Alex Macura is the founder and CMO of Your digital montage. A full-funnel agency that supports online companies in their digital growth.
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As a B2B marketer, I know the unique struggle you face. I’ve been doing this for decades and I have to say that in my experience it doesn’t really get any easier: same challenges, different customers. So let me give you the tips and tools I’ve picked up along the way to save you some of the growing pains we’ve been through.
Part one of this B2B full-funnel marketing series addressed some of the biggest challenges full-funnel marketers face. These include knowing how to map out your ideal customer or buyer profile and then setting up key performance metrics and attribution models to understand what true success means.
Now that we know who we want to reach, mapped the funnel and understand what the end goal looks like, we need to come up with a strategy.
How to Build a Full Funnel B2B Marketing Strategy
First, let me say that I use the word strategy with care here. When people ask about strategy, they usually just want a to-do list. As a reminder, a strategy is not a list of things to do. A strategy is a game plan. An approach. A map that takes you from A to B.
According to HBR, a strategy consists of decisions you make that place you (the company and the brand) on a playing field of your choice to win. A strategy has a “why” (as presented by Simon Sinek in a TEDx Talk), it has a win objective and there is a “how” (I’ll talk about this below). More than that, it must be understandable, integrated and doable.
Look, I get it. As a marketer, you barely have time to lift your head above the pressure of deadlines and campaigns to build a strategy. But to be successful in B2B marketing, you absolutely must. Unlike silo marketing tactics where the primary goal is to get leads, for example, a full-funnel B2B marketing strategy focuses on the why and the how. This informs how we will reach our ideal customers at every point in their journey.
The why
Until you’re clear why your ideal customer should be using you, not your customer. The why is the crux of the matter. Once you believe in what you are promoting, your marketing message will become much clearer.
This feeds closely into understanding your customer. It’s important to identify the emotional trigger for your customers before starting with the logical benefits and features of your offering.
the how
A B2B buyer’s journey is very different from a B2C journey. There are often committees, board members, and multiple layers of approval that sign a purchase or tender. So when it comes to tactics, you can and should be creative.
What does this look like? Each stage of the funnel has its own message with one goal: to move the customer to the next stage of the funnel. This means that the goal of your strategy (the win objective) is to successfully guide the customer from the unconscious to the conscious stage, then to the consideration and finally to the conversion.
Remember that full-funnel marketing can also mean multichannel. So experiment with Google ads and social ads, long blogs for SEO and email marketing.
What worked for my company in a B2B digital space was full search engine marketing with super personalized messages for each of our personas. We also used downloadables, tight tracking stats and attribution modelling. Our internal battle cry was “dare to test, lean into learning and always measure!”
Don’t be afraid in this room. Roll back if something doesn’t work and roll out again if it does.
Funnel Tactics for B2B Marketers
Now that you have a strategy, you need to implement it. I’ve covered some of the building blocks you need to build a complete B2B marketing strategy. Here’s a summary, plus a few more important steps.
1. Identify your ideal customer profile (ICP). This will help you build a unique message for each stage that highlights the problem and how to solve it.
2. Identify your key performance metrics (KPIs). This will help you know if you’re measuring success accurately.
3. Build your attribution model. This will help you know which phase of the marketing funnel budget is responsible for the conversion.
4. Win the trust of stakeholders. You will not easily check this off your checklist. There are many internal stakeholders who are counting on you to get things done. The best way to gain this trust is to meet point two: deliver results aligned with established KPIs. However, this brings us to the next point.
5. At first you may have to “fake it until you make it”. This is because it is nearly impossible to deliver results if you don’t know what works. So at the beginning of implementing your strategy, you should step out almost in confidence and see what works and what doesn’t.
6. Sharing is caring. Now that you’ve gained traction and are starting to see results, package your results in a way that makes sense to non-marketing stakeholders. When I say ‘know your audience’, the same goes for internal C-suite audiences. When you present the results, you need to answer their pain points: What’s in it for them? How does your data change their day? If you can present your findings, insights and results in a way that shows value to them, you are well on your way to a sustainable B2B marketing strategy.
Final Thoughts
Your strategy for reaching your ideal customer at every stage of their journey down the funnel should start with the why and then move on to the how. Reaching your customer often requires multi-funnel tactics, dedication to measurement, and iterative testing. Stakeholder and C-suite buy-in come when you deliver on fixed KPIs. Always remember to test, try, learn and communicate. Keep going, make bold moves, share your results and be brave.
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