Consideration marketing: How to win the shortlist and prove it's paying off

Every hiring manager knows the resume pile is the easy part. A good resume gets a candidate noticed, but the job usually goes to whoever does best in the rounds that follow, when the team is comparing a handful of finalists side by side and looking for reasons to say no. Strong candidates lose offers there all the time, usually because someone else answered the hard questions better.

Your customers run the same process on your brand. Initial awareness gets you into the pile, and the consideration stage is where potential buyers narrow the field and pick a winner. It's also the part of the marketing funnel that standard reporting struggles to see, because shoppers research in one place and buy in another, whether that's on Amazon, at a retail store, or weeks later through a branded search. Brands that cut mid-funnel spend based on last-click reports can fall off their customers' shortlists without noticing until revenue starts to slip.

Key takeaways

• Consideration marketing helps people who already know your brand evaluate it and choose it over the other options on their shortlist.
• Engagement, consideration, purchase intent, and purchases are four different things, and mixing them up leads to bad budget calls.
• The strongest consideration campaigns start with the pain points that stop people from buying, then pick the tactic that answers them.
• The consideration phase can last hours or months depending on your product or service, so your measurement window should match your real buying cycle.
• Consideration ads often drive sales through halo effects, like branded search, Amazon, and retail purchases, that last-click attribution doesn't credit.
• No single metric proves the consideration stage is working, so pair perception, behavior, and revenue signals instead of leaning on click-through rates.
• A marketing mix model can show how mid-funnel spend contributes to total revenue across every channel, including retail.

What is the consideration stage of the marketing funnel?

The consideration stage is the part of your marketing strategy aimed at potential customers who already know your brand and are actively researching solutions to a problem. They've moved past the awareness stage, and now they're comparing potential solutions, reading reviews, and trying to figure out which option is the best solution for them.

Marketers also call this the consideration phase or the middle of the marketing funnel. The goal is to get your brand's product into the consideration set—the short list of brands a shopper seriously weighs before a purchase decision—and keep it there until they buy.

Where consideration fits in the marketing funnel

The classic marketing funnel splits the buyer's journey into three broad stages, each answering a different question for the shopper.

Real customer journeys are messier than any marketing funnel diagram. Shoppers loop back, skip steps, and bounce between channels. The same creator video might introduce your brand to one viewer, help another compare options, and push a third to buy with a discount code. A tactic's role depends on the message and who sees it, so it's more useful to ask what job a piece of content is doing than which bucket of the sales funnel it belongs in.

What a strong consideration strategy should accomplish

Most mid-funnel marketing aims at a handful of connected goals. A strong consideration strategy usually tries to do four things:

• Educate with specifics. Give shoppers detailed information about key features, use cases, and how a product compares, instead of generic brand messages.
• Earn a spot in the consideration set. If you're not on the shortlist, you're not getting the sale.
• Build preference. Show the key differentiators and unique features that make your brand a credible solution, backed by proof.
• Reduce perceived risk. Reviews, guarantees, free returns, and trials help people who are seeking validation feel safe choosing you.

That last goal gets overlooked a lot. Plenty of shoppers who've shown interest already like your product. They just aren't sure it's worth the risk of switching or spending more.

Consideration isn't the same as engagement

One of the easiest traps in the consideration phase is treating every interaction as a sign that someone is seriously weighing your brand. These four terms get used interchangeably, but they measure different things:

• Engagement: Someone watched, clicked, read, or interacted with your content.
• Consideration: Someone is actively evaluating your brand as an option.
• Purchase intent: Someone says or shows they're likely to buy.
• Conversion: Someone actually buys.

None of these guarantees the next one. A person might watch a 10-minute review because they like the creator. High click-through rates on consideration ads can reflect a catchy hook rather than real interest in the product or service. Even stated intent doesn't always turn into a purchase.

This matters because teams tend to optimize whatever's easiest to see. If engaging content gets rewarded for clicks alone, you can end up with a mid-funnel program that looks busy without moving anyone closer to buying.

Start with your buyer's pain points, not the tactic

Consideration campaigns often underperform because the team picks a format first (more video, more retargeting) and only later asks what's actually stopping people from buying. Flipping that order makes for a much stronger marketing strategy. Customer interviews, support tickets, search queries, and reviews can provide valuable insights into the pain points your target audience runs into during their decision-making process.

Different shoppers can stall for very different reasons. Here's how that might look for a premium cookware brand:

Only one of those is an awareness problem, and none of them gets solved by showing the same ad more often. Once you know the barrier, planning gets simpler:

1. Pick the belief or behavior you want to change.
2. Build a message that answers the barrier directly.
3. Choose the format that can actually show it.
4. Decide what measurable results you'll judge it on, and what result would make you keep, change, or stop it, before you launch.

Mid-funnel marketing tactics that work

There's no shortage of formats for the consideration stage, and each one helps shift something a little different. This table maps common tactics to the job they do best and where they tend to live:

A few tactics need a little extra context to work well. These are the ones teams most often get wrong:

• Retail listings count as consideration content. For omnichannel brands, potential buyers may do all of their research on a retailer's product page. Use those pages to showcase customer reviews, answer common questions, and spell out key benefits.
• Arm the people at the shelf. If retail sales teams or store associates talk to your shoppers, simple sales materials like quick product guides help them explain why you're different.
• Interactive tools only help if they're easy to use. A product finder with a confusing user interface can make shoppers lose interest faster than no tool at all.
• Email should keep going after the sign-up. A well-paced sequence can nurture leads who joined for a discount but haven't bought yet, and it helps you stay top of mind while they compare multiple solutions.
• Bigger purchases may need longer formats. Expert-led webinars, live shopping events, and in-depth guides give prospective customers room to ask questions.
• Retargeting can't carry the stage alone. It only reaches people who've already visited, so it won't grow your pool of potential customers on its own.

Making content marketing work in the middle of the funnel

Content marketing carries a lot of the consideration stage, but volume isn't the goal. The content marketing strategies that work best here give prospective customers valuable information they can't easily get elsewhere:

• Answer the questions shoppers already ask. Educational content built around real search queries and support tickets is far more relevant content than another brand video.
• Get specific. Detailed information on specific features, sizing, or compatibility helps potential customers compare options with confidence.
• Show proof. High value content at this stage usually includes evidence, like testing results, reviews, or side-by-side comparisons.
• Make it easy to share. The researcher often has to win over multiple stakeholders, so content they can forward helps everyone make informed decisions.

Value-driven content earns trust because it's useful even if the reader doesn't buy from you today. That trust is what brings people back when they're ready, which makes valuable content worth the investment even when it never gets last-click credit.

How long the consideration phase lasts depends on what you sell

Not every product or service needs the same amount of convincing. The length of the consideration phase usually comes down to price, risk, and how familiar shoppers already are with the category.

Price isn't the only factor. A cheap product can still demand plenty of research if it touches on safety, allergies, or compatibility. Bigger household purchases also tend to involve multiple stakeholders, like a partner who wants a say, which means more decision makers and a longer shopper journey.

This has two practical consequences for your marketing strategy. First, your mid-funnel spend should reflect your actual buyer's journey instead of a generic marketing funnel template. Second, the window you use to judge results needs to match how long customers really take. A seven-day attribution window can make a campaign for a $3,000 product look like a failure when buyers usually take two months to decide.

Why the consideration phase gets undervalued

Here's where things get frustrating for marketing leaders. The consideration phase might be doing a lot of the heavy lifting in your marketing funnel, but most reporting is set up in a way that hides it.

Last-click attribution credits the final touchpoint

Last-click attribution gives the sale to whatever touchpoint came right before the purchase. That's usually branded search, direct website traffic, or a retargeting ad, all sitting at the bottom of the sales funnel. Those channels often collect demand that your consideration work created weeks earlier, so the campaign that actually convinced someone ends up looking expensive and ineffective.

Halo effects spread results across channels

A halo effect is revenue a campaign drives indirectly through another channel. Someone watches a creator demo on YouTube, doesn't click, and searches your brand name three days later. Or they see your ad on Instagram and buy on Amazon. The campaign did its job, but the sale shows up somewhere else in the customer journey.

Halo effects can come from campaigns at any stage of the marketing funnel, though upper and mid-funnel work tends to produce more of them. They commonly show up in a few places:

• Branded search volume
• Direct and organic traffic
• Amazon and other marketplaces
• Physical stores, which is where retail halo effects come in

Retail sales sit outside most dashboards

For omnichannel brands, this might be the biggest blind spot. A shopper can research on your site, check prices on their phone, and then buy at Target. If you only measure your own storefront, that sale is invisible, even though your consideration ads helped make it happen.

A simple hypothetical shows how much this can skew things. Say a brand runs a month-long product demo campaign:

The site-only view shows less than a third of the change. That doesn't prove the campaign drove all $35,000, since promotions, seasonality, and existing demand play a part, but it shows how much a narrow view can miss.

One caveat cuts both ways. Missing credit isn't proof a campaign worked, and stretching a measurement window until the numbers look good doesn't make them accurate, so look for real evidence before deciding either way.

How to measure the consideration phase

No single number tells you whether the consideration phase is working. The more reliable approach is to look at several layers of evidence and check whether they point the same way.

Metrics to track at each layer

Each layer answers a different question, so it helps to track at least one metric from each.

Clicks and engagement belong in that first layer. They're useful signals, but on their own they can't tell you whether you've earned a spot in anyone's consideration set.

What each measurement method can and can't tell you

Brands usually lean on one of three methods to put a number on the consideration phase. Each has a role, and each has limits worth knowing:

• Brand lift studies survey people who did and didn't see a campaign to check whether awareness, consideration, or intent changed. They're good at spotting a shift in perception, but they can't tell you how many sales followed.
• Incrementality and geo tests compare results between groups or regions that did and didn't see a campaign. They capture one moment in time, usually two to four weeks, and no two regions are truly alike. That makes them locally accurate but globally inaccurate, and they're especially shaky for the consideration phase, where results can take months to appear.
• Marketing mix modeling (MMM) looks at how spend relates to total revenue over time while accounting for seasonality, promotions, and pricing. Because it works from total sales rather than individual clicks, an MMM can capture halo effects, including retail sales when that data is included, without tracking every customer journey.

Common misconceptions about the consideration stage

Even experienced teams fall into a few traps when evaluating mid-funnel marketing. These are some of the most expensive ones for any marketing strategy.

High engagement means it's working. Engagement tells you people interacted with something. Check whether that interaction led to the next step you actually wanted.

Consideration campaigns should drive sales right away. Some do. Many influence a purchase weeks later through a different channel, so judge them on a timeline that matches your buying cycle.

If it didn't get conversion credit, it didn't do anything. Attribution routinely misses delayed, cross-channel, and retail sales. Look for evidence in total revenue before you cut anything.

Retargeting is our consideration strategy. Retargeting only works on people who've already shown interest. Without other mid-funnel marketing feeding it, the pool it can reach keeps shrinking.

One test settles it. A test reflects one moment under one set of conditions. Audiences, prices, creative, and competition all change, so what was true in March may not hold in October.

How to budget for the consideration stage

There's no universal rule for how much of your marketing efforts belong in the middle of the marketing funnel. A better question is where your business is actually stuck:

• If too few people know you exist, the bottleneck is probably the awareness stage.
• If people know you but don't see why your product or service is different, it's likely consideration.
• If shoppers reach checkout and bail, look at price, shipping, availability, or the checkout experience.

Two opposite mistakes show up again and again: starving consideration because it's hard to attribute until conversion campaigns run out of interested shoppers, or funding mid-funnel marketing indefinitely without asking for evidence.

Marketing leaders and other decision makers can avoid both by judging consideration spend on contribution margin and customer value, not just gross revenue. A campaign that brings in one-time discount shoppers has very different economics from one that creates loyal customers. People who choose you after a real comparison also tend to know what they're getting, which can support customer satisfaction and customer retention with existing customers down the line.

Where Prescient comes in

Prescient's marketing mix model was built for the parts of the marketing funnel that are hardest to see. It measures halo effects at the campaign level—including retail halo effects for brands that sell in stores—so you can see how consideration ads contribute to branded search, Amazon, and in-store sales. Our MMM refreshes daily and learns how long your own campaigns take to pay off, so consideration phase campaigns that pay off over two months get judged on that timeline instead of a generic default.

When you're ready to act on what you find, Media Forecaster shows what's likely to happen if you scale a mid-funnel channel or shift budget into it from somewhere else. That way, your team can make informed decisions about the consideration stage based on total revenue instead of last-click credit. Book a demo to see how the Prescient platform uncovers how much your consideration work is really driving.

FAQs

What's the difference between the awareness stage and the consideration stage?

The awareness stage is about getting potential customers to know your brand and product or service exist, usually through broad-reach channels like video, sponsorships, and PR. The consideration stage comes next, when people who already know you are comparing options and deciding whether you're the right fit. Awareness content tends to be short and memorable, while consideration content gets more detailed, with product demos, reviews, and comparisons that help people evaluate. In practice the two overlap, and plenty of campaigns do a bit of both.

What are examples of mid-funnel marketing?

Common examples include comparison guides, customer reviews, creator content, product finders and quizzes, free samples or trials, email sequences, and retargeting. B2B brands often add case studies and lead generation offers like downloadable guides. The best pick depends on what's stopping your target audience from buying, so start with their questions and choose the format that answers them most directly.

What is a consideration set?

A consideration set is the short list of brands a shopper seriously evaluates before buying. Most people only weigh a handful of potential solutions, even in crowded categories, so getting onto that list is a big part of winning the consideration stage. Brands earn a spot by being familiar, relevant, and easy to compare, and they keep it by offering valuable information that answers the questions that would otherwise send a shopper somewhere else.

Why is the consideration stage important?

It's where most purchase decisions actually get made, since it's when shoppers compare you to the alternatives and decide who's worth the money. Brands that skip it leave shoppers to fill the gaps with other brands' content. It's also the stage most likely to be undercounted in reporting, which makes it easy to cut by mistake.

How do you measure the consideration phase?

Use a few layers of evidence instead of a single metric, covering exposure, perception, behavior, and revenue across every channel where you sell. Then use a method that can see total sales, like a marketing mix model, so halo effects on Amazon and in retail stores don't get left out, and make sure your measurement window matches how long customers actually take to buy.

Is retargeting part of the consideration phase or the conversion phase?

It can be either, depending on where someone is in the buyer's journey. Retargeting that reminds someone about a product they viewed and answers a lingering question—like sizing, shipping, or what other buyers think—supports consideration. Retargeting with a discount or a "complete your purchase" message is mostly about conversion. Either way, it only reaches people who've already visited, so it works best alongside value-driven content and other mid-funnel tactics that bring new shoppers in.