As a business-to-business (B2B) marketer, you need a well-structured B2B multi-channel funnel strategy.
This will help you attract new customers, generate leads and land sales.
Without an omnichannel marketing approach, you can say goodbye to efficacy in brand awareness, lead generation, and sales revenue.
The B2B marketing funnel involves a four-stage multi-channel funnel strategy.
The first three focus on acquiring new customers, and the final retention phase focuses on customer loyalty.
- Funnel top (tofu): This mainly focuses on brand awareness and lead generation.
- Mid-Funnel (MOFU): This consideration phase focuses primarily on lead generation.
- Bottom of Funnel (BOFU): This is where the deal is closed and transferred to the sales team.
- Customer retention: This stage focuses on keeping existing customers happy, generating repeat customers, and working with referrals.
What is unique about the B2B funnel?
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 omnichannel marketing as part of their sales and marketing efforts.
However, unlike most B2C companies, B2B sales cycles are typically much longer than their consumer-facing counterparts and often require a more granular approach.
B2B companies often take months longer than B2C companies to nurture their leads before becoming paying customers.
They also have different decision-making processes for B2C consumers.
Unlike B2C customers, B2B buyers are looking for solutions to organizational problems such as profit, productivity and competitiveness.
After going through several internal processes and sign-offs, a group usually makes the final purchase decision or approval process.
Compared to B2C buyers, B2B buyers tend to use more logic, fact-based reasoning, and in-depth research before making a buying decision.
For this reason, a well-designed marketing funnel that guides buyers through the sales process is important for B2B marketers who want to be successful.
So what’s the problem?
Tunnel (Non-Funnel) Vision
Growth marketers are under enormous pressure to meet deadlines, budget budgets, meet goals, and make siloed campaigns work.
After all, performance marketing requires Performance.
The pressure on conversion ROI for each siloed campaign means that marketers may lose sight of how their potential leads move through the “invisible” B2B marketing funnel (awareness, consideration, and acquisition).
blind spot
Additionally, I often find a lack of effort in understanding who the ideal customer is and putting them first in all marketing efforts.
Maybe it’s an oversight or assumption that everyone knows about.
However, in the rush to sell and generate leads, not enough thought was put into creating content, messaging and user experience, focusing on unique buying motives and decision making process of potential customers.
As a result, digital marketing strategies miss opportunities.
First, there is a gap in creating awareness and consideration (top of the funnel) through focused and informative content marketing.
Also, you may have forgotten that marketing qualified leads can be targeted through remarketing.
Remarketing or retargeting audiences can increase brand awareness and support intent-based marketing efforts at the sales funnel stage.
the busy work
Despite the activities, expenses and goodwill efforts of the marketing and sales teams, there is often a complete lack of strategic, optimized B2B marketing channels.
Instead, only expensive campaigns drive lead conversions.
As a result, there is little to no data on how customers find the product or service offered.
There is also no insight into how companies can focus on replicating this desired outcome with their top-performing channels, and how they can reduce budget and effort for channels that don’t.
Challenges for the Modern B2B Marketer
It’s not because we don’t understand marketing channels.
In fact, most B2B marketers realize that they should be active on as many digital channels as possible.
They also know that messaging needs to be based on each Buyer’s Unique Role and stages of the funnel.
Messaging should also be consistent across all channels without being too intrusive. Plus, there’s a lot of pressure to do all of this while staying competitive, great, and within budget.
So how did you do it? This is not possible unless you have a game plan.
Here’s how to succeed with an omnichannel B2B marketing strategy
If you’re marketing in a B2B business, you need a fully integrated marketing channel.
If you want to attract new leads, nurture those leads over a long sales cycle and eventually convert them into paying customers.
B2B marketers can “unlock” the full potential of demand generation programs by implementing a solid B2B marketing and multi-channel funnel strategy.
That’s because omnichannel marketing is designed to provide potential customers with a seamless experience at every stage of the customer journey.
This makes it easier to guide them through each stage of the funnel to the desired positive outcome and ultimately convert them into paying customers.
Where do you start?
1. Focus on identifying and supporting your ideal customer
When I ask a company who their target market is, they say “everyone” or “all businesses in America.”
I say, “impossible” unless you have an unlimited budget and unlimited resources. No, you need to be specific.
What unique problem did you solve?
You may offer a variety of products and services, but knowing what you do best and why customers choose you will help demonstrate your position in the market.
View your CRM system
Identify the customers who bring the most value, the fewest support inquiries, and the most loyal customers. Now, find more similar ones and try to find any similarities they share.
- Are they the same industry?
- How many employees do they have?
- Where is their geographic location?
- Through what channels do they become leads, customers, etc.?
Determine what makes them an ideal customer, and you’ll know how to attract more people who like them.
Outline their pain points and support how your product solves their challenges
If you can highlight how your solution helps them do better, you have the apex of messaging.
2. X mark the scene
Answer this question: What do you want your ideal customer to do at the end of their journey?
OK, now working backwards from that action.
There is a clear journey from start to finish.
There are also well-defined “if-then” scenarios, and nets are captured at the drop-off point.
This will ensure you get the most out of your B2B marketing. Few cold leads turn into hot sells right away.
- When you map your B2B marketing funnel From awareness consideration to conversion – consider all touchpoints, channels, email nurturing and conversion criteria.
- Consider brand value And what the customer experience should be like. Most marketers sell products or services. The best marketers guide their customers through a customized experience.
- Use digital measurement tools Such as Google Analytics to understand which channel is your current best acquisition channel.
- View your social analytics Learn which channel is the go-to watering hole for your ideal prospect.
- analyze this data And your CRM insights to better understand how your customers like to interact with you online.
3. I prefer
Conduct competitor analysis of brands that share your ideal customer niche. Find out where they are doing well, what opportunities and gaps exist, and how to compete.
use Facebook Ad Library See what they are doing.
Use Google Search to see what ads they’re using, what keywords they’re targeting, and what their landing pages look like.
While this is just a glimpse into their own unique customer journey – as we don’t know 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 B2B Sales Funnel Content
Now that you understand your target customers, what your competitors are doing, and have mapped out a unique B2B marketing journey, it’s time to create content focused on a multi-channel strategy that encourages the required take at each stage action.
consciousness
What gets you on the B2B prospect radar needs to be available on multiple digital channels.
For example, an SEO optimized blog on your website answers common challenges in their industry.
Closed white papers, research articles, or long-form articles.
Paid search targeting awareness TOFU keywords, and custom Google display ads that track them online for weeks.
Facebook and Instagram ads drive traffic to websites, and organic social posts drive engagement on these channels.
Anything that introduces your brand or solution to your audience and lets them know you exist.
consider
Create consideration content for those who want to learn more about your service or product and what it can do to help them solve their challenges.
These are more educational and feature-oriented articles, such as case studies and product information.
Use pricing and USP keywords in your Google Search campaigns and Google Display Remarketing.
Create short-funnel lead ads on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
Post consideration, price, and feature-rich posts for organic sharing.
Send personalized drip campaigns over the next few weeks to verify why they can trust you as a guide to solve problems and help them achieve their goals.
get
Finally, create relevant acquisition content for those down the marketing funnel.
This includes targeting keywords with commercial intent on Google Ads.
You can deploy remarketing campaigns to your considered audiences on Google Display and social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
This may also include sending promotional emails to your database.
Remember to use your channels to build long-term relationships that may lead to more opportunities.
5. Measure what matters
great! You have come this far. Now let’s think about how to keep improving.
The best way to do this is to take steps to allow you to measure.
By measuring each stage of the funnel, you’ll see what works and what doesn’t.
Now is not the time for marketing teams and sales teams to “gut” and intuition.
Instead, built-in analytics in digital marketing channels and campaigns should enable you to try out simple experiments in your B2B marketing channel mix.
This way, you’ll understand why your audience engages with certain types of content or activities in the marketing funnel, why prospects convert or abandon the journey, and in which marketing campaign it occurs.
Iterative, brave, bold and agile.
in conclusion
The B2B marketing landscape has changed.
This is because B2B buyers are evolving.
Research-based, informative, and regulatory-driven, the only way to reach these tech-savvy target audiences is to deploy omnichannel B2B marketing strategies and tactics.
Start your game plan with a keen understanding of your target audience.
Get a deep understanding of your existing customers and replicate their characteristics.
Then carefully plan each stage of the marketing funnel, which channels to use, and what content to create to get the desired results.
Finally, start setting the pace and refining your strategy through diligent measurement and analysis.
Your B2B marketing funnel and a great B2B multi-channel funnel strategy will be a huge success!
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