Demand generation professionals responsible for optimizing B2B funnels must remove any obstacles preventing efficiency and scaling of operations.
Use this three-part proven framework to construct a funnel without friction that delivers value throughout its entirety.
What is a Business-to-Business Sales Funnel?
A B2B funnel illustrates a B2B buyer's journey from the initial discovery of your brand or product to their final purchase decision or adopting your solution.
This journey can be represented visually as a funnel. It's essential to remember that many potential buyers may know of your brand before being filtered out as potential customers. Only after they are successfully targeted become buyers.
Understanding a B2B Marketing Funnel's Stages
B2B funnels are five-step marketing strategies typically divided into three stages - top, middle, and bottom. They aim to raise brand awareness among prospective clients and engage and convert these individuals into customers.
Buyer journey stages include awareness, interest, consideration, evaluation, and purchase an integrated marketing team might consider stages in the post-sale sales funnel that help clients through product adoption and onboarding; additionally, they could support them to become brand advocates.
B2B funnels differ significantly because they often involve multiple employees from a company moving freely through each stage. Go-to-market departments must apply an ever-increasing group as accounts move further down their respective funnels.
Understanding where a lead sits within your sales funnel and devising ways to move it forward are paramount for successful lead gen campaigns. Each piece of information must be addressed individually while still meeting sales goals on an organizational level.
The Very Top of the Funnel
Many B2B buyers wish to remain as anonymous as possible when making purchasing decisions; at this stage, it can be preferable for them to conduct their investigation and exploration of suppliers and potential vendors. At this stage, buyers become "known." Even though your products and services may still need to be well-known to your prospects, they'll start searching for solutions to their current problems.
Attracting potential clients requires tracking intent. Keywords and phrases can help identify when prospective clients conduct anonymous research online and help move an account along into the awareness phase of their purchasing journey; at this stage of their funnel, they might not yet understand all available solutions to address their problem, and so a priority at this stage should be making initial contact and creating awareness among prospects about your products/services/offers available to them - making sure first contact is made early is key!
Focus on attracting leads who fit well with your target customer profiles and educate them through content that showcases you as an authority in your field.
Use these examples as examples of top-of-funnel offers to share with prospects and get them excited about your product/service:
- Blog posts
- Advertisement
- Infographics
- Whitepapers
- Posts on social media
Data points to focus on: As part of your marketing funnel strategy and with accounts at the upper levels who show strong interest in your solution, focus on gathering key details like phone numbers direct-dialed for direct calling purposes, emails, or general company data so you can engage them when they start searching online for something similar to what your product can provide them with.
The Center of the Funnel
In the middle funnel, prospects are in an interest/consideration stage where they're actively looking for solutions and considering if your product or another competitor best matches their needs.
At this stage, it is crucial that your efforts center around differentiators that draw prospects in and keep their interest high. Furthermore, it would be prudent to expand your buyer group until all key decision-makers have been identified.
Here are a few activities you can undertake to market to prospects in the middle of their funnel.
- Email marketing
- Customer case studies
- Quizzes and other self-assessment instruments
- Videos of products or solutions
- Reports by analyst
Data points to consider: Review each prospect's interaction with your marketing efforts (emails, events, and content), then convert this engagement to account engagement scores. In-Market Score (IMS) calculations provide another helpful data point - ranking pages according to engagement with individual prospects can also help calculate these scores.
The Funnel's Base
B2B marketing aims to move prospects through its funnel and towards making decisions and selecting their preferred option. Now that they've been captured by your messaging and made aware of all its advantages, now is the time for closing sales!
Sales professionals usually hand off prospects as marketing qualified leads (MQLs) or accounts (MQAs), to which candidates compare vendors in order to determine who offers them the most excellent value.
Below are examples of content that could help close sales at the bottom of the funnel.
- Checklists or buyer's guides
- Customer case studies
- Customer videos
- Pricing pages
- Comparative analysis
- Offers of trial
Data points of interest: As prospects reach the bottom of your marketing funnel, it's crucial that you closely track conversion rates, trial signups, and executive engagement, as these indicators indicate when customers may be approaching the purchasing stage.
What Makes the B2B Funnel Special?
Sales funnels aren't something only you and your team know about.
As part of their marketing and sales initiatives, most digital marketers employ full-funnel marketing in their strategies. B2B sales cycles take much longer and require more terrific refinement than B2C cycles.
B2B companies must invest more time cultivating leads before turning them into customers, unlike B2C firms which may find these prospects immediately available for conversion. B2C customers use an entirely separate decision-making system. B2B buyers look for solutions that will address an organization's problems related to profit, productivity, and competitiveness.
Group decisions typically represent the final approval for purchases or approval processes. B2B buyers typically employ more logic, use factual evidence, and conduct an in-depth evaluation before purchasing compared to B2C consumers. Successful B2B marketers know the value of creating a compelling sales journey through an efficient marketing funnel.
Tunnel (Not Funnel) Vision
Growth marketers face many demands in meeting deadlines and budgets while also overseeing individual campaigns to ensure they succeed.
Performance marketing demands results. Marketers may become blinded by pressure to achieve a return on investment with each campaign they run, leading them to miss how potential customers move through an invisible B2B funnel (awareness and consideration stages before becoming customers).
Related:- How are B2B SaaS companies balancing high growth with capital efficiency?
Blind Spots
Marketing efforts often fail to prioritize customer needs and desires, which I find disappointing. An assumption or oversight could exist that everyone knows about. As sales and leads are generated quickly, content, messaging, and UX are not explicitly tailored for potential customers' buying processes or motivations. Digital marketing strategies may need more opportunities as a result.
First, content marketing that is targeted and informative can help raise awareness (top of the funnel). Remarketing is an effective strategy for acquiring marketing-qualified leads. Remarketing and retargeting allow you to build brand recognition while supporting sales funnel stages through intent-based marketing.
A Busy Work
Marketing and sales professionals may spend money and exert effort with good intentions of creating an optimized B2B sales funnel, yet this often fails.
Attaining and converting leads are increasingly expensive processes that have resulted in costly campaigns to encourage acquisition. Since limited statistics show how customers perceive products and services offered, only some indicators exist regarding how customers evaluate these offerings.
No insights exist on how the business could replicate this outcome more efficiently using channels that work while decreasing budget and efforts on those that do not.
Modern B2B Marketing Challenges
We need to understand how marketing funnels work.
B2B marketing professionals understand the significance of being active across as many digital channels and at an increased frequency.
Message customization should reflect buyer personas and funnel stages expressly. Messaging should remain consistent across channels without becoming intrusive; cost-efficient and innovative are critical factors in controlling costs.
Advice For Enhancing Your B2B Sales Funnel Strategy
Optimize the Top of Your Funnel
1. Make a Fantastic Website
After hearing about your product or service, many visitors will visit your website first to gather more information.
Your website represents far more than simply text on a white background - it should serve as the ultimate reflection of who you are as an organization, the values it stands for, and your view of yourself as an individual. Use well-designed graphics with action-driven text for maximum sales conversion and retention of visitors. Your website design accounts for 94% of visitors' first impressions about your company.
Pro tip: Enhancing your website with something enjoyable or intuitive will encourage visitors to stick around longer.
2. Embed a Product Tour
Product-led growth should be the future marketing strategy. Use your product to convince potential buyers why they should buy it from you.
Integrate an interactive marketing software demo onto your site to help visitors quickly grasp its functionality. Your website visitors will appreciate it more if it allows them to interact with and fall for your product! This approach may enable them to engage with it more fully - potentially even becoming fans.
Pro tip: For an interactive tour experience, try adding images, videos, and animation gifs into the annotations of your guide's notes. This can give it more personality!
3. Blogs and SEO Optimization
Google reigns supreme. If your goal is success, however, the work must be put in.
Optimize the content and structure of your site for SEO to drive organic traffic to it. Create topic clusters and conduct keyword research to establish yourself as an authority in your niche, using blogs that support product pages as a great way to drive organic search traffic to them.
Pro Tip: Make each web page of your site clear call-to-action (CTAs). Encourage readers to subscribe via their email addresses for your blog or podcast.
4. Campaigns on Social Media
Create a community on a social media platform frequented by your target market.
Attracting more followers requires providing engaging, informative content. This will encourage customers to interact with your brand.
Your campaign could showcase your business achievements, data from within your industry, personalized content written specifically for it, and voice, all with one message being relayed at any time or all three simultaneously! Your content could range from informational, comical, or even entertaining pieces; all this depends on you! Your organic social media campaigns and paid ones targeted towards specific audiences across various platforms should help expand your following.
Tip: Keep in mind that social platforms such as TikTok may contain their own distinct target audiences.
5. Google Ads (PPC)
Use Google AdWords to target specific keywords with ads that directly address those phrases.
Research the keywords your audience uses in their searches and create ads using these specific terms. Google charges for clicks that come through your ads.
Employ the negative keyword option to avoid spending money on clicks that won't result in leads or sales.
- PR
Good, traditional public relations cannot be replaced.
Your company could be showcased in magazines, newspapers, television reports, and other media coverage. Showcase product launches, fundraisers, or any exciting updates in which your organization may have participated. Please share the news segment you produced along with its publication name and tag; doing this could generate additional likes, comments, and shares on social media.
Tips for Optimizing the Middle of the Funnel
7. Demos
Prospects at an earlier stage in the B2B process funnel typically exhibit interest in learning more about the product choices available to them.
Forrester reports that 75% of B2B customers prefer conducting their research without speaking directly with sales reps, making your job as a salesperson to provide your clients with all of the information needed for self-education about your products and services.
Send them the link to an interactive sales demo so that they can experience what your product can do firsthand. Make the sales experience more personal for prospective buyers by including their names and the logos used by their companies in your product demonstration while emphasizing features relevant to them.
8. Lead Generation Forms
Fill out the form on your website to request additional information or arrange a meeting.
Keep going here and there. Keep pushing forward! Keep going. Dividing up questions across pages when creating your form can make visitors feel more at ease, leading to higher conversions.
9. Case Studies
Social proof and firsthand experiences are unrivaled when it comes to selling.
Create case studies to demonstrate the advantages your customers will gain by choosing your product, using video testimonials or written testimonies as examples to show its ability for growth. Utilize quotes, statistics, and figures about your customers to promote your business on websites, emails, social media, and any other form of promotion that comes to mind.
Build success stories that draw from different industries and feature your tools, then target specific information relevant to them directly.
10.eBooks
Make content that will establish you as an authority in your field. Try becoming more of a consultant instead. By compiling statistics and data you collected into an eBook format, you could create something incredible for clients to read!
Sharing an ebook like this one with your customers will build trust and enhance credibility. Pro Tip: Consider offering your eBook behind an email paywall and ask visitors to register with you to access it, expanding your database of potential leads.
11. Email Marketing
Email marketing has an incredible effect on sales. While you might already realize its potency, do you learn how much more it can help boost revenue than its popularity suggests? DMA reports that email marketing campaigns earned, on average, $42 for every $1 spent, providing an impressive return of 4200% according to DMA's estimates.
Consider what content would appeal to you before sending any spam emails. Use newsletters with eye-catching headlines and informative information to grow your leads base, then ask yourself whether that kind of email would interest you personally.
Pro Tip: Sort leads according to industry, industry-related problems or needs, or whatever makes sense, and send relevant content as soon as possible.
12. Comparison Of Competitors
Your prospects will research in the middle of your sales funnel. Likely, you will also want to get to know the competition.
You could tell them what you think if they do it anyway. Break down your current position and the market. Your leads will know you are the best choice if you highlight the features and tools only you can offer.
Tip: Be honest. Refrain from misleading prospects, or you will lose their trust and credibility.
13. Meetings
Offer to meet or speak with them when they express more interest to determine if your product is a perfect match for them. Posing open-ended and comprehensive questions will allow you to better comprehend a prospect's requirements and understand their preferences.
In your demonstration stage, emphasize features over value.
Pro Tip: When considering Zoom versus phone call options, choose video. Gong discovered that deals won by using webcams were 41% more likely to succeed than exchanges lost.
Tips for Optimizing the Bottom of Your Funnel
14.CTAs
Offer to meet or speak with them when they express more interest to determine if your product is a perfect match for them.
Posing open-ended and comprehensive questions will allow you to better comprehend a prospect's requirements and understand their preferences. In your demonstration stage, emphasize features over value.
Pro Tip: When considering Zoom versus phone call options, choose video. Gong discovered that deals won by using webcams were 41% more likely to succeed than exchanges lost.
15. Landing Page
Landing pages that send a compelling message will assist your clients in transitioning into the next stage of the sales process. Individual pages for every use case your product solves can also be created. Offering your prospects all the required information will encourage them to complete a booking or provide credit card details. Please use client testimonials and logos as evidence that their content holds value.
Tip: At this stage, less is better. Your customer has already decided what they want and needs guidance through the final stages. Get rid of any excess fluff on your landing page to cut fat.
Tips for Post-Sales Sales Optimization
16. Product Walkthrough
Once your product has been sold, your customers must utilize it regularly in their daily lives.
Your product will become increasingly indispensable to customers as time progresses; happy customers become loyal. Provide your team with the resources needed to assist customers in getting the most from your products. Send guided walkthroughs of them directly to customers; this will accelerate and simplify customer onboarding processes.
Tip: Short product tours can provide your clients with valuable insight into any new features, which will increase adoption.
Inquire about referrals: Nielson's report found that 92% of individuals trust recommendations made by friends or family.
Ask satisfied customers to recommend your product to others within their social network as a powerful strategy to grow sales and boost business. This strategy could increase revenues while driving business success forward. Always think carefully before asking someone out. Make the process as painless for them as possible by offering incentives or rewards so they will spread the news themselves.
Advice For Improving B2B Sales Funnels
18. Build Reports For B2B Sales Channels
Make sure your funnel is at its optimal performance by monitoring its state continuously. utilizing existing numbers can allow you to predict overall performance and set individual and team targets. Watch your goals, your quotas, and whether or not they're being fulfilled: monitor leads, conversion rates, and growth projections for growth potential.
Tip: Update your CRM to monitor sales trends more quickly.
19: Use Lead Scoring
Make sure that during the sales process, you qualify your leads thoroughly.
Consider which factors will entice prospects to buy and use your product, determine which businesses could utilize it, and monitor how your leads engage with your brand to ascertain their interest level. Create a formula to score leads to analyze and rank prospects more efficiently so you know where and when your time should be best spent. This way, you will know exactly which shows you should prioritize spending your energy on. Use lead scoring software for tracking and qualifying leads.
Can Technology Help You With B2B Marketing?
Integration between technology tools enables teams to gain a comprehensive view of customers and reduce friction within their funnel. Consolidate your tech stack to save costs, automate tedious tasks, and integrate other tools.
Tech Stack Consolidation
Reducing your marketing technology stack to its essentials can save your team time and effort in managing it effectively. Focusing on one central platform rather than numerous point solutions may streamline processes while maintaining data consistency throughout your funnel.
Your team should consolidate some core marketing activities into one platform.
- Find new leads
- Enhance and clean your database
- Manage and create audiences
- Create and manage campaigns
- Report on progress
Marketing technology stacks give marketers an accurate picture of the leads in their pipeline and allow for automated nurturing campaigns that efficiently guide prospects down their funnel.
Automatism
Automating campaigns allows B2B marketers to reduce time-consuming manual work. Launching them at every funnel stage enables marketers to focus more time and energy on strategic tasks than doing repetitive, manual labor.
Imagine one of your leads downloading content from your site; they could automatically be included in a nurturing campaign tailored around this content, other relevant topics, or job roles. Here is an example of a nurturing email you could send after someone downloads from you. The template is customizable based on factors like job title or industry.
Lead-nurture automation can significantly boost conversion rates of high-value leads while shortening conversion times by creating stronger bonds between your brand and its target prospects. Instead of waiting until tips have been followed up on, your team can reach out while they still think about your products/services/topic.
Integrates
Multiple components are involved in creating and managing an effective B2B full-funnel strategy, so all data must remain consistent throughout. Snowflake can help marketing teams enhance their analytics and segmentation for more efficient campaigns. By collecting accurate account and contact data as well as first and third-party attributes of customers and prospects, you can deliver an improved customer experience.
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The Conclusion of the Article is:
Optimizing your B2B funnel can generate additional leads, increase conversion rates, and foster an enjoyable brand experience for prospective buyers. Your team can initiate campaigns that educate and delight customers at both ends of their purchase journeys.
