Marketing Funnel Automation

B2B Marketing Funnel Automation

A marketing funnel is a fundamental concept in the world of industrial and technical sales and marketing.  The right funnel can create a competitive advantage in your business.  However, most businesses are doing things the hard way.  The hard way is also the slow way and the reason most B2B companies complain about a ‘long sales cycle’ or ‘low conversion rate’.  With our help you can automate parts of your funnel, or even all of your marketing funnel to accelerate sales growth without the need for additional human resources.

First, let’s clarify what we are talking about with funnels.  We’re using the term ‘marketing funnel’ to describe how a new customer travels through your marketing and sales process from awareness to contract (or payment).  In our reference to funnels we’re not specifying a separate sales funnel vs. a separate marketing funnel, we are referring to one big funnel with different pieces – an important point we will come back to later.

This is how a typical B2B Funnel Works:

  1. Leads – The top of the funnel is where leads enter. Leads can simply be defined as having expressed an interest in your product or service.
  2. Suspects – When a lead is qualified it enters the suspect phase or ‘middle’ of the funnel. Prior to entering this phase the lead has gone through a sales or marketing qualification process.  [Note: some firms refer to the second stage as the Prospect phase and if you normally track prospects at stage two and suspects at stage three that’s fine, you don’t need to change around your terminology].
  3. Prospects – In the prospect phase the suspect is well qualified and a proposal has been delivered. The prospect is typically deciding between your firm and one or two others.  In a longer enterprise, B2B, or Government sales cycle their time to decision is <3 months.  There is a potential deal for you and your firm will win or lose this deal.
  4. Customers – When prospects choose your product or service they are then ‘converted’ into customers. The number of customers is always a fraction of the number of leads for a given period because the funneling process is also a process of elimination where unqualified or un-attended leads drop out.  An un-attended lead is one that may have been converted to a customer for your business but they ended up buying elsewhere.  This happens ALL the time.  You or your sales team get too busy and you forget to follow-up.  This is one of the things that marketing automation fixes.  Another important point is that simply by automating the right parts of your marketing funnel you will grow your new customers without even spending more on acquiring new leads.  We’ll discuss that more later.

Your ability as a company to continually drive new leads into your funnel and convert them into paying customers is what keeps your business growing and thriving.  True, you likely have existing customers and it is technically less expensive to sell to customers you have already acquired.  But, new business development is part of any growth plan and the funnel is where the magic happens.

Does this make sense so far?

Marketing Funnel Automation can add the proverbial turbo-charger to your sales and marketing efforts.  

How Can Marketing Funnel Automation Help Your B2B Business?

  • Increase new leads
  • Pre-qualify leads
  • Pre-educate leads
  • Increase conversion of leads into paying customers
  • Automate follow-up
  • Convert prospects into customers
  • Reduce your human labor costs
  • Leverage your existing resources
  • Beat much larger competitors
  • Reduce your customer acquisition costs
  • Grow your revenue
  • Shorten sales cycles

These are just some of the benefits of an automated marketing funnel for your business and the benefits don’t stop there.  Our founder (Jay Rice) has used marketing automation, automated marketing funnels and business systemization to the degree that he has traveled the world.  He even used an automated marketing funnel to sell his last business!

We’ve created automated marketing funnels and advised on marketing funnels for a number of different businesses and can provide you with expertise (consulting) or a complete ‘done-for-you’ marketing automation service.

To learn more, request a consultation with us or our Special Report on Marketing Funnel Automation.