Understanding How The Sales Funnel & Inbound Marketing Generate Leads

Kennedy Andersson AB www.kennedyandersson.com
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The sales Funnel &
Inbound Marketing

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The sales funnel
Introduction
The buyer’s journey across all industries and segments has evolved over recent years with the proliferation of the Internet.
According to Google research, Business-to-Business (B2B) researchers conduct an average of 12 searches before they
engage with a specific brand’s website. There can be between 7 – 12 touch points with a seller before a contact turns into a
qualified lead, according to research from Walker Sands. All of which means that companies have to try to be in front of the
buyer over a lengthy sales cycle.
If you add to this environment multiple new communication channels, an increasing number of mobile devices and the
rising influence of a new generation of consumers, it’s no wonder that suppliers do not know where to start. Most
companies are in a crowded marketplace, and need to assess how they can stand out.
Whether you are a start-up, giving up, or ripe for change, all businesses can benefit from a better understanding of their
customers and an appreciation of where and how they should be present during the different stages of the buying process.
If you want to upgrade your company’s ability to get found, get leads and close sales, then this guide should open up your
mind to consider all the elements of a comprehensive inbound marketing programme.

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Our aim is to help you understand the importance of the sales funnel and how to use content and inbound marketing
through the different buying stages to close a sale. `
In this e-guide we cover:
1. The Sales Funnel
2. The Sales Cycle
3. Inbound marketing methodology
4. Content marketing
5. How to nurture leads along the sales funnel
6. Practical next steps

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The sales process for most industries is complex and difficult to control. The increase in the numbers of B2B buyers “self
researching”, it is important that your business is being found because of great online content that helps the buyers in their
decision making process.
With so many touch points now in the sales process the sales cycle is becoming longer:
o Budgets are tighter so money needs to go further
o Fear of making a bad decision by those involved
o Buyers have more options to choose from
o More stakeholders involved so different agendas and an increased complexity
o Reaching a consensus is a challenge with more people involved
o Customers want to interact differently, so you cannot reach them all in the same way
Because of these variables and the unknowns, it pays for the sales team to approach any sales call prepared with the
understanding that the customer has already done extensive research. Suppliers today need to convince multiple people in
an organisation, each having their own priorities and agendas.

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1. The Sales Funnel
We all know trying to lead an uncertain customer through the sales funnel, usually ends up with failure in either a delayed
or defeated selling process. Prematurely presenting a solution to a customer who does not identify with the problem is a
recipe for disaster.
The idea of the funnel is that the number of leads grows
smaller as they move down the funnel. At the top of the
funnel (TOFU), there are many people who you will want
to make aware of your brand. The middle of the funnel
(MOFU) is smaller, as there are less people who would
actually consider buying from you, and the bottom of the
funnel (BOFU) is even smaller, as you narrow down the
number of people who are in a position to buy from you.
MQL = Marketing Qualified Lead
SQL = Sales Qualified Lead

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Sales funnel and conversions - Using the conversion estimates from SiriusDecisions you would need 1000 website
visitors to make 10 sales (see below).

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2. The sales cycle.
In a recent survey, 74% of business buyers told Forrester they conduct more than half of their research online before
making an offline purchase.
There are typically a number of obstacles to closing a sale:
1. The decision challenge – does the buyer have a full and robust decision-making process in place to know how to
evaluate what you are offering?
2. Switching process – it is common to have customers that do not buy because they are unsure about the change
process of switching suppliers, the potential extra time, costs, resources, new technology, etc.
3. The final challenge is value – is the buyer able to measure the impact of your solution, the added value that it drives?
Usually a buyer first learns about something new on offer from vendors via peers or colleagues. The second most popular
source of information is from news publications and blogs, followed by search engines and social media. Overall, buyers
trust information from their peers and other credible third parties more than anything that they hear directly from the
vendors’ themselves.

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What are the ways that inbound marketing can shorten the sales cycle?
1) Engage earlier in the process with customers by providing useful information to establish credibility
2) Build trust by providing value rather than always selling
3) Be visible and proactive online when they are searching using your content to attract them
4) Think about your offering as a solution to a problem
5) Give thought to the language that they would use to search on the problem
6) Align marketing messages with the buyers journey
7) Try to remain “top of mind” when they are at the decision making stage by establishing a role as “thought leader” in
your sector or business segment

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3. Inbound Marketing methodology
Inbound marketing helps leads find you by educating your audience instead
of selling to them. Content marketing is the fuel for the inbound engine.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 70% of B2B marketers are
creating more content than they did one year ago.
By creating engaging content you'll be attracting a larger audience to your
site, so it's important to create a system to qualify and nurture potential
prospects down the funnel taking them through the stages of Attract,
Convert, Close and Delight. A potential customer will start out as a Stranger
and as your nurture the relationship they move to a Lead, then to a
Customer as you close a sale and then as a Promoter to let other buyers
know what a great product or service you have.

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4. Content Marketing
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing content that is educational,
relevant and consistent to attract and retain a particular target audience. It can help you drive traffic and then engage with
those leads as your nurture them through the sales funnel. Regardless of what type of marketing tactics you use, content
marketing should be part of your marketing strategy.
Your content marketing can take many forms:
o Social media marketing through your posts and comments
o SEO - Search engines reward businesses that publish quality content
o PR - Successful PR strategies are those that address issues readers are looking to solve
o PPC - For PPC to work, you need great content to convert a visitor
o Inbound marketing – blogging, emails, etc.
Content marketing is an on-going process to attract and retain customers, to help you grow as a business organically. It is an
approach where you are educating your customers rather than trying to sell to them.
The following chart is from Econsultancy and gives an overview of the key elements of content marketing:

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To connect your content to your buyers you should map out how your customers buy (Buyer’s Journey). Typically this is not
a linear process and prospects may move around the funnel. But, as they move closer to the bottom of the funnel what
they wants becomes more focused.
1. Buyer Stage – at what stage is
the lead at from Aware to
Decision?
2. What information needs do
they have and how are they
researching the subject?
3. For this type of buyer
persona, do they have a
preferred format to digest the
content?
4. Depending on the stage they
are at in the buying journey
you will include certain
keywords
AWARENESS CONSIDERATION DECISION
User Behavior
Research & Info Needs
Key Terms
Content Types
BUYER STAGES
Have realized and expressed
symptoms of a potential prob-
lem or opportunity
Research focused on vendor
neutral 3rd party information
around identifying problems or
symptoms
Troubleshoot
Issue
Resolve
Risks
Upgrade
Improve
Optimize
Prevent
Solution
Provider
Service
Supplier
Tool
Device
Software
Appliance
Compare
Vs.
versus
comparison
Pros and Cons
Benchmarks
Review
Test
Have clearly defined and given a
name to their problem or oppor-
tunity
Have defined their solution
strategy, method, or approach
Committed to researching and
understanding all of the available
approaches/methods to solving
their defined problem or oppor-
tunity
Researching supporting docu-
mentation, data, benchmarks or
endorsements to make or recom-
mend a final decision
Analyst reports
Research reports
eGuides & eBooks
Editorial content
Expert content
White papers
Educational content
Webcase/podcast/video
Vendor comparisons
Product comparisons
Case Studies
Trial Download
Product Literature
Example
I have a sore throat, fever,
and I’m achy all over.
What’s wrong with me?
Aha! I have strep throat.
What are my options for
relieving or curing my
symptoms?
I can see a primary care
physician, ER, nurse or clinic.
The ER costs $$$, but are the
fastest & I have insurance.
Comparison white papers
Expert Guides
Live interactions
Live Demo
Buyer’s Journey
1
2
3
4

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5. How to nurture leads along the Sales Funnel

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i). Discovery: The Top of the Funnel (TOFU)
Goals: Indirect customer acquisition; brand awareness
Tactic: Educational content rather than sell, sell, sell
In this first phase of content marketing, you're trying to lift the awareness of your brand (and maybe even within the
market). In some cases, if you are a start-up or launching a new product you are also trying to educate the market that you
have a solution to a particular problem.
You're also trying to use content marketing to generate interest during this phase. Because it's not enough for people to
just hear your name, they also need to be curious enough about your story to remember the brand name and start
integrating it into their list of trusted brands (even if they only trust your content at this stage).
The top of the funnel is focused on generating visitor traffic to your website. Goals might include nudging a few potential
customers toward conversion but most importantly it is at this stage that you can show an understanding for your buyer
personas. Showing that you know what the audience wants and needs to learn about, interacting with them in the way that
they want and providing evidence of your competence to address a problem that they are searching on.

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Types of content that work well during the Attract phase include:
Blog posts providing information around identifying a problem or it’s symptoms
Whitepapers
Social media
Website
Webinars with expert opinions
Comprehensive e-guides, e-books or research from third parties
Videos
Emails
Key terms to be used are; Troubleshooting, Issues, Risks, Improve, Resolve, etc.

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ii). Convert and consideration: The Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)
Goal: Direct customer acquisition
Tactic: Start building trust in your offering
In the consideration phase, a consumer starts to associate your brand with the solution you offer. They have given a name
to their problem or opportunity. This is the time when you want to supply them with content that helps them evaluate you
and your products. The customer is now committed to research and understanding all the available approaches and
methods to solve their problem. Remember the customer does not quite trust you yet, so wait before you adopt a sales
approach. Instead, consideration content is a great opportunity to provide the information that differentiate your brand.
At this stage people will be looking for:
Blogging
Call-to-actions, landing pages and forms for customer details
Case studies
How-to content that showcases your products
Key terms; Solution, Provider, Tools, Service, Software, etc.

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Demo videos
Product descriptions and data sheets
Keep in mind, though, that middle-of-the-funnel content usually doesn't focus directly on what you're selling. It uses what
you're selling as a means to for example help search engine rankings or start to build intelligence on those that you are
beginning to interact with.

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iii). Close and decision: The Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)
Goal: Customer sales
Tactic: Unique value propositions, content to feed reviews, news articles, etc.
With most companies when it comes to decision making it involves usually a selected group of stakeholders who together
make the decisions, so it is important not to build a message that focuses on one role within an organisation. Within the
B2B environment there can be between 3 – 5 people involved, take this into account when you are producing content for
different points-of-view. Remember the potential obstacles to a sale or the problems that a customer is trying to solve.
With all of the content that is available online, buyers are well prepared in terms of information, research and lists of
suitable vendors. In many cases, as much as over half of buyers only reach out to sales during this final phase as they have
all the information they need to make a sale.
Be ready to impress with your knowledge of your prospects needs, and why your product is right for them before they
make their final decision.
You will need to prepare content on:

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Testimonials and endorsements
Reviews
Detailed product descriptions
A streamlined, comprehensible, and transparent sales process
This type of content is more straightforward. It can involve things like clear descriptions of your products that outline the
unique value they provide to customers. It could include charts that compare your various products to one another or to
those of other companies. Bottom-of-the-funnel content is the sales material of content marketing.

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iv). After sales and delight: Beyond the Funnel
Goal: Retention of existing customers and promoters
Tactic: Engage and support
At this point, we're focused on retention and delight —turning one-time buyers into repeat customers and making sure that
we use the power of social media for your happy customers to recommend and endorse you.
Think about content that will enable you to keep engaged with customers, even if there is a long sales cycle keeping in
touch can help with regular endorsements:
Special offers
Email outreach and follow-up
Customer surveys
Social media monitoring
Smart content on input fields for downloading content
Special offers
Insider tips & tricks

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6. Practical next steps:
Today:
Evaluate your understanding of your buyer persona and their buying journey. Remember that customers are engaging with
your brand outside of the impact of your marketing activities. So keep an open mind on how and where you can interact
with potential customers to understand more about their pain, the challenges they face and the opportunities they want to
exploit.
Tomorrow:
Question how effective your communication approach is. Are you creating the right kind of experience for your customers,
do you know your digital touch points, where you can influence the most to get greater share of mind? Traditional media is
not dead, but it does need to be assessed against the benefits of combining it with inbound marketing to achieve your
growth targets.
Next month:
Don’t forget that to get your inbound marketing programme running at full speed, that it needs content to fuel it. To
produce content it takes time, and for your customers to search, find and digest it. This will not be an overnight success; so
you need to be ready to wait to see those returns.

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During the next quarter:
Sales and marketing can only increase their impact if you allocate time for strategy and planning. Be dynamic in your
approach, test, experiment and assess all the time your actions. If you cannot measure it you cannot grow it.
It is valuable to assess what the pain points are, and then put them into some order of priority (as below):

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Resources:
As always we like to make sure that the growth hackers amongst us get access to the best free technology around to fuel
growth. Below again we have selected a number of sites that we use regularly to keep us on top of our own high-speed
growth plans:
Insights
o Google’s Consumer Barometer is a global interactive digital consumer insights tool, updated with data from more
than 45 countries and ten product categories for you to play with and retrieve free consumer insights.
o Google Analytics If you are a marketer, you have used or have heard of Google Analytics at some point. It’s a versatile
(and FREE) analytics platform.
o Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) has been a staple for many marketers over the years.
With the removal of keywords from Google Analytics a couple of years ago, Google Search Console was one of the
few tools to analyse keywords coming into your website. It’s still a great tool for keyword research.
o Google Drive is a free file and online storage platform for all of your documents, sheets and presentations. Access and
sharing permissions can be configured, along with a search feature of everything in your drive, saving you searching
for the right document.

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o Google AdWords: Keyword Planner for identifying new keywords for your organization, there’s no better place to
start than Google’s Keyword Tool. While you need an AdWords account to get started, it’s easy to sign up and you
don’t have to do anything AdWords-specific to use.
o www.google.com/trends/
Great for general trends about your market and larger direction for your app. Track search trends and volume
for search phrases across the world and even compare keywords against each other. Google Trends is a
fantastic resource for you to tap into some of the data Google holds.
Ghostery is a wonderful free site to reveal the digital tools that other
websites are using once you have download the app.

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Any questions or comments?
John Kennedy
CEO/VD Kennedy Andersson AB
Örebro / Stockholm
www.kennedyandersson.com
0705 78 42 66

Understanding How The Sales Funnel & Inbound Marketing Generate Leads

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