Since the original B2B sales funnel was developed, a lot of changes have occurred in modern marketing and selling. Today due to the digitalization of world B2B sales funnel has a different approach in its 5 stage model. But the basis of the B2B sales funnel remains the same. It is a great way to analyze at which point you are losing your customers and figure out the best way to grab those lost customers back into your business. Since the time the classic B2B sales funnel was developed in the late 19th century, over many decades it has gone through a lot of changes. Today due to the digitalization of world B2B sales funnel has a different approach in its 5 stage model. But the basis of the B2B sales funnel remains the same. It is a great way to analyze at which point you are losing your customers and figure out the best way to grab those lost customers back into your business.
According to this model, the value of the potential customers or leads keeps increasing the further they go into the funnel. Before we go on how to adapt to new changes in the B2B sales funnel, we need to understand the classic B2B sales funnel. There are 5 stages in classic B2B sale funnel: Awareness Interest Evaluation Engagement Purchase Awareness In this stage, the potential buyer is looking for solutions for their problems. Generally, they are looking to educate themselves about the problems and trying to find the right resources, information, and tools to solve their problems. At this stage, the value of the potential buyer or lead is at its minimum. To push this lead down the B2B sales funnel it is important to understand their problem and provide them enough data on probable solutions to their problems.
This will get the potential buyer interested in your product/services. Interest Here the lead will examine the products/services you are offering them as a potential solution to their problems. These problems can be simple or complex, but providing multiple probable solutions will give the potential buyers the options to choose from, this will improve the trust between the lead and the business. As trust builds, the value of the lead increases as well. Also when you provide multiple solutions to the problems of the potential customer, it increases the brand image of your business. And we all can agree on the fact that brand image plays a major role in generating new leads to your business without any much extra work.
Evaluation The evaluation stage is where a complete honesty pays off. In this stage it is important to completely grab the attention of the potential customers or leads to the solutions you are providing them and why is your solution a right choice for the leads to solving their problems. In case all your solutions aren't advisable for the problems of the lead, then this is the stage to let them know that your solution isn't the right fit to solve their problems. Being honest in this stage will further build the trust of the lead. Though this honest might lose you a potential buyer or lead, it will pay off in the future as you don't have to start to build trust from the scratch and this will also help you build a better brand image. Engagement Once you successfully push the lead down to the engagement stage of the funnel, it is time for the sales force to take up from here.
In this stage, you need to pitch in different solutions to the lead and show them that you understand their problem and are here to find a solution for their problems. It's very important to show the lead that you understand their problem as it communicates to them that you are working in their best interest. This will create much better trust. If you fail to create trust in this stage then you will fail in sending the lead into the final stage. Purchase This is the final stage where the entire transaction is approved and the final purchase is made by the lead, who is your customer now. This is where the traditional or classical B2B sales funnel ends, but in today's world CRM plays a huge role in feeding new potential customers to the funnel.
Your Post-purchase service doesn't only increase customer satisfaction but also builds trust with your customers which will convert a customer into a regular customer. For instance, if a business owner facing an issue with the installation of the billing software that he has purchased from you, you need to be in a position to solve his issue without any extra charges. Retaining a customer is much hard than finding a new customer. In B2B sales more than 80% of the leads come from mouth to mouth marketing. So, post-purchase services become an essential method to generate new leads. The major change that has occurred in the B2B sales funnel is the digitalization of the entire process. Starting from the Awareness stage where you need to find your leads through the internet as most of your potential buyers is looking for solutions for their problems online. So, having a digital presence is a must now.
Due to digitalization, to create awareness regarding your business you need to conduct webinars, digital marketing campaigns and follow new digital trends to be visible to leads. The process of creating trust is also much harder through the internet. So, brand image plays a huge role in creating trust in this digitalized world. You need to collect the data on the problems of your potential buyers through the internet. This can be done by survey methods. Examples of some of the survey methods are Google surveys, YouTube Ad surveys, Email surveys, etc. Email Survey is generally more accurate as you can create a personalized questionnaire to understand the problem of each potential lead. Whereas Google surveys and YouTube Ad surveys are good to get data on larger groups with similar problems.
No matter if it was classical 19th century B2B sales funnel or modernized & digitalized 21st century B2B sales funnel, marketing, sales and CRM has to go hand in hand to form a successful B2B sales funnel. The advantage of digitalized B2B sales funnel is that the barrier of miscommunication between marketing, sales, and CRM has reduced due to the internet. This makes the entire process more effective, efficient, and frictionless for everyone.
Social media is a route through which customers move at every point of the journey while making any purchase or see the products and services. The social media marketing funnel divided into four main ... Social media is a route through which customers move at every point of the journey while making any purchase or see the products and services. The social media marketing funnel divided into four main sections that are the discovery of anything, intent to but, conversion and loyalty for a long-lasting relationship with the brand. There are few touchpoints that can slow down the buyer rather than guiding throughout. It trims the targeting influencers and makes the buyer turn in a different direction. Touchpoints can prompt conversions but also slow down the buyers. If you are not good at social media marketing always lookout for a digital marketing agency for greater exposure.
There are a few ways that can be used on social media for the reduction of touchpoints of the social media conversion funnel: Target Influencers to reduce affinity groups that are unnecessary- Affinity groups develop roughness near the top of the funnel. This is the portion where an online purchaser decides to buy or purchase any product. For example- if someone is like a camping trip for summer, he must be looking for that related page and join to get the information and guidance for camping tents or who share the same interest. Elimination of this social touchpoint can pull buyers in many different directions from buying a tent of your brand by directly targeting the influencers with the content of yours. Influencers are present all over the social media sites majorly.
Instead of targeting the huge content with your content, figure out who can be your industry influencers and polish their social channels to find out the nice content they are likely to intensify and who can directly target them. Many of them can share industry influencer to attract towards the industry and drive unlimited buyers away from dark affinity groups and let them direct to land towards your page, all you need to have your land page should be ready in a better way. Enhance your social landing pages - there is always some misunderstanding that well establishes and successful brands that PPC landing pages can double as social landing pages. They can’t. Visitors who visit from social can land at your site from near to the top of the funnel. When PPC advertisements drive visitors toward your page and on the other hand there are customers who arrive from near the bottom of the funnel. There are many services such as Unbounce and spaces that can be used to optimize the social and PPC both. PPC landing pages are designed in a way to transform customers who have decided to already to buy but they were just waiting for the right time and right place.
Whereas, social landing pages are designed to deliver a value proposition to the visitors who are not much familiar with the brand or any product of your brand. Social Requirement as a sale is not the last leg of the conversion funnel- Conversion the focus and a big goal but it’s not the last goal. Having buyers to become a brand ambassador once the purchase is done is the last stage of the social consumer’s decision journey. Removing touchpoints for future buyers is converted buyers for recommending you. Research has proved that every demographic is influence to buy from social sharing from previous customer’s views. There are always different reviews, it may be like likely, fair likely or somewhat likely to buy after seeing a colleague recommendation. These takeaways enhance the landing pages for social media to start in a great way but those LPs must be backup by the confirmation pages which are designed to turn conversions into brand ambassadors. Use case studies to have customers bypass reviews- It is very natural for the consumers to seek the reviews while creeping down towards the bottom of the funnel. But many times reviews become a touchpoint occupied with resistance.
Review sites and comment sections can be drifted and they can be damaged by the competitors or the people with many irrational expectations. Testimony can be fruitful but they can also be well designed and fabricated and these things are well aware by the smart customers. Use paid advertising or native advertising to reduce every touchpoint- There are many simple ways to reduce the touchpoints on the social media conversion funnel by having paid tweets. All native advertising can encourage direct purchases but paid tweets make purchases more than thirty times which is result in thirty times more direct purchases. You must trim unnecessary touchpoints wherever it required and necessary. When there are few steps between the discovery and conversion there will be less friction for the journey of the buying process. This road from discovery to purchase should be small and straight as much possible. Conclusion The social media conversion funnel will improve even complicated cases. All you just need the right data to improve the all-over the experience of the users to divert and generate more sales. That’s why the regular collection of data and test running is important to do on a continues basis.
As we know there are four stages of the conversion funnel that is awareness, interest, desire, and action which is all need to enhance the content and pages at every stage. You must aware of a few things while building social media conversion funnel that is the identification of customer journey, create the funnel stages, and describe the point at which a user becomes a lead. This can be done to make decisions while going for digital marketing, social marketing, content marketing, and many more.
One must reduce the touchpoints on the social media conversion funnel to drive the visitors towards your industry and content will help to purchase products and increase sales for B2B or B2C. It can be improving and track through performance indicators that required for conversion funnels like traffic, conversion rate, bounce rate, sales increment, cart abandonment, among other issues and from all these one can collect data and record the test of the users to reduce more touchpoints on social media and outperforms with the competition.
