What if you get to know how to increase your sales? Well, that would be great, right? Why? Because when it's sales and marketing, there is so much.

Attracting an audience, engaging them, converting them into leads, further into customers, and building relationships with them can be overwhelming. And you may wonder where to begin and where to pay attention.

All your problems can be solved by just one thing, which is the B2B marketing funnel. Through this marketing funnel, you will get to know where to begin. Also, you can increase your sales through a productive B2B marketing funnel. 

What Is B2B Marketing Funnel?

Let's first start with the basics and see what the b2b marketing funnel is. You can think of this marketing funnel as a blueprint for understanding customer interaction with your brand.

Through the marketing funnel, you can understand how your customers are interacting with your brand. Like how customers interact with your brand after the first encounter. Do they spend time on your website, do they fill out forms, or do they make purchasing decisions?

If yes, then how many viewers became your customers after the first encounter? How many just bounced back after spending some time? These are all valuable insights you need to know about your marketing strategies.

A marketing funnel will not only help you understand this but also improve customer interaction with your brand. The marketing funnel is similar to the sales funnel, and in some instances, it feels like one.

However, they are both different in the sense that the marketing funnel creates a point of contact and gives your buyers a good reason to make a buying decision.

The sales funnel works on tangible actions you can take as a business to convince people to buy. However, they are very different from B2C marketing and sales funnels.

In the B2B funnel, the businesses as your clients act differently from individual customers. They will spend more money on your products; hence, they will take more time to make a buying decision. If they have stakeholders, then the entire process will take more time.

This means that your B2B sales are going to take a lot more time than individual customers. So, you need a marketing funnel that can reduce this time.

Why You Should Use B2B Marketing Funnel?

In this section, we shall discuss why you need a B2B marketing funnel or if it is really worth your time and resources. Well, the benefits of a marketing funnel for your B2B are as follows:

• As we have already mentioned in the B2B model, the buying process is complicated, so it needs oversight. The marketing funnel provides that oversight.

• As your clients are businesses, they want to have good experience in which the marketing funnel can help.

• When you work on a marketing funnel, you are providing a coordinating plan for different teams working together.

• These teams, in turn, work according to the marketing funnel to maximize the efficiency of the marketing tools. This becomes even more important when you have to automate large parts of the process.

• A B2B marketing funnel allows you to find inefficiencies in your marketing tactics so that you can fix them.

• Moreover, you can optimize your marketing process through a marketing funnel, attract clients, and retain them.

• In addition, a marketing funnel streamlines all your marketing strategies. You are not just making some random decisions but informed decisions.

• Through marketing funnel examination, you will know which part of the customer interaction journey to work.

Different Stages of B2B Marketing Funnel

When we are talking about a b2b marketing funnel, then it's important to know its different stages. All stages of the marketing funnel have different requirements and work differently in customer interaction.

Top of Funnel (TOFU)

The top of the marketing funnel, also known as the shortened form TOFU, is the first point of interaction. To understand how this stage works, first put yourself in the place of your customers.

As a customer, will you buy any product or service, or will you first like to know about that? Well, it's clear that before making any buying decision, you would like to discover something about the brand.

And that's what the top stage is about creating awareness and attracting the attention of your customers. When they know about your brand and trust it, they will also consider buying from you.

Middle of Funnel (MOFU)

Now that you have attracted the attention of your customers, you need to earn their trust as well. And for that, you have to understand their pain points and what they need or want.

Only then can you create content that your customers can relate to, and ultimately, they will trust you. So, the middle stage is about interest and consideration from your customers.

Bottom of Funnel (BOFU)

Now that you have reached the bottom stage of the marketing funnel, this is the point of conversion. Through the above two stages, you have to convince your customers that you are trustworthy and can help them with their problems. At this stage, they are ready to make a buying decision.

However, your journey with them doesn't end here, as you have to retain your customers. You have to work in the selling stage, where you can assist them through email marketing. Or simply just by providing them with genuine customer support services.

How to Create a Productive B2B Marketing Funnel?

Now you know about the B2B marketing funnel and why it is important to you. Well, then, the next thing is to work on creating a productive and efficient marketing funnel for your business. For that, you can follow the steps below:

Research Thoroughly

Just like any other marketing strategy, start with research. You can either research your niche and industry or your competitors. When you research your competitors, you will get to know various new things, like how they are working on their marketing, client relationships, and building personal relationships.

This will help to get the starting point from where you can begin. Also, when you research your industry, you will be able to identify customer behavior, purchasing patterns, and a lot more things like this. Thus, your marketing funnel will be supported by well-researched decisions.

Set Your Objectives

After doing thorough research and knowing your industry, you have to set goals and objectives. This will help you remember what your mission is.

Outlining your goals will help you align them with your marketing strategies. When you know what you want to achieve, you can work out the way to it. In your goals, you might consider,

• Conversion rate

• Total sales, monthly or half – yearly or annually

• Average sale value

• Customer satisfaction

When you know your goals, you can create your marketing strategies accordingly. Also, you will know how far or close you are to achieving your goals and how you can cover up the rest of the journey.

Know Your Audience

The next step is to know your audience and then make a B2B marketing funnel. When it is digital marketing, whether for B2B or B2C, knowing your audience is everything.

If you don't know your target audience, then every penny you spend will be wasted. All your marketing strategies will be futile. So, first, you know the target audience, in this case, the businesses that are your potential clients.

Your marketing funnel will focus on the customer journey, so you have to understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. When you know these points, you can also create marketing strategies to which your customers can relate.

Choose Channels Carefully

Now that you know your industry, goals, and audience, you need to work on the channels. You may think about what this means and why it is important. Let's take an example to understand this.

Suppose you have researched the industry and your audience, but you don't know how to approach them. In addition, you have chosen the wrong channel. Like your target audience focuses on Facebook, and you are running your marketing campaigns on Instagram.

So, now, all your research, marketing strategies, resources, money, and efforts will be wasted. Thus, when you are conducting research, know what channel your audience uses.

Do they spend more time on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or YouTube? And especially at what time, like during day hours or night hours. These things will support your marketing campaigns and help you reach your target audience.

Consistency in Content Creation

The next step is to produce quality content for your target audience. You can choose any sort of content, infographics, videos, blogs, or tutorials.

The content you create will help to engage your audience with your brand. So, it has to be of high – quality and relevant to your customers. Moreover, you have to be consistent in your content creation.

In marketing, think of your content as your asset, which can attract customers, retain them, and build brand recognition. While you are working with content, don't forget about your marketing funnel.

For instance, in the first stage, you can create a beginner's guide, and in the bottom stage, you can create comparison guides. Also, know your customers' pain points and try to address them in your content.

And then offer your products and services as a solution to their problems. In this way, you can efficiently use content for your marketing funnel and business.

Monitor Your Progress

The last but most crucial step of your marketing funnel is to track your progress. This includes a comprehensive analysis of your content engagement, marketing funnel campaign success, and, ultimately, purchases.

You don't want to see the same results after three years. And the change you want to see will be visible when you monitor your progress. This will help you in getting your weak points and plus points.

You have worked hard, and now it's time to track your progress and work on fine details. This will take your work and marketing campaigns to the next level. Also, when you compare your goals and progress, you will get to know if you are lacking or not.

And if you are lacking, then find out where and work on to improve that. Hence, you can make a productive and efficient marketing funnel for your business.

FAQs

Is creating a marketing funnel for the B2B model expensive?

A costly marketing funnel doesn't guarantee a successful marketing campaign. If you are appropriately distributing your resources throughout different stages, then you can create cost – an efficient marketing funnel.

Are marketing and sales funnel important for B2B business?

Yes, both marketing and sales funnel are important for your B2B business. You may think of them as the same, but in reality, they are not, and you need both of them.

Is the B2B sales funnel important?

Yes, a B2B sales funnel is very important for your business. It makes you work on the actions at each stage to convert your viewer into a customer.

What are the stages of the B2B content?

When you are working on the B2B marketing funnel, you have to work on content, too. While creating content for your marketing funnel, you have to work on awareness, consideration, action, and retention.

What are the four pillars of B2B sales and marketing?

Four prominent pillars in B2B sales and marketing improve the effectiveness of the marketing strategy. They are insight, marketing strategy, creativity, and metrics.

Conclusion

In this article, we have seen what a B2B marketing funnel is and how it can help your business. We can say here that b2b marketing is a bit tougher than b2c marketing. And that is completely understandable. When, as a business, you are selling your products and services to a customer, you have different goals. You have to capture active customers, motivate fast purchases, and provide efficient customer service.

However, when it comes to B2B selling, as a business, you have to capture qualified leads, provide dedicated support, and offer continuous answers in the sales funnel. Thus, when you, as a business, are selling your services and products to another business, you have to be efficient.

Moreover, you have to work on building personal relationships. You can understand your client's condition by putting yourself in their shoes. You have to work on the logical process–driven purchasing decisions. And for that, you have to create an efficient and productive b2b marketing funnel.

Through this funnel, first, you will understand the stage to pay more attention to, which is the transactional stage. Then, you can create a marketing funnel based on that. You have to make informed decisions, and that you can do only when you create a marketing funnel. Thus, you have to strategize your marketing funnel after researching thoroughly.