Someone sees a product on TikTok, watches three YouTube reviews, asks Reddit whether it’s worth it, checks the brand’s Instagram and then searches Google to find the best price.
By the time they land on your product page, they’ve already made up their mind. Your site just needs to not mess it up.
Now flip that around. What about the person who’s still in the TikTok phase? The one who doesn’t know your brand exists, hasn’t decided what they want, and is still figuring out what problem they’re trying to solve?
That person is the majority of your potential customers. And most e-commerce sites have nothing for them.
This is the gap that costs online stores the most revenue, not a broken checkout, not slow page speed. It’s that the entire site is built for the 20% who already want to buy, while the other 80% leave and go elsewhere. At Rise Marketing, we see this constantly and it’s exactly what a good e-commerce marketing agency is built to fix.
The Funnel Problem Nobody Talks About
Most e-commerce businesses think of their marketing funnel like this:
Run ads → drive traffic → convert on product pages → done.
That worked when Google was the starting point for every purchase. It isn’t anymore.
Buyers now research across multiple platforms before they ever search for a specific product. They watch content, read comparisons, ask communities, and form opinions, all before opening a new tab to shop. By the time they hit a search engine, they usually already know what they want.
The brand that showed up earlier in that journey has a massive head start.
If your brand only appears at the moment someone is ready to buy, you’re competing on price and convenience alone. That’s a race most independent e-commerce stores can’t win against Amazon.
A Stat That Should Change How You Think About Content
TikTok engagement for pet content averages 4.2%, outperforming almost every other content category on the platform.
That’s not engagement from people who are actively shopping. That’s engagement from people who love their pets, consume content about them constantly, and are being shaped in their purchasing behavior long before they open a browser tab.
Pet brands that understood this early built TikTok audiences, created content that answered real pet owner questions, and showed up during the discovery phase. By the time someone was ready to buy food, supplements, toys, accessories, those brands already felt familiar.
The purchase felt like a natural next step, not a cold transaction.
What “Full-Funnel” Actually Looks Like
It’s a term that gets overused. Here’s what it means in practice-
Top of Funnel- Discovery Short-form video on TikTok and Reels, educational YouTube content, Reddit presence in relevant communities, SEO blog content that answers real buyer questions. Nothing here is trying to sell. It’s building familiarity.
Middle of Funnel- Consideration Product comparison pages, honest buying guides, customer stories, email sequences that educate rather than just promote, retargeting ads pointed at specific products someone viewed. The goal is to stay in the conversation while the buyer is still deciding.
Bottom of Funnel- Conversion Product pages, checkout flow, abandoned cart emails, price-match messaging. This is where most e-commerce stores live and it’s only the last step of a longer journey.
Most stores have a strong bottom, a weak middle, and no top at all.
That’s why their paid ads feel expensive, they’re trying to do the work of all three stages at once, in a single click.
The Content Gap Is Costing You More Than You Think
Here’s a simple way to see this in your own store.
Compare your paid traffic conversion rate to your organic traffic conversion rate. In most e-commerce businesses, organic converts are higher significantly. The reason is straightforward: organic visitors found you through a blog post, a YouTube search, or social content. They’ve had more time with your brand before arriving. They’re more informed, more confident, and more ready.
That’s the compounding value of upper-funnel content.
It doesn’t just drive traffic, it pre-qualifies the traffic it sends. And unlike paid ads, it doesn’t stop working the moment you stop paying.
An e-commerce marketing agency that only manages your Google Shopping and Meta ads is working on one slice of what drives revenue. The ones that actually move the needle build the content infrastructure that makes every paid dollar work harder.
Four Questions to Ask About Your Store Right Now
Before hiring an e-commerce marketing agency or evaluating whether your current one is earning its keep, start here-
- What does someone find when they search a problem your product solves? If the answer is nothing, you have no top-of-funnel presence. You’re invisible during the research phase.
- Do you have content that honestly compares your product to alternatives? Buyers will make that comparison somewhere. If it’s not on your site, it’s on a competitor’s or an affiliate with no loyalty to your brand.
- What happens to a visitor who doesn’t buy? Retargeting ads are a start. But they work best when there’s middle-funnel content to send people to not just the same product page they already left.
- Are you present where your buyers spend time before they shop? Not every platform suits every brand. But you should know which ones your buyers use during research and have a presence there.
The Bottom Line
Your product pages aren’t the problem. Your checkout flow probably isn’t either.
The gap is earlier.
Your potential customers are forming opinions about what to buy and which brands to trust before they ever find your site. If you’re not showing up in that phase, you’re not losing sales at checkout.
You’re losing them weeks before the customer even knew you existed.
That’s the problem a real e-commerce marketing agency is built to solve. Not just managing the ads that close sales but building the content and presence that makes those sales possible in the first place.