Create a Demand Generation Funnel the Right Way? Phases, Stages and More!
Create a Demand Generation Funnel the Right Way? Phases, Stages and More!
Any marketing strategy’s ultimate objective is to streamline the buyer’s journey and the demand-generating funnel.
However, what is demand generation, and how can you construct a sales funnel that converts the most significant number of leads into paying customers?
In this blog, we will discuss all these principles sequentially. Read up!
In 2021, the team at Cognism, a sales intelligence platform, reduced their lead-generating efforts by 90%. The company went from two million dollars in sales to six million dollars in just six months. The company was able to achieve this expansion by abandoning the conventional linear sales funnel in favor of a more value-oriented approach.
This brings us to the term “demand generation”, which is used to describe the process of using a value-based approach to attract the targeted clientele to your doorstep.
Demand generation is any marketing activity that uses technology to spread the word about your products and services and get people interested.
It’s all about giving the customer something of value and making sure your product fulfils a need. A B2B demand generation funnel shows how tactics for generating demand fit into the sales and marketing funnel.
Since the goal of demand generation is to make people want a product or service instead of trying to get them to buy it right away, it looks a bit different.
This is how the typical demand generation funnel looks:
Now that we know what the demand generation funnel looks like, here are the different stages of the demand generation process:
Awareness stage – Top of the Funnel (ToFu):
At this point, your goal should be to spread awareness about your brand among people so that they visit your website.
There are three ways to get people to visit your site:
Search Engines (Google, YouTube, Bing)
Social Media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter)
Referrals (Listing websites, reviews, guest posts)
In the initial stage of the demand generation content funnel, you must discover the specific platforms where your prospects spend their time and establish an authoritative presence to generate quality traffic.
In case of any requirement, an individual or a business first searches business listing websites, LinkedIn, search engines, etc., to find dependable vendors. Thus, it would be best to be visible and, most importantly, stand out to attract their attention.
It is obvious that the awareness funnel for lead creation starts with building a social media presence and website traffic. It starts with sources like paid ads, search engine listings that build your traffic and moves on to starting pages like your landing pages, blogs, or resources.
Interest stage – Middle of the Funnel (MoFu):
You always want your visitors to stay on your website to learn more about your brand and its products.
The first conversion point for visitors is landing on your website. Thus, what happens then is crucial for the entire funnel because losing a potential customer at this step may never be back.
At this point, you should guide your visitors and pique their curiosity. To do so, guide them through the website’s pages. Adding links to popular or related blog entries in the sidebar might keep the visitors engaged for a long time on your website.
Also Read: 7 Pillars of Successful Demand Generation
Links in the menu bar and footer can also direct visitors to your company’s products, services, features, case studies, etc.
Thus, the process starts from landing pages and concludes with browsing other pages with the help of link clicks. This funnel stage is where you direct traffic between pages.
Action stage – Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu)
Most potential clients are spending time on your website now. At this point, you want them to share their contact details.
You already know they’re interested in your products since they’re engaged on the website, but they’re still exploring other options before contacting you.
At this stage, lead magnets like publications, whitepapers, and webinars can demonstrate your competence. To access these materials, individuals would have to fill in lead forms.
After they submit the form, you have their contact information and data to nurture them through the buying process. And you’ve got a lead!
You must enhance the user experience by adding value to their interest to receive these leads. Popups can show related resources they may want to download. Retargeting Ad campaigns can also target engaging visitors with more resources on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
Visitors from social media advertising or pop-ups come to landing sites to learn more about the resources and download them. Make sure your landing pages are engaging, informative, and convert.
Finally, the demand generation content funnels yield several business prospects for the lead nurturing funnel.
B2B sales cycles typically last six to eight months. This is enough time for a potential customer to seep from your sales pipeline into your competitors’ lead funnel.
Thus, it is important that organizations shorten their customer sales cycles. However, B2B buyers that carefully consider all the facts before making a purchase make it difficult.
Thus, a well-planned demand creation funnel can give potential clients the relevant information at the right moment. This speeds up their sales journey and decision-making.
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) get identified
Unfortunately, not all leads qualify for marketing. MQLs make up only a tiny percentage of your leads. A demand generation pipeline can help you turn MQLs into SQLs (sales-qualified leads).
Completes your objectives
A funnel helps you reach your marketing goals faster. Key performance indicators can also be used to link marketing strategy with goals. You can also track your marketing campaign performance with KPIs. This will keep your team aligned.
Streamlines marketing efforts
Digital Marketing is a jungle where you may get overwhelmed by organic and paid marketing options. A sales funnel can assist you in staying aware of digital marketing methods, simplify marketing, and will let you focus on business growth tactics.
You may also track your marketing and further maximize your ROI (Return on Investment).
Builds confidence
Trust is crucial to all customer connections. 90% of buyers will pay more for trusted brands, according to research. Therefore, a well-structured demand generating plan can help you create client confidence because not all customers are ready to buy.
Improves your conversion rate
Today, generating traffic and leads is slowly getting easier. You may boost brand awareness with paid ads and social media bots.
But is your conversion rate good? How many of your leads convert to paying clients is your conversion rate. You can also track conversions with a plan. You can secure a reasonable conversion rate for your marketing campaign resources.
Marketing has always prioritized lead volume over lead quality for years, so sales teams often waste a lot of time trying to convert unready or untargeted leads. But B2B demand generation strategies change the entire marketing funnel.
Marketing teaches purchasers what they need at scale, which streamlines sales and increases conversions and income. While B2B demand generation funnel is a shift from traditional marketing funnels to being more customer-centric.
Are lead generation funnels crucial for your business? Absolutely!
Since a sales funnel is simply the steps buyers take to become customers and clients, all organizations use this method to some extent. Each business’ funnel will depend on its products and services.
Some industries rely on lead generation funnels more than others:
Call center services and BPO
Software and IT companies
Consultation firms
Industrial and manufacturing companies
Let’s look at the seven stages and demand generation funnel metrics you need to focus on to construct a demand generation marketing funnel that generates income and shortens sales cycles:
Step 1: Define your long-term plan
Every strategy starts by defining a goal and then finding the right solutions to achieve them. You can map out your marketing strategies to help you achieve them.
Step 2: Identify buyer persona
If your solution solves a real-world problem, your ideal clients already exist. You need to identify them by characteristics, pain points, and other data points coming from surveys or interviews.
Step 3: Understand customer intent from the content
You need to use intent data to understand what your customers are searching for online. Use different content styles to help you get the data, which will help you in creating the strategy.
Step 4: Create content for every demand generation stage
Good content underpins all marketing initiatives, from social media to digital ads. Hence, create content for every stage to engage your prospects. It starts from content that brings awareness, sparks interest, influences decisions, and drives action.
Step 5: Align your content with other marketing plans
You need to align your content with result-driven strategies like webinars, remote engagement activities, digital ads, social media marketing, or video conferencing; in addition to content marketing.
Step 6: Equal marketing and sales funnel
Demand generation funnels should be 50% sales and 50% marketing because nobody likes constant hammering. There should be a balance in your strategies to give your audience some space. Use many elements to inform, engage, and interact with customers.
Here, recognizing your leads and scoring them based on their involvement with marketing materials will help.
Step 7: Review and reshuffle your demand generation funnel
Also Read: Build and Set Out for Successful B2B Demand Generation Campaigns
Keep monitoring your marketing approach and conversion rates. If results are poor, you can adjust your demand funnel in real time. Making improvements immediately saves your marketing resources.
Now that your lead generation funnel is running, use these three tips to make it even better and stay at the top of your sales game.
Investing in helpful tools – Tracking results and making small changes along the way is the best way to improve any process, including your lead generation funnel.
Here are a few examples of tools that can help you:
Google AdWords
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
CrazyEgg
Improve your forms for generating leads – One of your most important assets is the lead generation forms on your landing page. Almost half of the marketers say their web forms are their best tool for getting new leads.
Develop effective SEO content – Content marketing rules, and SEO content is the jester. Your website needs high-quality, search-engine-optimized content to generate leads.
Short and long-form content should smoothly integrate SEO keywords that address your target audience’s pain points.
Remember to create a B2B demand generation funnel model tailored to your business goals.
Simultaneously track your development using demand generation funnel metrics.
Use precise demand generation measures to track campaign success. The buyer’s journey should be visible in your demand generation process.
It takes work to implement the demand generation funnel. Depending on your field and audience, this breakdown may need to be adjusted. Use demand generation KPIs like close rates per channel and MQL to SQL to convert to track initiatives that generate money, not simply leads.
We can help you track those parameters. In this demand generating journey, interactive content is your best buddy. So, what’s the wait? Sign up with Binary Demand and witness your business boom to heights!
Originally published at: B2B Demand generation funnel