Marketing funnel with creators: which influencer content to use at each sales funnel stage

A marketing funnel with creators has four stages, and each one needs different content. At the awareness stage, short reels from creators with wide reach in your niche do the work. At the consideration stage, honest reviews, comparisons and unboxings from creators the audience trusts. Conversion is closed by a discount code, a link in the description and UGC used in ads. Retention and retargeting are kept alive by tutorials, “after purchase” content and Partnership Ads aimed at people who have already seen the brand.

What matters most is that these stages are connected. A sales funnel with creators is not four separate campaigns but one sequence: material from the upper stage fuels the next one, and every next stage speaks to people who already know something about the brand. You can find creators for each stage manually, through an agency, or by posting a task on a platform such as Blogger Bank, where creators apply on their own. Below we break down each stage: which creator, which format, which metric and how to hand the audience over to the next step.

The marketing funnel stages at a glance

The classic funnel describes the path from “I don’t know this brand” to “I buy again and recommend it”. When working with creators it is easiest to split it into four stages, because each requires a different type of collaboration.

• Awareness. The viewer meets the brand, or the problem it solves, for the first time. Goal: get noticed by the right people.
• Consideration. The viewer knows the brand exists and compares it with others. Goal: give them reasons to choose you.
• Conversion. The viewer is ready to buy and only needs a nudge and a simple path. Goal: a conversion — a purchase, sign-up or registration.
• Retention and retargeting. The viewer has bought or came close. Goal: make them come back, buy more and recommend the brand.

If you are looking for which format (post, stories, reel, live) fits a specific campaign goal, we cover that separately in the article on choosing a content format by campaign goal. Here we focus on order: what to do first, what next, and how to keep the stages from drifting apart.

Awareness: reels from creators who reach new people

At the top of the funnel the point is for new people to see the brand at all and remember one thing about it. Nobody buys yet, so do not judge this stage by sales.

Which creator

Creators whose audiences overlap with your target group but who have not yet talked about your category. Reach matters, but niche fit matters more. Dog food will do better with mid-sized creators in the pets category than with a general entertainment creator with a huge following. At this stage it is worth working with several creators at once to see which niche and which style attracts attention.

Which format

• A short Instagram or TikTok reel where the product appears naturally in the creator’s everyday life.
• Educational content about the problem the product solves, with the brand as one element rather than the hero.
• A trend or challenge that the product fits into effortlessly.

In the brief, ask for one thought to remember and a strong opening few seconds. A long list of product features only gets in the way at this stage.

Which KPI

Views, reach, new followers on the brand profile, growth in brand-name searches and how many people watched the video to the end. These metrics show whether the message gets through and holds attention.

Handing over

Before moving on, agree with the creators on the rights to use their material in ads. The best-performing top-of-funnel reels are ready-made creatives for later campaigns, and the people who watched them become the audience for the next stage.

Consideration: reviews, comparisons and unboxings

At the consideration stage the viewer is asking: does it work, is it worth the price, how is it different from what I already know. The creator’s content should answer honestly, because credibility is exactly what sets it apart from brand advertising.

Which creator

Creators the audience trusts on the subject and who can assess a product on the merits. For electronics, creators in the technology category who test gear every day; for car accessories, creators from the automotive niche. Smaller creators with engaged communities often work better here than big ones, because their comments are real conversations.

Which format

• A review after several days or weeks of use. Shows the product in real life, flaws included.
• Unboxing and first impressions. Answers questions about packaging, build quality and what is in the box.
• A comparison or “how I use it”. Helps the viewer picture the product in their own home.
• A longer YouTube video or a detailed carousel. Leaves room for details that will not fit in a reel.

Do not dictate the creator’s opinion. A review with no critical remark at all sounds like brand copy and loses its purpose. Remember to label the collaboration in every piece.

Which KPI

Saves, shares, comments asking about the product, clicks to the product page, time on page and the number of people adding the product to a wishlist or cart. Comments are the most valuable signal here: they show which doubts you need to address at the conversion stage.

Handing over

Collect the most common questions and objections from the review comments. This is a ready list of topics for further content and product descriptions. With the creator’s consent, cut the strongest review fragments into short ads for the conversion stage.

Conversion: codes, links and UGC in ads

At the conversion stage the viewer is close to deciding. The content should remove the last doubts and give a reason to buy now rather than someday.

Which creator

Two groups. The first are creators who have already talked about the product and whose audiences know it — their next piece with a code reaches warmed-up people. The second are UGC creators who make material not for their own profile but for the brand’s ads. Their audience does not matter; what counts is how convincingly they show the product.

Which format

• Stories or a reel with a discount code and link. A clear call to action and a time-limited offer.
• An affiliate programme. The creator gets a personal link or code and can recommend the product for longer than a single post. We explain payouts in the article on affiliate programmes with creators.
• UGC in paid ads. Short “I tested it and recommend it” videos used as creatives in sales campaigns aimed at people who watched upper-funnel content.
• Answers to objections. A short piece where the creator answers the most common question from the consideration stage.

Which KPI

Purchases or sign-ups from the code and link, sales value, customer acquisition cost and on-site conversion rate. Some people will buy without a code, so alongside codes look at overall sales during the campaign and brand search traffic.

Handing over

Buyers are the group you address in the last stage. Make sure you know who bought thanks to creators, for example through a separate code for each creator and tagged links. This also shows which creators should work with you longer.

Retention and retargeting: post-purchase content and Partnership Ads

The last stage is the most often skipped, yet it frequently delivers the most, because you speak to people who already know the brand. The aim is for customers to use the product well, come back for more and recommend it to friends.

Which creator

Creators you already have a proven collaboration with and who have been using the product for a while. A long-term partnership with one creator builds an association between the brand and that person, which a one-off post cannot do. For home products this means creators in the home category; for food, creators from the food niche who show new recipes with the same product.

Which format

• Tutorials and inspiration. “Five ways to use it”, recipes, roundups, tips. They help customers get more out of the purchase.
• “After a month of use” content. An honest review update that also reminds people about the product.
• Partnership Ads. Ads shown from the creator’s profile, targeted at people who watched brand content or visited the store but did not buy. How to set them up and what to agree with the creator is covered in the article on UGC in Meta ads and Partnership Ads.
• New products and offers for loyal customers. The creator shows a new variant or a set add-on.

Which KPI

The share of customers who come back for another purchase, purchase value over time, referrals, clicks and purchases from retargeting ads, and reviews left in the store. For Partnership Ads, compare them with brand-profile ads aimed at the same audience to see whether the creator’s face actually helps.

Handing over

Happy customers and long-term creators feed back into the top of the funnel: their recommendations and new material reach new people. That is how the funnel turns into a loop.

How to connect the stages into one sequence

The most common problem is not individual pieces of content but stages that are not connected. Here is an order that helps avoid it.

1. Start from the goal at the bottom of the funnel. Decide what should happen at the end: a purchase, registration, sign-up. This determines what data you need to collect earlier.
2. Launch awareness with several creators from different niches. See which pieces and which audiences respond best.
3. Build audiences. People who watched the reels or visited the site become the audience for consideration and conversion ads.
4. Show them reviews and comparisons. Ideally from the same creators who appeared at the top, or from creators in the same niche.
5. Close conversion with codes and UGC in ads. Reuse the best fragments from earlier stages instead of starting from scratch.
6. After the purchase, move to retention. Tutorials, updates and Partnership Ads for people who were close to buying.
7. Judge each stage by its own metric. Awareness reels judged by sales will always look weak, and so will reviews judged by reach.

A good practice is one shared core message for the whole sequence. The same main argument, repeated at every stage in different words and by different creators, sticks better than four different messages.

Common mistakes in a creator funnel

• Top of the funnel only. The brand orders reach reels and then wonders why sales do not grow, because nobody answered the audience’s questions.
• A discount code at first contact. A viewer who does not know the brand rarely buys straight away, and a code at this stage only teaches them to wait for sales.
• No rights to the material. Without agreed rights you cannot use your best content in ads at later stages.
• One creator for the whole funnel. Risky when their audience burns out or the collaboration ends.
• The same metric for every stage. It leads to cutting content that does its job well, just at a different stage.

How Blogger Bank solves staffing every funnel stage with creators

The hardest part of a creator funnel is that every stage needs different people and different material, and it all has to fit together. On Blogger Bank it works like this:

• Instead of separately hunting for reach creators, reviewers and UGC creators — you post a task for each stage describing the format and goal, and matching creators apply on their own.
• Instead of explaining to every creator from scratch where their piece fits in the sequence — you describe everything you expect once in the task, and the contract with the chosen creator opens automatically.
• Instead of collecting reels, reviews and UGC videos from various messengers and emails — the conversation with the creator, material approval and payment are in one place, so finished content is easy to pass on to the next stage.

You can also browse the influencer catalogue by niche and invite specific people for a chosen stage. Create a brand account and post the first task for your funnel.