How to build a results-driven marketing funnel

In your research, or in conversation with teammates or marketing agencies, the ‘marketing funnel’ or ‘customer ‘funnel’ will no doubt have been discussed. It is a concept which can transform or hold back your growth, depending on whether you understand it or use it the right way.

What is the marketing funnel?

There are variations on how the stages are labelled, but the typical marketing funnel describes the actions or mindset of a prospect on their way to becoming a customer.

Those stages are usually along the lines of:

1. Awareness (of the vendor or partner and the need to solve a business problem)
2. Consideration (of the supplier and their offering, compared to competitors)
3. Conversion (choosing a supplier and buying)
4. Loyalty (continuing to buy)
5. Advocacy (recommending that others buy from the same partner)

It is not a huge revelation to see or hear the funnel described, because most people who run businesses know it instinctively or from experience — but it is a useful framework to apply to sales and marketing campaigns. That is, as long as you have the right relationship with it.

How should you use a marketing funnel to grow your business?

The two common weaknesses with the marketing funnel are at the opposite ends of the spectrum — focusing too much on it, and not thinking about it enough.

Why businesses forget the funnel in their marketing

Aside from not knowing or really understanding the concept, there are lots of reasons why businesses neglect the funnel when marketing themselves. Often it is because their marketing is being driven by urgency, with the focus on creating as much material as possible, as soon as they can, without pausing first to apply a strategy. Let’s label this ‘panic mode’.

Ambitious businesses are often so hungry for leads that they rush into sales and marketing. Ironically, it achieves the opposite of what they set out to do and that often means far fewer leads.

Why the funnel alone is not enough

The funnel’s biggest strength can become its biggest weakness.

Its power is its simplicity, but if you are not careful it can make you over-simplify your approach.

Having the concept and the framework in place can lead to strategies whose only focus is ticking the boxes of the funnel. You must not forget that the purpose of everything is to engage, interest, and motivate a prospect. You can have content that is aimed at each stage of the funnel, but if it isn’t high quality, empathetic content that genuinely encourages buyer progress, then it won’t move anyone along the path to purchase.

It is a tool to improve your marketing, not the goal itself.

How the funnel should inform your sales and marketing

As an attempt to describe the overall psychological, intellectual, and emotional route people take on the way to buying something, it is excellent.

As a framework for understanding in broad terms the mindset of the audience for a piece of marketing, it is invaluable.

As a dogma, it is dangerous.

The truth is, nobody buys in a neat, linear way, and the borders between each stage are blurrier than they are clear.

How your target market buys, and what that means for your marketing funnel

You almost certainly know and understand your target market, but if you enrich that picture, with data and research, you can create campaigns that align perfectly with buying preferences and habits. Here are some useful considerations for B2C and B2B marketing.

The B2C path to purchase

In B2C, because the majority of transactions don’t involve salespeople, marketing takes people on the whole journey from awareness to advocacy. So, there is more pressure on a campaign to attract, engage, excite, and close a customer without a salesperson to interact personally, close a deal, and inspire repeat purchases and recommendations.

However, there are easier aspects too. Because deals are (usually) smaller, the pipeline is shorter, and prospects will need less certainty and evidence. People will be more willing to take a risk on buying a new brand of coffee, say, than a business will be on a contract that costs tens of thousands of pounds.

Naturally, there are major and considered consumer purchases, too, but your average B2C deal is not life-changing, and brands’ deals are about higher volume rather than higher value.

The B2B path to purchase

There is a tendency in B2B to think that because Sales qualifies and closes leads, marketing’s job is done as soon as the lead comes in. That is not the case, and assuming things look that way is one of the most common and most damaging mistakes in business growth.

In many cases, by the time a member of the sales team is involved, the prospect has already completed the vast majority of their journey to becoming a customer.

• 89% of buyers say they identify their business problems without supplier input (Challenger)
• 83% of a buying journey happens before any discussion with a supplier (Gartner)
• 75% of B2B buyers prefer a sales experience that does not involve a salesperson (Gartner)

It is never a case of handing over the baton. Marketing is there the whole time, because prospects will return to content and information in their consideration of a supplier. Marketing can and should reinforce the messages that Sales communicate, and Sales should support that by providing ‘on the ground’ information about how prospects communicate their problems. 

Aligning Sales and Marketing creates a unified experience of the brand and a consistent message, so that interactions with your business move prospects towards conversion quickly and effectively.

The 95/5 rule and what it means for your marketing funnel

A piece of research that will help your funnel work much better is the ‘95/5 rule’.

Research by Edelman shows that of your target market, only 5% are actively in the market for a solution. However, data from LinkedIn suggests that 92% of a typical marketing budget goes towards targeting that 5% of ready buyers.

That approach might seem successful, because it can deliver some short-term wins, but it costs long-term results to ignore 95% of prospects who might be ready to buy in a few months, or a year or two. That’s where true sustainable pipelines come in.

Of course, you should produce marketing that helps to close the deals that are there for the closing, but make sure the balance and emphasis is right — filling up the ‘awareness’ segment of your funnel is the only way to create long-term growth.

Create a marketing funnel that gets results

Like many things that are easy to learn and difficult to master, it is easy to think you are using the funnel well. The only way to know is to track the results.

Just as you do not know someone simply because you know what they look like, understanding the shape of your marketing funnel is not a substitute for thorough research.

Generating leads, then nurturing them into customers and advocates is part art, part science, and completely transformative when you have a unified, complete, coherent strategy.

Do you understand your lead generation challenges, and how to overcome them? If not, then click the link below to get your guide to the most common obstacles to building a pipeline, and the best ways to turn prospects into customers:

Common Lead Generation Challenges (and how to overcome them)