Do you think it would be helpful to have a guide that outlines the steps to increase sales?
Our guide offers insights into customer preferences and suggests actions to take at each stage of their journey.
That would be beneficial, wouldn’t it?
In this blog, we’re describing a B2B marketing and sales funnel strategy. If you haven’t implemented one yet, you are lagging, as 87% of marketers develop content based on different stages of their customer journey.
Learn how to create a B2B marketing funnel to boost your sales.
This blueprint outlines the stages your customers go through, from first encountering your manufacturing brand to becoming a customer. It includes targeted marketing actions at each stage. Although similar to a sales funnel, a B2B marketing funnel is focused on the customer journey rather than just sales.
- The marketing funnel generates opportunities for potential customers to learn about your product or service.
- The sales funnel outlines the specific steps taken to persuade them to make a purchase.
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B2B marketing/sales funnels differ from B2C funnels because businesses have a unique purchasing process. Since business customers usually make high-value purchases and involve more stakeholders, the purchasing journey takes longer and is more involved, requiring more time and resources.
B2B buying can be complex and lengthy, with 77% of buyers reporting their most recent purchase as very complex. Closing B2B sales can take at least 4 months; 74.6% take this long, and almost half take 7 months or longer. Therefore, B2B companies should optimize their funnels for marketing AND sales!
What Is The Importance Of A Marketing Funnel For My Manufacturing Business?
There are numerous reasons why a B2B marketing funnel is essential. Below, we have highlighted five crucial advantages, but there are many more to explore.
1. The manufacturing customer journey is complex and demands detailed attention.
2. Businesses today prioritize customer experience, which influences marketing strategies.
3. The funnel enables collaboration among team members.
4. Marketing tools can effectively automate some aspects.
5. It helps identify inefficiencies and streamline the marketing process.
The B2B marketing funnel has different stages, and it’s vital to deliver the appropriate content or experience based on where the customer is in their journey.
For instance, a first-time site visitor will have different needs and questions compared to a regular visitor. It’s necessary to understand the B2B marketing funnel and what potential customers desire at each stage to ensure you deliver the correct information when needed.
According to SEJ, 95 percent of marketers create content for the funnel top more frequently than the middle or bottom of the funnel. The top of the funnel is the stage where prospects become aware of your brand before considering your products.
“Today, businesses often focus on brand building, SEO, social media posts, content marketing, influencer marketing, video marketing, and paid advertising at the top of their sales funnel.”
When potential customers reach this stage, they have a question they want an answer to or a problem that needs to be solved. Providing them with that answer can help initiate a relationship, even though the customer may not be familiar with your brand. However, drawing and maintaining their attention can be challenging, particularly in saturated social media platforms. A well-defined marketing funnel can help build brand awareness and establish a foundation for nurturing customer relationships.
SEJ found that 86% of marketers commission or create content for the middle stage of the funnel, which focuses on generating interest and consideration after grabbing the audience’s attention at the top.
- It’s important to understand that B2B sales typically require multiple touchpoints before a sale is made.
- Typically, around eight points of contact are needed to establish enough trust and build a strong relationship with potential clients.
- This means that to be successful in B2B sales, you need to invest in marketing and focus on building interest in the middle stage.
- You can do this by showing you understand your prospects’ pain points, care about their problems, and have the knowledge and expertise to provide effective solutions.
Marketers use targeted and informative content to help prospects solve their problems. While giving away free information, the end game is to convince prospects that your product or service is the fastest, easiest, and most effective solution. Although it’s not hard selling, you must plant the seed that will grow into purchase intent.
According to SEJ, 76% of marketers produce content for the bottom stage of the funnel, where the objective is to convert leads into customers. At this point, you need to be straightforward and have compelling calls to action leading users directly to pages where they purchase. Although content still guides prospects, the focus has slightly changed.
Now that the prospect is aware of their pain point and agrees they need help, your goal is to differentiate your company from competitors and make sure they choose your company for assistance.
Marketers use various tools such as case studies, social proof, webinars, comparison guides, demos, free trials, and optimized landing pages to guide potential customers through the sales process. While the top and middle stages of the process generate interest, it is at the bottom stage where the marketer closes the deal – by making sales.
Post Funnel
After making a sale, the relationship-building process doesn’t end there. It’s crucial to implement a clear post-purchase marketing strategy to get the most out of the relationship you’ve built with your customers.
Engaging with repeat customers is crucial in driving ROI, as they are 9X more likely to purchase again. It involves providing ongoing support to ensure they are maximizing their product’s benefits and resolving issues they may encounter. During this time, you should try upselling and cross-selling by pointing out the enhanced features of upgrades and informing customers about the new improvements in the products you make and the services you offer. The goal is to maintain an ongoing conversation so that when customers require something additional, your business will be the first one they think of.
B2B Sales Funnel
This funnel illustrates how potential customers are acquired and move toward purchasing. Unlike the B2B marketing funnel, which focuses on creating touchpoints to lead the prospect along their journey, a B2B sales funnel focuses more on taking actions that gradually transform the prospect into a customer. For example, rather than only providing informative content, a sales representative may also offer a software demo to the prospect.
For optimal efficiency in providing prospects with the necessary information, it is vital to have marketing and sales funnels that work cohesively together.
To clarify, your manufacturing business requires a B2B sales funnel because the purchasing journey is complex due to the involvement of several decision-makers with unique interests. Even apparently simple decisions may become complex. Without a strategic plan, it can be challenging to bring all decision-makers together and reach a decision in favor of your product. Therefore, a sales funnel is essential for navigating the B2B buying journey.
The B2B marketing funnel assists stakeholders behind the scenes, while the B2B sales funnel explains the visible steps taken to convert potential clients. Each stage of the sales funnel is outlined so that your team is clear about what actions are needed at each point.
Stages
The B2B sales funnel can vary for each business as buyers may have different experiences. However, most B2B sales funnels follow basic principles like AIDA, Forrester’s model, and Conversion Funnel. In the section below, we outline the 6 essential steps of a B2B sales funnel.
1. Awareness
As mentioned earlier, the B2B marketing funnel and the sales funnel are closely related. The marketing funnel customer journey requires different types of content, while the sales funnel focuses on creating brand awareness and demand using various methods.
Here, you can experiment with various marketing strategies and carefully monitor the outcomes to determine which ones yield the best results. These strategies could entail evaluating the click-through rates of social media ads and Google Ads or developing cold emails to generate leads.
It’s important to track specific metrics to monitor your B2B business performance; for example, site traffic, social media growth, email newsletter sign-ups, click-through rates of paid ads, and gated assets downloads. Although the B2B sales funnel may seem complicated, it all begins with building awareness.
2. Interest
To generate interest in your offer, you must first establish a relationship with your potential customers. This does not involve constantly pushing sales through multiple phone calls. Instead, allow them to become interested in your services or products by providing interesting content. Take note of the type of content that captures their attention and provide similar, even better, material to reinforce their interest.
If a person registers for a live software demonstration, it shows a strong interest, indicating that you can proceed to the next step of actively pursuing the sale. To decide how interested a lead is, ensure that you create premium content upgrades.
Here is an example of how we score leads:
- email newsletter sign-up = 2 points
- beginner’s guide download = 3 points
- brochure download = 5 points
- webinar attendance = 8 points
- free trial started = 10 points
With this scoring system, we can determine the level of interest of a potential customer and know when it’s the best time to contact them.
3. Consideration
In the B2B sales funnel, the consideration stage involves convincing potential customers who have already earmarked your products as a potential solution to their problem. At this stage, prospects are evaluating the extent of their problem and the urgency with which it needs to be addressed. They are also considering whether they can solve the problem in-house and exploring other alternative products. Finally, they are deciding on a budget to tackle the problem. Many studies indicate that at this point, around 60 percent of all prospects prefer to talk to a senior salesperson, typically a manager.
By now, you likely have gathered enough information about the prospect to assist them in solving their problem with the help of your product. In this stage, many prospects usually read reviews and assess your product or service. Speaking with someone from your company is often the quickest way for them to do so.
4. Intent
During this stage, the goal is to identify and prioritize leads. Potential customers are already familiar with your brand, have recognized a problem that needs solving, and researched their options. But, now, they may need a final push to make a decision to buy.
It’s common for customers to add items to their online shopping cart but never complete the purchase, with almost 70% of carts abandoned. Adding items to the cart may indicate interest and exploration, but many customers do not move beyond this stage, as shown by the shopping cart abandonment statistics.
To effectively move customers through the sales funnel, it’s crucial to distinguish between their intent and the actions necessary to complete their purchase. Examples of leads include abandoned carts, unutilized software trials, or signed-up demos. Such cases signify that the customers are interested and present an opportunity to contact them by phone or send abandoned cart emails to persuade them to commit.
The open rate for abandoned cart emails is 41.09 percent, indicating that a significant number of potential customers will give you a second chance. Calling them will probably increase your chances of conversion even more.
5. Evaluation + Decision
In the B2B sales funnel, the evaluation and decision stage is crucial in closing the sale. Although your prospect has shown interest, they may not be ready to decide yet, so you need to guide each prospect to the next stage.
During this stage, stakeholders conduct final research and collaborate to reach a decision. However, since the process may involve numerous people, it can be a challenge.
Your team may consist of individuals from marketing, sales, customer support, and corporate, each with unique perspectives. After putting in significant effort to move them all through the sales process, it’s time to focus on converting them. Sales representatives need to stay in touch with the prospect, providing answers to their questions, emphasizing the benefits, and negotiating a deal.
6. Purchase
Deciding to purchase a product or service doesn’t guarantee that the transaction will occur, as several steps are involved, from entering card details to receiving the product or service.
For instance, the speed of a website affects its conversion rate. A page that takes less than two seconds to load has an average conversion rate of 6.32 percent. However, if the page takes more than two seconds to load, the conversion rate drops to around 3 percent, and the conversion rate keeps decreasing with increasing load time.
Improving the purchase process for convenience can help ensure customer satisfaction when making a substantial investment. The initial obstacle customers may encounter is the payment process, which needs to be smooth to increase conversions. The payment process should be user-friendly and intuitive and have pre-filled details whenever possible. Conducting user tests may help identify any problems with the process. Also, closely monitoring customers who abandon the process can highlight opportunities for ad retargeting or social selling to potentially recover a prospect who has abandoned their cart.
Creating A B2B Marketing & Sales Funnel For Your Manufacturing Business
You need to customize it according to your business’s unique position in the market. Your competitors don’t have the same resources, team, or model as yours. There is no ready-made blueprint to copy from, so how can you create your own funnel?
1. Outline Your Desired Outcomes
How do you begin analyzing a business process? It is crucial to define goals and objectives. Research suggests that marketers who write down specific goals are 20% more likely to achieve them. So, outlining your desired outcomes is essential.
To effectively measure your performance, you can concentrate on aspects such as overall sales, average value of sales, conversion rate, number of repeat sales, and customer satisfaction. It is worth noting that you can have multiple funnels with distinct goals based on the target audience. So, each customer’s journey will vary as well. Ensuring you establish specific key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial in monitoring your progress.
2. Know Your Target Audience
To succeed in digital marketing, you must know your target audience. Even with an unlimited budget, you won’t get the best results if you don’t understand who you’re targeting. Customer journey funnels help understand your audience, their desires, requirements, and challenges, so you can take the appropriate steps when needed.
To better understand your ideal customers, create comprehensive customer profiles with all the relevant details.
3. Organize Your Team
You can optimize your B2B marketing and sales funnels by using various talents and skills. Sales and marketing teams must work together to prevent inefficiencies caused by communication breakdowns. Implementing a B2B sales funnel for the first time can be a significant adjustment, so try to get buy-in from your team and show them how the new funnel will benefit everyone by improving ROI.
4. Target Channels
To effectively target your audience, you should be present on the platforms where they spend their time. You must consider demographics; for example, if you want to target people aged 50 and above, Instagram may not be the ideal platform as only 29% of U.S. adults in that age group use it. Your task is to determine where your audience spends most of their time and customize your content accordingly.
5. Create Marketing Assets
To succeed in B2B marketing and sales, you must create consistent high-quality content throughout the funnel. This means creating the right assets at each step of the journey, whether it’s a beginner’s guide for the funnel top or an in-depth comparison for further down the funnel.
6. Track Progress
To improve your B2B marketing and sales funnel, monitor your results and make necessary changes over time. Don’t simply create a funnel and leave it as is. Try to focus on improving the details and continually track your progress to ensure ongoing success. Having a process in place for measuring results is key.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you explain the distinctions between a B2B marketing funnel and a B2B sales funnel?
The B2B sales funnel aims to establish contact and motivate prospects to buy. In contrast, the B2B marketing funnel is more focused on directing the actions required in each stage of the customer journey to persuade a prospect to become a customer.
Does my business need a sales funnel AND a marketing funnel?
We recommend using both a sales and a marketing funnel for B2B manufacturing companies to have a comprehensive understanding of the customer journey and the necessary actions for each stage.
What is the cost of outsourcing the creation of a B2B marketing funnel?
The cost of outsourcing the creation of a B2B marketing funnel is typically between $5,000 and $10,000. While it may seem expensive, having a blueprint for your sales and marketing strategy is a worthwhile investment. You can also create one on your own, using your own resources.
Wrapping Up
In summary, the goal of any business is to make sales. B2B marketing and sales funnels provide a detailed roadmap for how a business can attract customers and generate sales. While it’s impossible to convert every potential customer, even minor enhancements to your conversion rate can have a major impact on your business.
Young Caesar can provide your team with a clear action plan for any situation and easily track results to improve performance. A good B2B marketing and sales funnel makes navigating the complex customer journey easier. Have you integrated B2B marketing and sales funnels into your business plan?