Consumers Have Moved Influencer Marketing Down the Funnel. Brands Haven’t.

For a long time, influencer marketing sat comfortably near the top of the funnel. Creators were there to generate reach, awareness and engagement, and success was measured through impressions, views, likes and comments. If a campaign got enough people seeing and talking about a brand, it had done its job.

That no longer reflects how people actually use creator content. Consumers are now turning to creators to discover products, understand how they work, compare their options, validate purchasing decisions and, increasingly, buy directly. The consumer journey has changed significantly, but many of the briefs, KPIs and measurement frameworks brands use for influencer marketing haven't changed at the same pace.

Creator content is no longer just the starting point

Thirty percent of UK shoppers have bought a product based on a creator recommendation, but what's particularly interesting is what happens between seeing that recommendation and making the purchase. After discovering something through creator content, 41% look for more reviews and 37% conduct further research, while 40% of Brits look up a product after seeing it promoted online.

Rather than a straightforward journey from creator content to checkout, we're seeing something closer to creator discovery → review → comparison and research → social proof → purchase. Creator content can appear at several of those stages, meaning its role extends far beyond simply introducing someone to a brand or product.

At the same time, the distance between discovery and purchase is shortening for some consumers. More than a third of UK social users make spontaneous purchases from social content a few times a year, with a further third doing so monthly, while TikTok is now the leading platform for direct social purchases in the UK, used by 48% of consumers for social commerce. In a global study of people who had purchased after seeing creator content, 56% bought directly through a platform marketplace such as TikTok Shop.

The line between influence, research and commerce is becoming increasingly difficult to separate.

Consumers are using creators as a validation layer

This shift isn't simply about making it easier to buy something directly from social. Creator content is increasingly becoming part of the evidence consumers use to decide whether something is worth buying in the first place.

Seventy-seven percent of UK consumers say online creators and influencers influence their purchasing decisions, with explainer and how-to creator content influencing 40% to buy. Practical content that demonstrates a product, answers questions or shows how it fits into someone's life can therefore play a very different role from a purely aspirational brand placement.

Relevance matters too. Forty-five percent say an influencer's relevance to their hobbies drives engagement, while 44% point to personality and entertainment value. This aligns with wider research showing that only 17% of consumers consider follower count when deciding whether to follow a creator, compared with 47% who care about the subjects they discuss.

The implication for brands is important. The creator capable of explaining, demonstrating and contextualising a product for the right community may be more commercially valuable than the creator capable of putting it in front of the largest possible audience.

Trust matters even more when creators move closer to purchase

As creator content becomes more influential during consideration and conversion, credibility becomes increasingly important. Consumers aren't simply looking for someone to tell them that a product is good; they're looking for evidence that the recommendation makes sense coming from that person.

Thirty-four percent of UK consumers trust influencers most when reviews feel balanced, while 33% feel more confident when creators actually use the products they're recommending. Meanwhile, 44% would lose trust if an influencer appeared fake or overly scripted, 36% would disengage if a recommendation seemed purely profit-driven and 49% say their trust drops when paid partnerships aren't clearly disclosed.

That creates an interesting challenge for brands looking to make influencer marketing more commercially accountable. Making creator content more sales-led isn't necessarily the answer, particularly if doing so removes the personality, credibility and independence that made the creator influential in the first place.

Instead, commercially effective creator content can still feel useful and creator-led. Someone demonstrating how they use a product, explaining where it fits into their routine, answering common questions or discussing its strengths and limitations can move an audience considerably closer to purchase without turning the content into a traditional advert.

Social is becoming part of the research journey

The changing role of social search adds another layer to this. For many consumers, particularly younger audiences, platforms such as TikTok and Instagram aren't only entertainment feeds anymore; they're places to actively look for information.

Forty-three percent of UK consumers use social media for online search at least once a day, while 34% use video-sharing platforms such as TikTok for daily search. Among Gen Z, 41% say social is the first place they turn for online information, including product reviews and tutorials.

This changes how brands should think about the lifespan of influencer content. A creator video doesn't necessarily stop delivering value when the campaign ends, because it can continue appearing in searches, being shared privately, answering product questions or providing another layer of social proof weeks or months after it was originally published.

Influencer content therefore has the potential to become part of a brand's product research layer rather than simply temporary media inventory. The question isn't only what audiences will see when a campaign launches, but what potential customers will find when they're actively looking for information later.

Brands are scaling influence faster than they're changing the model

None of this is slowing investment in influencer marketing. The two industry reports we've looked at show brands increasing budgets, expanding creator rosters and investing more heavily in areas such as paid amplification, long-term partnerships and UGC.

Nearly nine in ten brands expect influencer marketing budgets to increase, while micro influencers remain central to that growth. In the UK, the commercial importance of the channel is particularly clear, with 38% of brands describing influencer marketing as a core growth driver. Half say influencer marketing contributes between 11% and 25% of their marketing-driven revenue.

Yet proving what all of that investment delivers remains a significant challenge. 59% of marketers say proving influencer ROI is a major challenge, creating a disconnect between how quickly the channel is scaling and brands' ability to demonstrate its commercial contribution.

Part of the problem may be that influencer marketing is increasingly performing lower-funnel jobs while still being measured predominantly through upper-funnel indicators.

The measurement model hasn't caught up

Reach, impressions, video views and engagement rate all remain useful measures of creator performance, but they can't tell the whole story when consumer behaviour extends beyond simply viewing and interacting with a post.

Someone might discover a product through a creator, save the video, search for reviews a few days later, visit the product page, encounter the creator content again through paid media and eventually purchase through another channel. The creator may have played an important role in that decision without receiving any credit in a traditional campaign report.

That becomes even more significant when we consider the wider evidence around purchasing behaviour. Two-thirds of consumers say they've made a purchase decision directly because of an influencer recommendation in the past year, rising to 81% among Gen Z, while almost a third say they've done so ten times or more.

If consumers are using creator content throughout the purchasing journey, measuring influence predominantly through what happened immediately underneath the original social post is inevitably going to miss some of its impact.

Measure what the consumer is actually doing

A more useful approach is to connect measurement to the role creator content is supposed to play at each stage of the journey.

For discovery, reach and qualified views remain important, but brands can also look at new-user exposure and branded search lift. As consumers move into consideration, saves, shares, watch time, product questions and interactions with review content can provide stronger signals of intent. Further down the funnel, product-page visits, tracked links, affiliate sales, creator codes, assisted conversions and social commerce data can help establish a clearer connection with commercial outcomes.

There is also value beyond the creator's original post. If high-performing creator content is subsequently used across paid social, product pages, CRM or other brand channels, its impact can continue to grow. Measuring how those assets affect click-through rates, conversion or product-page behaviour gives brands a much fuller picture of the value created by the original partnership.

Rather than asking one metric to prove whether influencer marketing "worked", brands need to identify the role creator content was supposed to play and then measure the consumer behaviour that indicates whether it achieved that job.

Influencer marketing doesn't need to choose between brand and performance

Moving influencer marketing down the funnel doesn't mean turning every creator partnership into performance marketing. Awareness, cultural relevance, community, entertainment and brand trust remain valuable outcomes, and not every creator activation should be expected to deliver an immediate sale.

What has changed is the ceiling of what influencer marketing can achieve. Creators can introduce people to products, educate them, answer objections, provide social proof, appear during search and research, produce assets that can be amplified through paid media and ultimately contribute to conversion.

The opportunity for brands in 2027 isn't to abandon awareness metrics, but to recognise that they represent only one part of the picture. Consumers have already moved influencer marketing further down the funnel. Now the strategies, briefs and measurement frameworks brands use need to catch up.

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