the mid funnel. When you only measure activity, you undervalue the connection work that actually drives growth. You see clicks and conversions, but you miss the bridge that makes those conversions possible.

What Mid-Funnel Marketing Actually Does

The mid-funnel is the transition stage between curiosity and conviction.

It’s where prospects decide whether they trust you enough to move forward. It answers three unspoken questions:

• Do you understand my problem?
• Have you solved it for someone like me?
• Can I believe you?

These aren’t yes-or-no questions. They’re trust builders. And trust compounds over multiple micro transactions.

Some Mid-Funnel Marketing Tactics

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself” ~ Peter Drucker

Case studies and testimonials that explain the “why,” not just the results. “Show me the problem, the stakes, the solution, and the aftermath.”

Email nurture sequences that teach, and don’t pitch. “Give me something valuable before you ask for something.”

Retargeting ads that add value instead of repeating the offer. “I already saw your product. Now show me why it matters.”

Webinars or short workshops that help prospects self-qualify. “Let me discover if I’m a fit before we both waste time.”

Interactive tools or guides that provide insight before a sales conversation. Things like calculators, assessments, and diagnostic quizzes, when done well, allow the prospect to convince themselves that your solution is the best solution for them. They build trust, and trust becomes belief.

This isn’t “content marketing.” It’s relationship building at scale.

For more on mid-funnel marketing tactics, I suggest you read Mid-Funnel Marketing: 3 Tactics Every Marketer Should Use.

It’s the difference between someone saying, “I’ve heard of them,” and someone saying, “I’ve seen how they think.”

Measuring What Matters

Traditional analytics are built to track the transaction, which is why mid-funnel performance rarely shows up. So you need different methods.

Practical Ways to Measure Mid-Funnel Impact

Geo-split tests: Reduce spend in one region and compare total revenue impact. If revenue stays flat, that channel was just collecting credit, not creating growth.

Holdout testing: Pause one channel or campaign and observe whether overall sales change. Sometimes the silence tells you more than the noise.

Track branded vs. non-branded search volume: Increases in brand search signal mid-funnel strength. People looking for you by name means they already trust you enough to seek you out.

Monitor engagement and direct traffic: People who type in your domain, engage with remarketing ads, or click a link in an email are warming up. They’re moving from awareness to understanding.

Mid-Funnel Marketing’s Secret Measurement Trick

The most underused and least expensive measurement tool is talking with new customers. “What finally convinced you?” “How long did you consider us before buying?” “Describe the steps you took before deciding.”

Post-sale surveys and conversations with customers expose patterns your analytics can’t see. You’ll discover which emails actually got read, which case studies made the difference, and which content pieces shifted their thinking. You’ll hear how they talk about your product and your competitors. 

Dashboards can’t tell you what your customers are thinking. But your customers will, if you ask them.

This is why we built Marketing Sage Advantage. It analyzes customer interviews to map the actual journey buyers took, showing you which mid-funnel moments created trust and which ones you’re wasting effort on. Because the numbers tell you what happened. Your customers tell you why.

The Strategic Payoff

Mid-funnel marketing compounds trust.

It reduces lead drop-off, shortens sales cycles, and lowers acquisition costs over time. Better yet, it creates advocates before purchase. “Get the right customers for the right reasons.” Customers who trust you are customers who share your message and vouch for your credibility.

The mid-funnel is where efficiency lives.

If 100 people know you but only 10 get you, you’ve got a 90% leak. Reduce that leak, and suddenly the same traffic generates 5X the revenue, without new spend.

That’s the efficiency play. But there’s another strategic advantage.

Effective mid-funnel marketing protects your business. 

While your competitors are screaming for attention and scrambling to close deals, you’re quietly building trust in the middle. That’s where differentiation happens, not in your offer, but in how people come to understand it.

Trust is the competitive insulation you need to protect your relationship with your customers. And like an iceberg, it’s hidden from your competition.

When the mid-funnel works, the purchase stops being a sale. It becomes the next logical step in a customer’s journey. This is trust manifesting in action.

Most businesses can’t see any of this happening. The work that builds trust doesn’t show up in traditional analytics the way clicks and conversions do. So to protect the mid-funnel marketing budget, you need creative measurement approaches that go beyond last-click attribution.

Mid-Funnel Marketing – Bridging the Chasm

Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm explained how startups move from early adopters to the early majority. The gap was about technology adoption, getting mainstream buyers to trust something new.

The new chasm is about trust adoption.

Businesses that master mid-funnel marketing don’t just attract customers, they support them on their journey. They don’t chase attention; they nurture understanding.

And here’s what that looks like in practice.

Your top-of-funnel brings people in. Your mid-funnel shows them who you are and why you can be trusted. Your bottom-of-funnel closes the ones already convinced.

But if the middle is missing, you’re left with a parade of strangers who visit once and vanish. That’s not a funnel. That’s a leak.

The smartest marketers I know have stopped asking, “How do we get more leads?” They’re asking, “How do we help people understand us better?”

That’s a mid-funnel question. And it changes everything.

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If you suspect your marketing is strong at the edges but weak in the middle, let’s map your funnel together. Visit VIPChatWithJames.com, and we’ll help you identify the missing pieces in your mid-funnel marketing strategy.