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LATEST POSTS 📚

If you’re new, not yet a subscriber, or just plain missed it, here are some of our recent editions.

🗞️ Launching & Scaling A New Media Giant. An interview with Tim Huelskamp, Co-Founder & CEO at 1440.
🔮 Middle-earth, Big Brother & A Philosopher King: The Palantir Story. The interesting story of Alex Karp and Palantir.
❤️‍🔥 Building Just-In-Time Performance Management. An interview with Barbra Gago, Founder & CEO at Pando.

PARTNERS 💫

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HOUSEKEEPING 📨

Something cool for the people and culture nerds out there—my buddy, Matt McFarlane (who we did an Open Source interview with recently), is hosting the Startup People Summit. Matt is someone I respect a lot, and who is currently helping Athyna with our career levelling frameworks, among other things.

GUEST POST 💄

Fixing Marketing's Missing Middle

Funnels are a funny thing. Everyone gets excited about the top (’oooh, shiny new prospects, let’s get their attention’) and the bottom (’money, money, money, plz’) but no one gets excited about the middle of the funnel. That’s what I would call the ‘engine room’ of your go-to-market function. That place where you need to get your hands dirty. The place you need to really grind.

If we were to anthropomorphise the funnel and create a living embodiment of these three stages, the top of the funnel would be your TikTok influencer, twerking their way to success, while the bottom of the funnel would be a bounty hunter, pushing the cash through at all costs. The middle of the funnel is your coal miner—the person who drives value by literally breaking their back, 1,000 feet under the earth, with zero recognition and even less thanks.

Another analogy would have been Gimli, from The Lord of the Rings. But those little dwarven buggers were bougie (BOO-zhee) as hell. So the analogy breaks down. Anywho, today I have a special treat for you. I am enlisting the mate, Isaac, who runs Pistachio, and also writes the Brand Chemistry newsletter to run us through how to fix this issue we all seem to be having with the middle of our funnel.

So grab your gloves, put on your hard hat, and get ready as we take a romp through the deep, dark recesses of the missing middle.

Your content won’t convert: Here’s why

You’ve invested in brand. Built a content engine. Traffic is growing. Engagement looks strong. But deals are stalling. Pipeline is active, but conversions lag behind expectations. Sound familiar? We’ve seen this movie before. What’s missing isn’t strategy, talent, or traffic. It’s the middle.

Teams have nailed top-of-funnel reach. They’ve built conversion paths. But the bridge between those two is barely a rope. So let’s unpack why the middle of your funnel is likely underperforming, and how to build the systems that turn interest into impact.

The ‘Content Barbell’ problem

If you've ever sat through a B2B content planning meeting, you know how it goes. One group is pitching deep-dive technical content, while another wants clicky listicles and snappy social posts.

So you end up with a barbell. On one end is high-value, bottom-of-funnel content (think 30-page whitepapers or ROI spreadsheets), and on the other end is the top-of-funnel fluff to catch attention.

But the middle? Crickets.

That’s where relationships should be built. Where trust forms. Where leads mature. But most brands skip it because it doesn’t spike traffic or directly drive conversions. They end up with a funnel that’s wide on both ends and hollow in the centre. Leads fall straight through.

It’s not just a creative imbalance; it’s a resource allocation issue. 46% of marketers dedicate their largest budget share to top-of-funnel awareness, while 39% focus on bottom-of-funnel conversion. That leaves the middle perpetually underfunded and under-resourced.

Then, when you look at what content teams actually create, 67.4% primarily produce top-of-funnel content while only 27.9% focus on mid-funnel nurturing. We’re building reach and closing deals, but skipping the part where buyers build trust.

You don’t need to take my word for it. The research gives us a few scary insights:

• 80% of leads never become sales.

• 67% of the buyers journey happens before they talk to sales.

• Buyers now need 27+ touchpoints before making a decision (up 22% in 5 years).

That means most of your influence happens in the dark. Before a sales call. Before a demo request. So if you’re not building trust in the middle, you’re not in the game. Teams obsess over reach (awareness) and efficiency (conversion), but they ignore the time and space where most buyers are actually making up their minds.

This isn’t a marketing gap. It’s a trust gap.

The cost of getting this wrong

The ‘missing middle’ costs you. It wastes ad spend on leads that aren’t ready to convert, increases churn because customers weren’t educated before signing up, and makes sales unscalable because reps are doing all the narrative-heavy lifting. Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost, and nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases on average. It’s not just a gap, it’s a leak, and it compounds over time. There are a few big reasons why this gap keeps getting ignored.

No One Owns It

Social teams own awareness. Product marketing owns conversion. But who owns the trust in between? Usually... no one. Middle-funnel content isn’t a campaign. It’s a conversation. It needs editorial thinking, narrative consistency, systems to sustain value week after week. That’s hard to own in a world built around launches and leads.

Attribution Panic

You can track impressions. You can track leads. But what about trust? That’s where marketers panic. No easy attribution = no budget. So what gets funded? 46% of marketing budgets go to the flashy top-of-funnel and 39% goes to the bottom-of-funnel. Middle-funnel? Left with crumbs.

It’s no surprise that only 17% of marketers say they have a fully functioning sales funnel, and 52% say they struggle to align content to the buyer's journey.

Misaligned Incentives

Middle-funnel content doesn’t deliver vanity metrics. It doesn’t create a hero moment. It creates slow, steady progress. That means it rarely gets prioritised until someone notices that sales are slow and marketing’s conversion rate is worse than last quarter. By then, the trust gap has already cost you.

What winning teams do differently

They don’t just publish content. They build relationships. They think like media companies, not marketing departments. They treat attention and trust like capital. That shift changes everything.

This mindset doesn’t mean abandoning goals; it means adopting a rhythm. You start treating your audience as subscribers, not just prospects. Here’s what it looks like in action.

Ahrefs: Teach First, Sell Later

Brand Chemistry: Practice What You Preach

I started Brand Chemistry to prove that nurturing content works. Each week in the newsletter, I break down how brands build trust and how that drives growth. No hard sells for Pistachio. Just weekly stories on how brands earn trust. Most buyers aren’t ready to purchase when they first discover you, which is why playing the long game is critical to how we approach trust-building. 40,000+ subscribers, 60% open rate, and a pipeline that feels like warm intros, not cold calls.

HubSpot: Building a Media Portfolio

HubSpot acquired The Hustle (newsletter with 2M+ subscribers), Trends (trend analysis) and supported My First Million (podcast).

These weren't just audience acquisitions; they were acquiring media expertise and distribution channels. HubSpot's own research confirms their approach, with companies that blog regularly receiving 55% more website visitors and companies with 30+ landing pages generating 7× more leads.

ThinkerTank: From Chaos to Consistency

At Pistachio we worked with Ben and his business ThinkerTank to fix his middle-funnel mess. We audited his channels, built a content system, and created plug-and-play templates. Now he moves people from follower → subscriber → client without even pitching.

Canva: Community-Driven Growth

Then they launched Design School, a free education hub that now reaches millions. They help people do the thing they came for, and they keep coming back.

🔥 Looking for help boosting your middle of funnel? Isaac is currently working with Clay, BuzzFeed and more. You could be next.

Why this works (Hint: Psychology)

You don’t build relationships with one-off clicks. You build them with consistency. Here’s what middle-funnel content really does.

Newsletters = Habit

They show up in inboxes week after week. Your brand becomes a routine. Readers start to feel like they know you. That repetition creates subtle cues that influence how your audience perceives you, kind of like how priming changes taste perception without anyone noticing.

It’s called the mere exposure effect: the more someone sees you, the more they trust you.

Podcasts = Intimacy

Voice hits different. Listeners hear your quirks, tone, and timing. It creates what psychologists call para-social relationships. You feel like you know the host. You trust them, even if you’ve never met.

Video = Proof

Want someone to trust you? Show your face. Let them read your body language. Video activates primal trust signals we can’t explain, but totally believe.

Other Psychological Drivers to Tap

• Reciprocity: Give consistent value, and people will feel inclined to give back.

• Commitment & consistency bias: When someone reads 5 emails from you, they’re more likely to keep opening the 6th.

• Authority bias: Publish enough smart content and your audience will assume you’re the expert—even before buying.

So what should you actually make?

Middle-funnel content doesn’t need to be flashy. It needs to be familiar. Here are some formats that work, but remember your goal here isn’t conversion. It’s connection.

How you can apply this

If you’ve been nodding along to any of this, your marketing isn’t broken. Your funnel is just missing the muscle that moves people from curious to committed. Here’s how to build it so that it’s not just about volume, but about rhythm.

• Channels: Start with formats that build relationships, not just traffic.

• Systems: Systemise your content like a media publisher with strategies for topics, cadence and distribution.

• Reporting: Measure connection, not just clicks. Think about replies, referrals, repeat readers.

• Consistency: Show up every week, not just once a quarter with a PDF.

• Storytelling: Maintain narrative consistency, using one story across many touchpoints.

• Repurposing: Repackage the same idea across different formats. People need to hear it more than once.

• Ownership: Align your team so someone owns this work and protects it from being deprioritised.

Final word

If your content were to disappear tomorrow, would anyone notice?

If the answer is no, you’re not just missing the middle. You’re missing the point. Content is a compound asset. Every piece builds on the last. Every reader you retain gets more valuable. Every week you show up increases your odds. But only if you stop chasing clicks and start earning trust.

When you treat your content like a relationship channel instead of a lead magnet, you stop shouting into the void and start hearing “I feel like I already know you.”

That’s how trust is built. That’s how businesses grow.

If you’re serious about building a content system that actually converts, let's talk. At Pistachio, we've spent years perfecting exactly this type of growth playbook for companies all over the world. Hit me up on LinkedIn, or at Pistachio, where we can help you build the organic content machine that drives real results.

Extra reading

• 26 Crucial B2B Marketing Statistics - September, 2024

• Pattern Interrupt Marketing, What Is It? - January, 2025

• The Pirate Metrics - May, 2025

And that’s it! You can connect with Isaac on LinkedIn here, subscribe to Brand Chemistry here, and work with Pistcachio here.

BRAIN FOOD 🧠 

TWEETS OF THE WEEK 🐣 

TOOLS WE USE 🛠️

Every week we highlight tools we actually use inside of our business and give them an honest review. Today we are highlighting Paddle—a merchant of record, managing payments, tax and compliance needs—we use their ProfitWell tool.

See the full set of tools we use inside of Athyna & Open Source CEO here.

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