B2B Marketing Funnel: Explanation, Structure, Implementation & Lead Generation

Our guest author Andreas Just explains to you in our article everything about how B2B marketing funnels are structured and how they work.

One of the most important tasks of B2B marketing is the generation of new customers. This can often be challenging and long-winded with products that generally require explanation.

Without a strategic approach, you won't get far.

One term that has been haunting the marketing and business world for years is "the funnel". Occasionally vilified as a "dubious" marketing tactic, it is nevertheless a valuable tool that can assist in acquiring new customers.

What you can imagine under a funnel in B2B, how you can upgrade your marketing with it and generate more customers and everything else you need to know, you'll find out in this article.

What is meant by a B2B funnel?

The term "funnel" means translated funnel – so far so clear. But what does that have to do with your B2B marketing?

In principle, a B2B funnel is a visualization tool that is symbolic for the phases of your customers in the buying process. With a B2B funnel, you can map the path from the initial contact with your company to the purchase decision and plan corresponding marketing measures strategically.

Similar to a customer journey – but this describes the path from the seller's point of view. A funnel (often also called marketing funnel) puts the view of the buyer in focus.

When you speak of a B2B funnel, it is usually depicted in the following way:

If you look at the whole thing literally as a funnel, the representation is not quite correct. Because that would mean that all interested parties who enter the funnel in the first stage also come out 1:1 and thus become customers.

This is (unfortunately) not the case.

Therefore, the marketing funnel is rather to be understood as a multistage sieve. At each phase, interested parties drop out, and only a few real customers emerge.

If you now want to use this as a visualization for your marketing, you have to ask yourself which stages of the buying process your potential customers go through and which marketing measures are supportive in each stage.

How is a funnel structured and what phases of a B2B marketing funnel are there? 

The funnel originated from the AIDA formula which describes the individual phases of the customers on the way to the purchase decision. AIDA stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action and goes back to a classic marketing theory. Therefore, funnel illustrations are also often shown in exactly these stages.

However, the marketing funnel in the previous figure shows only a three-stage buying process. Personally, I am a fan of this simpler model because your customers will never go through this path linearly, so in my opinion three stages are completely sufficient.

However, you have to decide for yourself how granular you want to differentiate the stages and how you want to work with the funnel diagram.

For simplicity's sake, I use the three-stage funnel in the further course.

The three stages of the funnel can be named as follows:

• Stage 1: Upper Funnel or Top of the Funnel (ToFu),
• Stage 2: Middle Funnel or Middle of the Funnel (MoFu)
• Stage 3: Lower Funnel or Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu)

Stage 1: Upper Funnel

The Upper Funnel part describes the Awareness phase. Here, it is about getting the attention of your potential customers and thus "pulling" them into your funnel.

Upper Funnel Marketing therefore employs all measures that ensure that potential customers become aware of your company.

These can include the following measures:

• SEO
• Videos
• Paid advertising
• Podcasts
• Social media postings
• Blogs
• …

It's important to note in this phase that it's not about giving your customers all the information in detail. Upper Funnel Marketing is merely about arousing a sense for a problem or a need in your potential customers. They should realize that you offer a solution that can solve one of their problems.

Stage 2: Middle Funnel

In the Middle Funnel stage, your potential customers have recognized that they have a need for which a solution is needed. This phase represents both the "Interest" and "Desire" phase.

So here it's about giving your customers a deep dive into the problem and your solution, in order to awaken interest and buying desire. Therefore, relevant and detailed information should be available.

In this phase, the following measures are often taken:

• Statistics
• Videos
• Whitepaper
• E-Books
• Studies
• ...

With these measures, your potential customers have the opportunity to gather as much information as possible in order to finally enter the most important phase of the funnel, the purchase decision.

Stage 3: Lower Funnel

Here you finally make interested parties into customers. This phase therefore also describes the "Action" phase.

In this stage, your potential customers are fully aware of their needs and problems and have compared various solutions and suppliers, and now want to make a purchase decision.

Therefore, in Lower Funnel Marketing, appropriate measures are used that help interested parties decide for your company.

These can be:

• Product demos
• Coupons
• Discounts
• Case Studies
• Recessions and customer voices
• ...

A small tip: Many are of the opinion that sales should take over at the latest in this phase. This means that if potential customers use one of the Lower Funnel Marketing measures such as a product demo, then marketing should pass the contact on to sales.

Principally correct.

However, I have found that it is best to involve sales one stage earlier. This means that your sales team cooperates in the creation of studies, e-books o. a.

Sales staff usually have many valuable pieces of information about your customers from previous conversations. You can use these super to create even more relevant content.

What does a funnel look like in practice?

When I first heard about a funnel, I was both thrilled and confused. Therefore, I want to show you an example of what it can look like in practice, when potential customers go through your B2B funnel.

Let's say you have a company that sells robots.

Stage 1: Upper Funnel

You busily post on your social media channels every 2- 3 days. Your posts contain valuable tips that help your target audience in their day-to-day work (topic relevance of course related to your product). Prospect X reads week after week with attention to your posts, his/her questions around the topic are answered this way. He/She however realizes more and more that you offer exactly the solution that can solve one of his/her problems.

Stage 2: Middle Funnel

He/She continues to deal with the problem and begins to look for a solution. In addition to your website, he/she browses through the websites of your competitors, deals with your product and finally finds on your website a whitepaper on the topic "How Robots can Increase the Productivity of Workflows by X %".

He/She downloads the whole thing and reads it carefully. At the end of the whitepaper, he/she finds a product description of your robot and the contact to a salesperson in your company. However, he/she initially puts the whole thing aside.

Stage 3: Lower Funnel

A few weeks later he/s.he stumbles again over the problem. He/She again sees a post of yours on one of your social media channels. This post links to a case study with one of your customers. He/She reads this, picks up the whitepaper again and finally decides to book a product demo with you. After this demo and the friendly conversation with a salesperson, he/she finally buys a robot from you.

In this example, the interested party has gone through all phases of the B2B funnel, albeit not linearly. On the way to the purchase, some measures that we previously highlighted in the individual stages have been helpful. If you now use a funnel to visualize the path of your customers, as in the example, you can plan your measures along the stages.

In this example, a classic B2B sales funnel or acquisition funnel was mentioned, since the goal at the end was the sale of a product. However, there are many more funnel types in B2B marketing.

What B2B marketing funnels are there?

The three-, four- or seven-stage funnel from the preceding chapter helps you visualize the path of your customers, plan measures strategically, and thus lead them to a purchase decision.

However, it so happens that in marketing pretty much everything is termed funnel that leads interested parties to a desired action. There are a few distinctions in this respect. The most common types of funnels are:

• Content Funnel, Content Marketing Funnel
• E-mail Funnel
• Survey Funnel
• Webinar Funnel
• Product Launch Funnel

The Content Funnel

The B2B content marketing funnel doesn't necessarily have to lead interested parties to a purchase decision. The content funnel primarily serves to lead users who consume your content from one important piece of content to the next.

Sometimes this context also refers to a B2B inbound marketing funnel, as it does without acquisition or outbound measures.

In practice, the path through the content funnel might look like this:

The goal of a B2B content funnel can be for your users to perform an action at the end, such as downloading an e-book. Or you simply want to teach your users as much as possible about the problem and your solution.

The E-Mail Funnel

The e-mail funnel provides interested parties with different e-mails, depending on the phase of the buying process in which they find themselves. The whole thing usually starts with the subscription to your newsletter or your e-mails.

The first mail in your e-mail funnel is usually the welcome mail. Subsequently, over several days, different e-mails with different content along the buying phase are sent.

The whole thing can look like this:

E-mail No. 1 contains, for example, a tip, E-mail No. 2 more detailed information about your product, E-mail No. 3 a case study with one of your customers and E-mail No. 4 the request to purchase.

However, the e-mail funnel can also be structured in such a way that depending on the link clicked within an e-mail, or depending on the e-mail opened, different e-mail sequences start. Usually this can be controlled via appropriate tools.

In practice, this then looks like this:

Regardless of which e-mail funnel is chosen, the goal at the end is usually a conversion.

The Survey Funnel

Another effective funnel is the survey funnel. The purpose behind the survey funnel is, on the one hand, to find out more about your own target group and, on the other hand, to significantly increase the conversion rate.

The whole thing works by sending a survey at the beginning (usually in the welcome mail) when users sign up for your e-mails. Depending on the answer of the users, an automatic segmentation into a certain e-mail funnel takes place subsequently.

From now on, the users only receive content that fits the previously chosen answer. Through this tailored content, conversion rates can be significantly increased.

It can look like this:

The Webinar Funnel

A webinar funnel aims to bring as many people as possible into your webinar.

The starting point is usually the registration landing page. Then an e-mail funnel starts, which provides the people with the access data or after the webinar with the recording.

Within the webinar, a link to a landing page of the respective product or service is usually provided in order to achieve a product purchase.

In practice, it usually looks like this:

The Product Launch Funnel

The product launch funnel is used to sell a new product.

This usually consists of a combination of various landing pages with videos and an e-mail funnel.

The videos typically show the product in action, clarify how it solves problems, and show interviews with other customers who have already successfully used the product.

The whole thing can look like this:

How can you make your B2B funnel even better?

Testing, testing, testing

Test everything you can. Combine different types of funnels with each other and test different content in the individual stages. Only in this way will you find out what works for you and achieves the best results.

These comparison tests are called A/B tests. Different versions are tested against each other to find out what works better.

For example, if you want to improve the conversion rate on a landing page at the end of your funnel, various elements can be tested against each other there. For example, you have one version of your sales text online for a week and observe the relationship between visitors and buyers during this period. While in the following week you test another version of your sales text to see how the relationship develops in this week.

Everything from images to prices can be tested. The important thing is just that the tests make sense. Testing the color of individual elements on the site only makes limited sense.

It doesn't always have to be gated content

Gated content is the marketing practice aimed at getting data from your potential customers in exchange for content. You've probably seen this before: "Sign up now and receive our free e-book or similar". In this case, we speak of gated content.

As the internet is increasingly changing and many users are no longer willing to give out their data, I have made considerably better experiences in the past, when for example e-books or whitepapers were provided for free and without data query.

The reason is simple: customers who don't want to enter their data would never see the e-book or whitepaper with a previous data query. If it's freely accessible, every user benefits and the chance is higher that more potential customers will see it.

Know your target group exactly 

To build, for example, a strong sales funnel, it is essential that you know your target group exactly. It's useless to provide, for example, an e-book or similar on a topic that doesn't interest your target group.

Better have one or two more conversations or use a survey funnel to find out where your target group is pinched. Then provide something that has real added value for your potential customers.

Start with the tracking

In order to make decisions and to see whether a funnel works, you need key figures. And these ideally along the whole funnel. From the traffic on your landing page, via the registrations for your e-mails, up to the conversion rate at the purchase of your products.

So think at the beginning about how and which figures you want to capture. If you first build up your tracking and then develop your funnel, you can capture what works and what doesn't from day 1. Building up the tracking afterwards just makes life unnecessarily difficult for you.

One last tip: use appropriate tools to keep an eye on and optimize your entire funnel.

These tools help you build effective B2B marketing funnels

There are now a number of tools to support you in building and testing your funnels. I'll show you a few of them here:

Funnel

Funnel is a data platform that allows you to connect different marketing platforms. The tool takes over all data, prepares them clearly and lets you track your individual funnel stages exactly. If you connect, for example, your Google Ads account, you can capture all KPIs in a dashboard and see if your Google Ads and all connected measures work.

Perspective Funnels

With Perspective Funnels you can build simple but effective funnels using a drag-and-drop editor. You can customize these individually and use them for all types of funnels. The good thing about Perspective Funnels is that they work with so-called "Mobile Funnels".

Mobile funnels are fully responsive and can be set up like a kind of quiz. This allows you to guide your potential customers with targeted answers and questions to the desired action.

As the whole thing feels more like a kind of game, this can achieve high conversion rates.

FunnelCockpit

FunnelCockpit is one of the most comprehensive tools. With it, you can build entire websites including funnels and link them intelligently.

The best thing about it are the dashboards that track every relevant key figure of your funnels and your website. This gives you a holistic view of all your key figures. Various types of funnels such as video funnels, webinar funnels or e-mail funnels can be represented via this.

If you are just starting to build your funnel, then FunnelCockpit could be worth considering. There you have everything in one place.

There are many other tools that can help you build and improve various marketing funnels in the B2B sector and your digital marketing. If you want more information about the best digital marketing tools or how B2B marketing tools can boost your business, have a look at our articles on OMR Reviews and in our Content Hub.

Summary

As you can see, the topic of "Funnel" is by no means just a dubious term that often promises the quick sale of a product. Ultimately, it's a visualization tool that helps you strategically plan your marketing measures to win customers. More on customer acquisition in the B2B sector, you can read in our article.

And even if your interested parties will only rarely follow 1:1 the way of your funnel, it's still an effective marketing measure that in most cases also creates clarity within the own company. Through the construction of a funnel, you deal intensively with the individual phases of the purchasing process in your own company.

To build an effective funnel, however, all that remains is testing and finding out whether and how a funnel can be used in your case to achieve your marketing goals..

PS: If you are still looking for more tools or other software around your company, please take a look at OMR Reviews. There you can find all important tools and reviews from the OMR community.