In a competitive landscape like the Software as a service (SaaS) industry, a sales/marketing funnel can give you an edge by driving potential customers toward a successful close. Your funnel is a strategic process, which means you’re eliminating much of the guesswork in both your sales and marketing efforts. As you optimize your funnel over time, you'll have a system in place that works like a well-oiled machine. This can mean a more streamlined and effective process, allowing for greater profit margins over time. But sometimes jumping right into the process can be a bit overwhelming, this is where it helps to know the basics.
What is the Digital Marketing funnel?
The Digital Marketing funnel is a strategic model that represents the entire buying journey of the personas, from the moment they know your brand until the time they become customers. This concept is widely used among salespeople but has also become a fundamental resource for the success of marketing actions. There are numerous approaches to the funnel concept, but the model we will present is divided into six stages:
Exposure
At this stage, the goal is to produce content that captures the attention of users.Traditionally this can be done with the help of videos, presentation software or infographics. But, now is the time to attract as much traffic as possible.This is where an interactive product demo can help to generate more excitement and interest in your product.
in the SaaS marketing funnel at this stage, potential customers might not recognize some of the problems they face. For example, sales managers might not be fully aware that they are spending too much time on figuring out sales invoices manually, and have not considered using b2b payment software. So, What is the best way to do marketing at this stage? Marketing managers need to target specific audiences and see what their pain points are. Once they figure out their target personas, they’ll need to use different digital channels, such as a blog, social media channels or even paid ads to build brand awareness.
Discovery
In this next step, it is ideal to focus on producing content that encourages users to take an interest in your brand. By this stage customers are aware of their problem. However, they might not be ready to look for the solution. As an example, sales managers know their manual process is not as efficient as it could be and may be aware of the process problem. Unfortunately many managers don’t have the time to actively look for the best solution, this can be due to the level of priority or the complex process to adopt new software. The best marketing message in this stage is pointing out their pain points and how your software can solve the specific issues they face. By addressing pain points such as reducing operation cost or highlighting an inefficient process, potential customers can decide whether they leave this funnel or stay in and goto the next stage.
Consideration
Here, the consumers are at a stage of consideration where they are more familiar with your brand, and the ways your product can help solve their problem. This is where it now becomes up to you to deliver the materials that will facilitate their decision process. This stage becomes a lead nurturing stage. Lead nurturing is defined as the stage developing relationships with leads and bringing the target customers into the buying process. As an example, now sales managers are looking for the Saas product to help their business process.Marketers give more information to the target audience and offer free trials or personalized email marketing as well as interactive product demos. We can go deeper into this stage when we explore the sales funnel.
Conversion (Action)
Now that you have shown the pros and cons of your offer, it’s time to help them make a decision. After all, you want loyal customers In this stage customers are actively looking for more information on your product as they compare and contrast all other options. For example, a sales manager maybe narrowing down software applications keeping in mind yours for contention.Considerations might include seeing which product is more cost effective and efficient for their team. On the marketing side, the landing page plays a crucial role in leading the customer to take action. Call to action pages such as “request demo”, “free trial”, “schedule a meeting”, help to increase the conversion rate.
Customer relationship (Engage)
With the lead conversion established, the next step is to get closer to your customers.Being able to show that you aren’t just interested in getting a conversion but want to help solve their problems and make their business prosper. Studies have shown that customers have already started their buying journey at this stage and if they haven’t yet, this is the stage where the sales team should get involved.
Retention (Evaluation)
The work has been long, but it is not over yet. It’s time to think about the actions and content focused on the retention challenge. In other words, secure consumers who already know your brand and who have bought your product or service. Having a good rapport with your customers will help to ensure that they continue to make new transactions. When it comes to long term growth, this stage is vital.
The B2B marketing funnel is only step one of the process, the second is making sure you have the right sales strategy to complete the buyer's journey. This is where understanding the Sales funnel can help your team to increase conversion rate and build more efficient product demos. We’ll be taking a deeper dive into the Sales Funnel so stay tuned and remember continually monitoring the conversion rate across your funnel is essential to the growth of your business. Always keep in mind your objective is to create a useful product that benefits your customers and everything else is a result of that goal.
