The ultimate guide to full-funnel optimization

The customer journey is messy. People jump from TikTok to Google to email, circling back and forth before finally converting (if they ever do). 

As media buyers and planners, you’re expected to drive results across every stage of that journey. But if you’re only optimizing the bottom of the funnel, you’re leaving conversions (and budget) on the table.

Full-funnel optimization fixes that. It considers the entire consumer journey and intent, creating media campaigns that capture more demand.

Here’s how to make it work.

What is full-funnel optimization in paid media?

Full-funnel optimization in paid media is the alignment of your ad campaigns across every stage of the customer journey—top, middle, and bottom of the funnel—to increase conversions and maximize ROI.

A full-funnel strategy for media agencies and buyers includes a cohesive media plan that drives marketing incrementality, not just clicks.

Why media agencies need to take a full-funnel approach

You need a full-funnel optimization approach to media spend because:

• Customer journeys are fragmented: People jump across channels and devices. Without a full-funnel strategy, you risk losing them along the way.
• Budgets are under pressure: Clients expect proof of incremental impact, not just clicks or impressions. You need to show clear ROI. And companies that adopt a full-funnel strategy see an average 15–20% uplift in marketing ROI, according to McKinsey.
• Siloed strategies waste ad spend: Running channels in isolation creates inefficiencies. Full-funnel optimization ensures everything works together.
• Clients want unified marketing: Brands are asking for end-to-end strategies that deliver measurable results at every funnel stage.
• Customer acquisition costs are rising: Bottom-funnel tactics are getting more expensive. To lower customer acquisition costs (CAC), you need to engage prospects earlier in the journey.

The three stages of the media funnel—and why they matter

Before you can optimize across the full funnel, you need to know what that funnel actually looks like—and what each stage is designed to do. Here are the three stages of a buyer’s journey and how you can use each one of them:

1. Top of the funnel (TOFU): This is the first touchpoint in the buyer’s journey. TOFU is about spreading awareness and capturing the attention of people who don’t know you yet. 
2. Middle of the funnel (MOFU): At this stage, prospects know your brand but keep exploring their options. MOFU is often the neglected middle child, but you need to use this stage to educate and move buyers closer to a decision.
3. Bottom of the funnel (BOFU): This is the final stage, where prospects are highly interested and close to making a purchase decision. BOFU focuses on convincing them to choose your brand over others and take action.

Aspect	TOFU: Awareness stage	MOFU: Consideration stage	BOFU: Decision stage
Objective	Get on your target audience’s radar	Educate and nurture interest	Push for action—sales, sign-ups, leads
Tactics	Broad awareness campaigns and organic content promotion (social shares, SEO blog distribution)	Retargeting, lead-gen forms, and mid-funnel content (comparison guides, email nurtures)	Conversion campaigns and sales support content (landing pages, case studies)
Channels	Paid social, programmatic display, YouTube, OTT, TV, OOH, SEO	Paid search (non-brand), influencer marketing, native ads, email	Paid search (brand), affiliate marketing, direct response email
Messaging	Focus on broad, attention-grabbing creative. Build brand awareness and mental availability	Show value with demos, free trial, case studies, customer reviews, and product or service comparisons	Clear call-to-action, offers, urgency (discounts, limited-time deals)
Performance metrics	Reach, impressions, brand lift, video views	Click-through rate (CTR), time on landing page, engagement, content downloads	CPA, CVR, ROAS, and iROAS

How to optimize each stage of the funnel for higher conversions

Align your full-funnel media strategy with these steps:

1. Define clear KPIs for every stage

Stop grading every campaign by conversions alone. Map the right marketing channel performance metrics to each funnel stage so you can track and optimize effectively.

2. Balance brand and performance media

Yes, you can (and should) do both. Agencies often under-invest in brand because it’s harder to prove short-term ROI. But a smart media planning tool (like Keen) can show you the incremental impact of brand spend on conversions. When you get this balance right, conversions improve down-funnel.

3. Break down channel silos with data

A true full-funnel approach demands you look beyond platform dashboards. Holistic media mix modeling (MMM) shows you how each channel works together to drive conversions. 

With Keen, you get channel-neutral insights—so you’re not relying on last-click bias or over-attributing conversions to the wrong channel.

4. Optimize creative and messaging by funnel stage

Don’t use a one-size-fits-all message. Upper-funnel ads should build awareness; mid-funnel should educate and convince; bottom-funnel should drive urgency. Agencies that get this right drive higher conversion rates because they meet customers where they are in their journey.

5. Manage cross-channel frequency

Consumers are hit with hundreds of ads daily. You need to control frequency across cross-channel media, avoid fatigue, and deliver a consistent brand message. Otherwise, your marketing campaigns get ignored—or worse, they annoy people.

Read more: How to create a full-funnel marketing strategy

Proven full-funnel measurement technique

You can’t optimize what you can’t measure. And you definitely can’t prove value to clients without clear full-funnel measurement.

Here’s the problem: traditional marketing attribution (last-click or multi-touch attribution) falls apart in full-funnel strategies. It’s biased, incomplete, and often rewards the wrong channels.

For example, ROAS looks impressive on paper, but it doesn’t always reflect incremental impact. In fact, Skai and BWG report that there’s essentially no correlation between a campaign’s ROAS and its incremental ROAS (iROAS). 

Translation: a campaign showing high ROAS may not actually be driving any sales beyond what would have happened anyway.

Solution: incrementality. You need to know what worked because of your media investment—not what was going to happen anyway.

This is where the Keen’s MMM platform steps in:

• Marketing causality isolates incremental impact across the funnel.
• Marketing mix modeling helps you rebalance spend across channels (TV, Meta, Search—you name it) based on real, causal insights.
• Incremental ROAS (iROAS) helps agencies prove true ROI to clients, not just platform vanity metrics.

Bottom line: Keen gives you the data to make smarter media decisions and the proof your clients need.

Common pitfalls to avoid when running full-funnel paid media campaigns

If you’re new to full-funnel optimization, make sure you avoid:

• Over-focusing on the bottom of the funnel. If you neglect the top and middle, you’ll dry up your pipeline. In fact, the 2022 ROI Report by Nielsen shows that agencies that layered upper-funnel marketing efforts onto mid-funnel campaigns boosted ROI by 70%. Even mature campaigns that already covered mid and lower-funnel stages saw an additional 13% lift when they added top-funnel tactics.
• Chasing easy conversions over incremental growth. You can lower your CPA and still miss the big picture.
• Ignoring creative fatigue and frequency. High spend doesn’t mean high impact if your audience is tuning you out.
• Relying on platform-reported media attribution data. They have their own incentives. You need unbiased, holistic measurement.

Optimize your full-funnel strategy with Keen

The best agencies aren’t just buying media anymore. They’re optimizing the full customer journey—guiding people from first impression, building trust, driving final action, and proving incremental impact every step of the way.

Full-funnel optimization drives more conversions, more efficiently. And with the Keen platform for agencies, you get the tools to measure, model, and optimize your media spend like never before.

Request a demo to see how Keen helps you in your full-funnel media strategy.