There’s No Reason to Fear the Funnel

By Robert Pease, Practice Lead, Pipeline Performance – Heinz Marketing

B2B marketers must embrace a full funnel mindset when it comes to their activities and measures of success.

What this means is that they need to wrap their heads around being “revenue relevant” with the customers they help acquire or grow being the ultimate measure of their success.

Yes, there are lots of different activities both in the control and outside the control of the marketer that lead to a customer win but being united with the sales team around the sale funnel and constantly seeking to make it more efficient is core to the DNA of the modern marketer.

So think about each part of the funnel and how activities and investments contribute to growing it and making it more efficient.

For the very top of funnel, are you reaching your audience in a way that is meaningful and actionable to them?  Do you know what your optimal customer looks like and have you embraced account-based marketing (ABM) concepts to reach them?

For the middle of the funnel, do you have a firm grasp on what the buying journey looks like and who is involved in the decision making process?  For longer, more complex sales there are a series of micro-decisions that lead to the ultimate win and you need to understand and anticipate them.

For the bottom of the funnel, are you doing all you can to enable the sales team to engage and close prospects?  Do they have the right content at the right time to close a deal?  Have you supplied the agreed upon and qualified optimal prospect to the sales team?

Don’t fear the funnel and certainly don’t fear revenue contribution as a measure of success. Companies invest in marketing to scale their businesses and a full funnel mindset will keep marketing aligned with sales and what matters most to the business.

 

Still fearing the funnel? Register now for a live Seattle event tomorrow, June 16: Full Funnel Marketing: How to Impact Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey with nationally recognized speakers to talk all about best practices for each stage of the funnel.

There’s still time to register!