6 Tips On How To Build The Perfect B2B Sales Funnel
The journey of a consumer from signing up to conversion accounts for success for any business.
Products, content, and design are key components that entice a user. However, once we break down the process from enticing a user to making them a consumer, we realize there are many more steps. These steps, cumulatively, form a sales funnel. It guides to-be-consumers from signing up to buying a product/service.
79% of marketing leads don’t turn into sales. The stat is too big not to pay attention. Hence, the sales funnel(also known as the marketing funnel) is important for business growth as it helps generate conversions. If you’ve been scratching your head over the concept, you’re in for some relief. The article enlists six important steps to build a marketing funnel for your business. Let’s dive right in.
1. Use a sales funnel software
Upscaling your digital marketing strategy to the next level is necessary to thrive in the digital world. In order to take your marketing strategy to the next level, you need to go back to the fundamentals; the sales funnel. You may have come to believe that the sales funnel is an old-school business tactic that's no longer used today. However, you couldn't be more wrong.
Building a strong sales funnel is foundational to building a successful business. It's that simple. Fortunately, sales funnel software is designed to make building and optimizing your business sales funnel, a cakewalk. Software solutions like Flodesk Checkout, WishPond, GetResponse, ConvertKit, ClickFunnels, Hubspot, etc., will help you build a sales funnel from scratch for your business in optimal time.
2. Create brand awareness
When you’re building a B2B funnel from scratch, the first step is finding a way to drive your B2B target audience to your website. What action do you want your audience to take when researching your brand? What do you intend to show the visitors when they visit your website? To come to the answers, we’ll first go through the marketing funnel stages.
A marketing funnel consists of three stages:
When a user goes through your website, they’re in the Top funnel stage of your marketing funnel. This is when a user is moving toward the bottom funnel, if only they find it worthy enough. So encourage them to sign up for your newsletter to send valuable content or to check your social media by placing icons on the page.
Since the top funnel is where a user will formulate an opinion about your brand, you must place enticing design elements and a few secondary CTAs. Social media paid and organic awareness are key components of the top funnel stage. Ensure you devise clear brand messaging in this stage.
3. Guide your audience
Once you’re done identifying and championing your audience, you want to answer a specific question. What should an ideal customer do at the end of their journey? Backtrack this question to find the first step. You’ll come across several if-then use cases when answering this specific question. Doing so will also lead you to potential drop-offs along the way.
Getting specific only sharpens a B2B marketing strategy. It’s very rare that a cold lead turns into a hot sale quickly. Below mentioned are a few key parameters to consider during this stage:
The marketing of a product/service is the one that guides a customer in their journey. Take a look at your core brand values and consider what type of experience you want your customers to feel like.
Since we’re gradually moving from creating awareness to making a customer buy a product, it’s essential to consider all touchpoints, email nurturing and conversion criteria.
Google Analytics lets you know which channel is your best current acquisition channel. So use digital marketing tools to understand your customer preferences and engage in a better way with them online. After all, data is better than creativity.
Keeping the above-mentioned points in mind helps you identify your audience in a better way.
4. Ensure communication with the prospect at each possible step
Remember, as a brand, you’re guiding your customer in their journey from signing in to making a purchase. It’s critical to ensure that your prospects embark on the buyer’s journey. They should receive the right content at every step of the journey. This consumer engagement paves them to move swiftly down the funnel.
Below are a few key ways you should follow to ensure proper communication at every phase:
The consumer isn’t bothered about the stage of the funnel. It’s up to you to create a seamless buying experience for them.
So, ensure to empower your consumer with the right knowledge at each crossroad of the funnel. Provide information that they will not usually get anywhere else. This will help develop trust between you and the prospects and influence them to make a purchase from your brand.
However, sometimes unpredictable stuff happens and you will face service disruptions. To minimize the damage make sure you use an SMS Alerts System to keep your customers informed at all times.
5. Let your customer take action
Once you thoroughly know your audience and have touched all the marketing points, it’s time to reach them so they make an action. To reach your target audience, you need to be present where they are. To do so, you need to:
After analyzing all social media channels, the target audience enters the action stage.
This is the phase where the buyer decides which product they want to buy. They are sure to compare the features and benefits of your products with others available and will choose the one that benefits them the most. The best combination of the product’s features at the best price will drive their decision. So don’t rush it, ensure they’re really interested in buying your product or service before they leave the page.
By this stage, your content should’ve helped foster trust in your consumers. Also, you must keep several CTA optimization ways in mind when placing CTAs. For instance, a short and crisp CTA is likelier to be clicked than a button with lengthy wordings.
6. Keep a tab on the progress
Your job doesn’t end with creating the marketing funnel. Post-marketing analytics is equally important to keep your business growing. The goal is to keep updating your B2B marketing, and sales funnel. To do so, you must constantly monitor the results and optimize accordingly. After all, creating a framework is the first crucial step. Once that’s done, you start to work on the fine details to take it to the next level.
Data analytics is an integral part of post-marketing. This includes:
Knowing these metrics helps to re-strategize and build a relationship with your consumers. An exceptional email remarketing campaign will ensure your customers don’t disappear again. Moreover, this phase also compels you to focus on your existing customers.
Ensure you provide your existing customers with top-notch content to keep them engaged, resulting in higher consumer retention. Doing so can also encourage new user referrals that can upscale your business.
As with any strategy, even with a marketing funnel, you need to have set goals. Ensure you have these goals and metrics outlined and communicated with your team to be on track. Continuously monitoring and optimizing your marketing funnel is a sure-shot way to retain your consumers while attracting new ones.
An effective sales funnel helps you understand your audience better, supports SEO, enhances brand awareness, nurtures relationships, and increases ROI. Now that you know the steps to build the perfect B2B sales funnel, it’s time to brainstorm strategies to market your products or services effectively.
Building a marketing funnel is the first crucial step. Your strategy decides success, from moving a consumer to the top of the funnel to the bottom. So ensure you focus all your energy on creating a strategy that cooks you conversions.
What are you waiting for? It’s time to funnel down your users and upscale conversions!
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