3 Important Tips to Create an Effective B2B Marketing Funnel

To convert interest into sales, you need quality leads at the top of your marketing funnel.

The marketing funnel is crucial for creating an effective and powerful customer journey. The funnel has many stages, from creating awareness in potential customers, deepening their understanding of your business, and ultimately committing to making a purchase.

Too many organizations become far too focused on the bottom of the marketing funnel, which is when customers make a commitment to buy. But, without a robust strategy that is focused on the top of the funnel, the sales will never come.

That reality is due to human nature. At the top of the funnel, there needs to be a large number of potential customers. As their experience with a product increases, inevitably, some will drop out.

Focusing attention on the top of the funnel is not just about sheer volume. It’s about ensuring that those leads are those most likely to become customers. Quality matters. Having too many poor-quality leads will not benefit the bottom line. In fact, it may hurt it, as salespeople waste time and money chasing after bad leads.

Building awareness

The top of the marketing funnel is about building awareness. For marketers, this takes on many forms. Online strategies include content marketing, inbound marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and online advertisements. Content tactics and tools include e-books, blogs, white papers, social media, and direct email. Other funnel fillers include trade shows, personal referrals, events and public relations.

Filling a need

An important aspect of the top of the funnel is meeting a need. Customers should be aware of the needs that must be filled. Then, they need to understand that your products or services can fill those needs. Otherwise, they will never have a reason to seek you out.

The top of the funnel provides an opportunity to get in front of potential customers to discuss the needs and the solutions you provide. The value of online marketing is that the awareness can be built both passively and actively.

By understanding and targeting potential audiences, you can position awareness campaigns well before the need is crucial. Paid search and SEO position you to be there when those suspects are urgently searching online. Whether you’re a carpenter or a consultant, you want to be there, online, when those potential customers need a solution.

Finding potential customers

Lead generation services are essential to pinpoint those potential customers who are most likely to lead to sales. Lead generation services provide robust lists of contact information in order to optimize conversion rates. You can get your content in front of the right prospects who are mostly likely to continue down the funnel towards sales.