To build a B2B inbound funnel, you need to identify your targeted audience and, according to their need, interests, and pain points, create content for every stage of your buyers’ journey. Typically, a buyer journey starts from brand awareness and moves through the consideration, decision, and retention stages. All four stages make a B2B inbound funnel. Let’s discuss below the core B2B inbound funnels and how they are constructed.
What Is a B2B Inbound Funnel?
A B2B inbound funnel is a structured and strategic pathway for a potential prospect, and it ends when the journey comes to an end. Assume you are walking through a road, and suddenly notice a new van selling pizza, and a lot of people are gathered to eat their food.
This makes you curious about the taste of their food. Then, subconsciously, you are thinking about buying one or not, and you take the final decision to go there and buy one. You invented that their pizza is cheaper and delicious compared to others, and you keep coming.
Let’s see how the sales funnel works here:
- Awareness: When you first notice
- Consideration: Gathering a lot of customer feedback made you interested
- Decision: When you were thinking about buying one
- Retention: You started coming to their food cart regularly
When the same process happens in the B2B industry, it’s called B2B inbound funnel because you did not reach out to another business to take your service; leads were attracted by your organic marketing or appearance, and that is why they are also called inbound leads.
Why Does a B2B Inbound Funnel Matter?
B2B inbound funnel represents the journey of a buyer from the first phase, knowing about brands or particular products, a company, then the customer goes through several more stages, like picking that brand, considering reasons, making a decision, becoming a paid and loyal customer.
B2B inbound funnel matters because it:
- Maps complex buyer journeys
- Qualifies and nurtures leads
- Builds trust and authority
- Predictable revenue growth
- Aligns marketing & sales
- Improves ROI
Those are the solid reasons why the B2B inbound funnel matters. You smooth the buyer’s journey, and they give you B2B sales that are the main fundamentals.
The Core Stages of a B2B Inbound Funnel
Your inbound leads flow will keep coming once you work on the customer’s journey. The B2B inbound funnel has four steps, where
- Awareness is TOFU
- Consideration is MOFU
- Decision is BOFU
- Retention is the post-funnel stage
Let’s discuss in detail those stages and see how you describe a potential customer’s journey through the B2B inbound funnel.
Stage 1: Awareness (TOFU)
This stage starts when a prospect feels like buying something new and encounters problems or looks for better service, they search online, ask friends and relatives, and look for different resources. The goal is to appear as a solution to your potential customers’ pain points through
- Blog posts
- White papers
- E-books
- General guides
- Infographics
- Social media posts
- Webinars
By creating valuable content, if you can address your target audience’s pain point, then you can easily generate B2B leads.
Stage 2: Consideration (MOFU)
The middle of the funnel is called the consideration stage, where a prospect is actively looking for a solution for their specific pain points. In this stage, a prospect is called a marketing qualified lead (MQL), and they research the solution on different opinions, they will see your competitors offering your services, and many more queries.
You can drag them to your inbound funnel through:
- Case studies
- In-depth technical guides
- product demo videos
- free trials
- personalized email nurturing campaigns
- product/pricing comparisons
Those are your weapons to attract and drag to your sales funnel.
Stage 3: Decision (BOFU)
The bottom of the funnel, or decision stage, refers to where a prospect makes a final purchase decision, and this stage has high involvement of your sales team. If your product or service matches the prospect’s industry, interest, and pain point, then applying some frameworks, lead scoring, you can consider them as sales-qualified leads as well.
Offer your prospect:
- Personalized consultations or demos
- Detailed proposals
- Customer testimonials
- Implementation plans
- Clear pricing information
In short, everything you do to represent your product or service is better than others and fits the prospect, making them think of buying from you. Your inbound leads get attracted by your presence and performance, so they have more possibilities to convert than an outbound lead.
Stage 4: Retention & Advocacy (Post-Funnel)
For long-term business relations, you need a loyal customer. For the B2B industry, retention is so important.
Retention: Once your customer becomes satisfied with your product or service, they will come back to you or not change their brand, and keeping them engaged by developing your product is also important for the funnel.
Advocacy: This is a B2B content strategy improvement tactic. For example, consulting your customers to allow them to give you case studies, feedback, referrals, and testimonials will increase your business authority.
This stage is the post-funnel stage of your customer’s journey, but it keeps a similar importance.
How to Build a B2B Inbound Funnel (Step-by-Step)?
To build a B2B inbound funnel, you need to go through several steps, such as identifying ICP, measuring buyer journey, creating content, lead capturing, nurturing, and a few more steps.
Step 1: Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
A B2B funnel is called inbound when a prospect comes to your funnel themselves through your appearance online and brand recognition. Identifying your ideal customer profile is essential for the first few steps.
Recognize who is your ICP:
- Matches your industry
- Company size
- Location
- Buying Authority
Once you make sure of those parameters, you can consider this prospect as your ideal customer profile. You need to know who is trying to reach and if things are your way, then the journey toward your inbound funnel gets started.
Step 2: Map the Buyer’s Journey
Buyers’ journey is considered into three stages
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
We have already discussed in the above section, so map them where they are on their own journey, and once you find their stage, you can approach with the required actions.
Step 3: Create Targeted Content
To attract your prospects according to their stage to your inbound funnel, you need to focus on your product marketing, though
- solution-based Blog posts, research reports, guides, and checklists (For awareness stage)
- Whitepapers, webinars, case studies, and comparison guides (For consideration stage)
- Free trials, demos, consultations (For the decision stage)
Step 4: Implement Lead Capture and Scoring
Once a lead shows interest in your service or product, you need to capture them. Lead capturing can be done in several ways, such as a Lead-capturing form.
- Website pop-up form
- Subscription form
- Lead magnets
- Social media
- Webinar
Then create a leads list and hand it over to the lead scoring team. Lead scoring filters your cold and worthless leads out of the list and saves your time and investment.
Step 5: Nurture Leads with Automation
Most of the leads are not ready to make a purchase right away, so you need to nurture and promote trust and make sure your company stays top of the minds of audiences until they are ready to buy. Create friendly automated email sequences that share useful content to your leads’ interests and their current stage in the funnel.
For example, if someone downloads an awareness stage guide, you might follow up a few days later with a consideration stage case study, use the data to personalize your message, and make it more relevant and engaging.
Step 6: Align Marketing and Sales Teams
Misalignment between sales and marketing is a common funnel blocker. By establishing a straightforward process for when a lead reaches the SQL threshold and is ready to be handed over to the sales team, we can simplify your efforts.
It’s also helpful to encourage sales to share their feedback on the quality of the leads they receive. This way, marketing can continually improve its lead generation and scoring criteria, making the process more effective for everyone.
Step 7: Measure, Optimize, and Scale
A B2B inbound funnel is not static; it requires continuous improvement.
- Track Key Metrics: Monitor conversion rates at each stage of the funnel (visitor-to-lead, lead-to-MQL, MQL-to-SQL, SQL-to-customer), cost per acquisition (CPA), and customer lifetime value (CLV).
- Analyze and Optimize: Use data analytics to identify bottlenecks or drop-off points in your funnel. A/B test different content offers, email subject lines, and landing page designs to improve conversion rates.
- Scale: Once you have a working, efficient model, increase your investment in successful channels to scale your lead generation efforts.
Conclusion
Building a B2B inbound funnel is easy if you master the art of disciplined workflow. A strategic and structured way of attracting leads towards your sales is an inbound funnel. Awareness, consideration, and decision, these three stages are the core phases of a buyer journey, and one more stage comes, which is called the post-funnel stage. And you have learned how you can create a funnel in our discussion, so apply that and become a master in the B2B sales industry.
