<div class="gn-article"><div class="gn-hero gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-hero__image"><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687a235da6861294eec73166/69089aa54e9ffd30f11e3903_651d7ecc348bed4b2ce22884_623cafe470a2a7ec2a5a7512_Event%252520Cover%252520Images%252520_%252520Scale_Marketing_Drive%252520(5)%252520(1).png" alt=""></div> <div class="gn-hero__head"> <span class="gn-kicker"><span class="dot"></span>Event · Expression</span> <h1 class="gn-title">Influencer Marketing Panel - How to Influence Consumer Decision-Making Through the &#39;Messy Middle&#39;</h1> <div class="gn-meta"> <strong>The GO Network</strong> <span class="pip"></span> <span>22 September 2022</span> <span class="pip"></span> <span>1 min read</span> </div> </div> </div> <div class="gn-event-meta gn-reveal"><div class="gn-event-meta__block"> <span class="gn-event-meta__label">When</span> <span class="gn-event-meta__value gn-date">Thu, 22 Sept 2022 · 09:00</span> </div><div class="gn-event-meta__block"> <span class="gn-event-meta__label">Where</span> <span class="gn-event-meta__value">Online</span> </div><div class="gn-event-meta__block"> <span class="gn-event-meta__label">Status</span> <span class="gn-event-status gn-event-status--recording">Past · Recording</span> </div></div> <div class="gn-body"> <p>The traditional marketing funnel was always a simplification. But for most of its history, it was a useful one. Today, it is increasingly misleading. Consumers do not move cleanly from awareness through consideration to purchase. They loop, backtrack, research obsessively, get distracted, return weeks later, and convert on a channel nobody predicted. Google's research into what they call the "Messy Middle" gave this behaviour a name, and for agencies building influencer strategies, it reframes almost every decision about where and how to deploy creators.</p> <p>A panel session hosted by The GO Network brought together agency and brand perspectives to examine exactly this challenge: how do you use influencers not just to generate awareness, but to actively guide consumers through an increasingly complex path to purchase? The discussion surfaced practical thinking that applies whether you are building your first influencer programme or trying to scale one that has stalled.</p> <h2>What the Messy Middle Actually Means for Agency Strategy</h2> <p>Google's Messy Middle model describes the space between a purchase trigger and the final buying decision as a loop of exploration and evaluation. Consumers move between these two modes repeatedly, often across many sessions and platforms, before committing. Traditional funnel thinking assigns influencers a role almost exclusively at the top, as awareness drivers. The Messy Middle reframes them as assets that can operate at every stage of that loop.</p> <p>For agencies, this has a direct implication: influencer briefs built around reach and impressions alone are incomplete. The more useful question is where in the exploration-evaluation cycle your audience is when they encounter a piece of influencer content, and what that content needs to do to move them forward. A creator who builds genuine category authority can interrupt the evaluation phase as effectively as a paid search ad. A long-form review or tutorial can resolve objections that no display creative would ever address.</p> <p>This is not an argument against awareness-led influencer work. It is an argument for being deliberate about the full range of jobs influencers can do, and building campaigns that use them across multiple touchpoints rather than concentrating budget at the top of the funnel.</p> <h2>Integrating Influencers Across the Full Consumer Journey</h2> <p>One of the clearest themes from the panel was the shift among more sophisticated agencies toward treating influencers as an integrated channel rather than a bolt-on. That means mapping creator content to specific stages of the consumer journey and coordinating it with other activity running in parallel.</p> <p>In practice, this looks like several things working together:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Awareness content</strong> from broader-reach creators introducing a brand or product category to new audiences, coordinated with paid social amplification to extend reach efficiently.</li> <li><strong>Consideration content</strong> from mid-tier or specialist creators, such as detailed reviews, comparisons, or use-case demonstrations, designed to support the evaluation phase and address the questions consumers are actually asking.</li> <li><strong>Conversion support</strong> through creator-led promotions, affiliate links, or exclusive codes that give consumers in the final stages of decision-making a specific reason to act.</li> <li><strong>Post-purchase content</strong> that reinforces buying decisions, reduces returns, and builds the kind of social proof that feeds back into the exploration phase for future customers.</li> </ul> <p>The agencies making this work are not treating each of these as separate briefs. They are building creator rosters with range, briefing for different objectives at different stages, and measuring accordingly. Applying a single metric, typically reach or engagement, across all of that activity produces misleading results and undervalues what influencers are actually contributing.</p> <h2>Common Challenges and How Agencies Are Overcoming Them</h2> <p>Scaling influencer marketing is genuinely difficult, and the panel was direct about where agencies and their clients most commonly run into problems.</p> <p><strong>Attribution remains the hardest problem.</strong> Influencer content that contributes to the evaluation phase rarely gets credit in last-click models. Agencies that have made progress here tend to use a combination of tracked links, uplift studies, and brand search data to build a more complete picture of what is driving conversion. The argument for influencer investment is much stronger when you can show its role in the full path, not just the final step.</p> <p><strong>Briefing quality directly affects creative quality.</strong> Influencers produce their best work when they understand the objective and have room to express it in their own voice. Overly prescriptive briefs produce content that their audiences can identify as inauthentic, which undermines the core value of the channel. Agencies that invest time in creator onboarding, sharing the strategy rather than just the deliverables, consistently report better output.</p> <p><strong>Scaling without losing relevance is a structural challenge.</strong> What works with a small roster of carefully selected creators does not automatically scale to a larger programme. Agencies that have solved this tend to build tiered systems, with clear criteria for creator selection at each tier and standardised but flexible briefing frameworks that can be applied at volume without turning every brief into a bespoke project.</p> <p><strong>Client education is still part of the job.</strong> Many brands still think about influencer marketing primarily as a brand awareness tool, which limits both budget and ambition. Agencies that have successfully expanded influencer programmes have typically done so by bringing clients case studies that demonstrate performance across the full funnel, rather than asking them to take the broader role of influencers on faith.</p> <h2>Where to Start If Your Influencer Strategy Has Stalled</h2> <p>If your current influencer programme is delivering awareness but not much else, the most useful first step is an audit of where your creator content is actually being deployed in relation to the consumer journey. Map your existing activity against the exploration and evaluation loop. Identify the gaps, particularly in the consideration phase, where consumers are actively researching and comparing options. That is usually where a well-briefed mid-tier creator can deliver disproportionate value, and where the case for expanded investment is easiest to make with data.</p> <p>The Messy Middle is not a problem to be solved. It is the reality of how consumers make decisions, and influencer marketing, used strategically across the full journey, is one of the most effective tools agencies have for navigating it on their clients' behalf.</p> </div></div> <aside class="gn-related gn-reveal" data-auto="related-reading"> <div class="gn-related__label">Related reading</div> <ul class="gn-related__list"> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/building-an-influencer-marketing-strategy-that-connects-with-your-consumers" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Influencer Marketing Panel: How to influence consumer decision making through the &quot;messy middle&quot;</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">McCann, Ketchum and peers share how agencies deploy influencers across complex consumer journeys to boost campaign efficiency, effectiveness</span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/influencer-marketing-panel-how-to-influence-consumer-decision-making-through-the-messy-middle" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">How Influencer Marketing can guide consumer decisions through the &quot;messy middle&quot;</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Consumers don&#39;t buy in a straight line. 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