As a B2B marketer, you need a well-structured B2B multi-channel funnels strategy.
This will help you attract new clients, generate leads, and land sales.
Without a full marketing approach, you can kiss your efficiency in brand awareness, lead generation, and goodbye to sales revenue.
The B2B marketing funnel includes a four-stage multi-channel funnel strategy.
The top three focus on new customer acquisition, and the final retention stage is focused on customer loyalty.
- Top of the funnel (TOFU): This mostly focuses on brand awareness and lead generation.
- Mid-Funnel (MOFU): This ideation stage mainly focuses on lead generation.
- Bottom of funnel (BOFU): This is where the deal is closed and the transition to the sales force takes place.
- Customer retention: This stage focuses on keeping existing customers happy, generating repeat business, and working with referrals.
What is unique about the B2B path?
The sales funnel is not new information to you, nor is it unique to your marketing team.
Most digital marketing professionals use some version of Complete Marketing as part of their sales and marketing efforts.
However, unlike most B2C companies, the B2B sales cycle is often much longer than its consumer-facing counterpart and usually requires a more nuanced approach.
B2B companies often have to nurture their prospects for several months longer than B2C companies before they become paying customers.
They also have a different decision-making process for B2C consumers.
Unlike B2C customers, a B2B buyer is looking for a solution that solves an organizational problem, such as profit, productivity, and competitiveness.
After going through several internal processes and signatures, the group usually makes the final purchase decision or approval process.
B2B buyers tend to use more logic, fact-based reasoning, and in-depth research than B2C buyers before making a purchase decision.
For this reason, a well-designed marketing funnel that guides the buyer along the sales journey is of great importance to B2B marketers who want to succeed.
So what’s the problem?
Tunnel vision (not the funnel)
Growth marketers are under tremendous pressure to meet deadlines, sweat budgets, hit targets, and make isolated campaigns work.
Performance marketing, after all, requires performance.
The pressure on conversion ROI for each isolated campaign means that marketers may lose sight of how their potential prospects are moving through the ‘invisible’ (awareness, insight, acquisition) B2B marketing funnel.
blind spots
In addition, I often find a lack of effort in understanding who my ideal customer is and keeping them front and center in all marketing activities.
Perhaps this is an oversight or an assumption that everyone knows.
However, in the mad rush to sell and generate leads, not enough thought has been given to creating content, messaging, and user experience that focus on the unique buying impulse and decision-making process of potential customers.
As a result, there are missed opportunities in your digital marketing strategy.
First, there are gaps in creating awareness and consideration (the top of the funnel) via focused, informative content marketing.
Also, you may forget that qualified marketing can be targeted with remarketing.
Remarketing or retargeting audiences can increase brand awareness and intent marketing efforts that support the stages of the sales funnel.
Busy
Despite the activity, expenditures, and well-intentioned efforts of the marketing and sales team, there is often a complete absence of a strategic and optimized B2B marketing funnel.
Instead, costly campaigns exist only to drive acquisition towards converting leads.
Thus, minimal or no data indicates how customers find the product or services offered.
Nor are there insights into how the company can focus on replicating this desired outcome through its best performing channels, and how to reduce budget and effort on channels that don’t.
Challenges of modern B2B marketers
Not because we don’t know about the marketing path.
In fact, most B2B marketers understand that they should be active on as many digital channels as possible, whenever possible.
They also know that messaging needs to be exquisitely customized based on each buyer’s unique personality and funnel stage.
Messaging should also be consistent across all channels without being too invasive. Plus, the pressure is on to do all of this while remaining competitive, nimble, and on budget.
So how do you do this? This is only possible if you have a game plan.
Here’s how to succeed with a complete B2B marketing strategy
If you are marketing in a B2B company, you need a fully integrated marketing funnel.
If you want to generate new leads, grow those through the long sales cycle, eventually converting them into paying customers.
B2B marketers can “unleash” the full potential of their demand generation initiatives by implementing a strong B2B and multiple channel marketing strategy.
This is because omnichannel marketing aims to give potential customers a seamless experience at every stage of the customer journey.
This makes it easy to direct them towards the desired positive outcome at each stage of the funnel, and ultimately convert them into paying customers.
Where do you start?
1. Focus on identifying and advocating for the ideal customer
When I ask a company what their target market is, they say “everyone” or “all companies in America.”
To which I say, “Not possible”, unless you have an unlimited budget and unlimited resources. No, you have to be specific.
What is the unique problem you are solving?
You may offer many products and services, but knowing what you are best at – and why your customers choose you – will help clarify your position in the market.
Research your CRM system
Identify the customer who brings the most value, has the fewest support inquiries, and is the most loyal. Now, find more like that and try to identify any similarities they share.
- Are they in the same industry?
- How many employees do they have?
- Where is it geographically located?
- What is the channel through which they become leads, customers, etc.?
Identify what makes them an ideal customer and you’ll know how to attract more like them.
Identify their pain points and highlight how your product can solve their challenges
If you can highlight how your solutions can help them do what they do better, you’ll have the top of your message.
2. X marks spot
Answer this question: What do you want your ideal customer to do at the end of their journey?
Well, now work your way back from this procedure.
From start to finish, there is a clearly defined journey.
There are also clearly defined “if this happens” scenarios and fishing nets at drop off points.
This will ensure that you get the most revenue from your B2B marketing. A cold lead rarely turns into a hot sale right away.
- While drawing your B2B marketing funnel From awareness to conversion thinking – consider all your touchpoints, channels, email promotion, and conversion criteria.
- Consider brand values And what should the experience feel like for your customer. Most marketers sell a product or service. The best marketers guide their customers through personalized experiences.
- Use digital measuring tools Like Google Analytics to see which channel is your current best acquisition channel.
- Review your social analytics To find out which canal is the preferred watering hole for your ideal horizons.
- Analyze this data and your CRM insights to better understand how your customer prefers to interact with you online.
3. Compare Like For Like
Analyze competitors for those brands that share your ideal customer niche. Find out what they do well, what opportunities and gaps there are, and how you can compete.
Use the Facebook Ads Library to see what they do.
Use Google search to see what ads they use, what keywords they target, and what their landing pages look like.
While this is only a glimpse into their unique customer journey – since it’s not clear what happens after a lead is generated – this will help you generate ideas and stay relevant. Inspiration is often the fruit of imitation!
4. Create a net content B2B sales funnel content
Now that you know your target customer, what your competitors are doing, and have mapped out a unique B2B marketing journey, it’s time to create content focused on multi-channel tactics that encourage desired action at every stage.
consciousness
The content that gets you on your B2B prospect’s radar needs to be available on multiple digital channels.
For example, an SEO optimized blog on your website that answers a common challenge in their industry.
Gated white papers, research pieces, or long articles.
Paid search targeting awareness with TOFU keywords, and a dedicated Google screen of intent you’ve been tracking online for a few weeks.
Facebook and Instagram ads drive website traffic, and organic social posts drive engagement on these channels.
Anything that introduces your brand or solution to the public and just lets them know you exist.
consideration
Create conceptual content for those who want to know more about your service or product and what it can do to help them solve their challenges.
These are educational and feature-oriented pieces, such as case studies and product information.
Use pricing and USP keywords in your Google Search and Google Display Network remarketing campaigns.
Create short funnel general ads on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
Post thinking pieces, quotes, and feature-rich posts for organic sharing.
Submit personal rating campaigns over the next few weeks to check why they can trust you as a guide to solve their problem and help them reach their goal.
acquisition
Finally, create relevant acquisition content for those who are further down the marketing funnel.
This may include targeting keywords with commercial intent on Google Ads.
Deploy your remarketing campaigns to your audience on Google Display and social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
This can also include sending promotional emails to your database.
Remember to use your channels to build long-term relationships that can foster more opportunities.
5. Measure what matters
Great! You’ve come this far. Now let’s think about how we can continue to improve.
The best way to do this is to take measures that allow you to measure up.
By measuring each stage of the funnel, you’ll see what works and what doesn’t.
This is not the time for “gut feeling” and instinct in the marketing team and sales team.
Instead, the analytics built into your digital marketing channels and campaigns should enable you to pilot simple experiences into your B2B marketing channel mix.
This way, you’ll learn why your audience engages with certain types of content or campaigns along the marketing funnel, why potential customers divert or abandon a trip, and in which marketing campaign that occurred.
Repeat, be brave, be daring, be agile.
conclusion
The landscape of B2B marketing has changed.
This is because B2B buyers are evolving.
The only way to reach this tech-savvy target audience is by deploying full-funnel B2B marketing strategies and methods.
Start your game plan with a deep understanding of your target audience.
Dig into your existing customers and replicate their characteristics.
Then carefully define each stage of the marketing funnel, which channels to use, and what content to create to get the desired result.
Finally, start picking the pace and improving your strategy through diligent measurements and analysis.
Here’s to a hit with your B2B Marketing Funnel and Premium Multi-Channel B2B Channel Strategies That Work!
More resources:
- B2B keyword research done right with practical examples
- How to make paid search work for B2B marketing
- PPC 101: A Complete Guide to the Fundamentals of Pay-Per-Click Marketing
Main image: eamesBot/Shutterstock
