Full-Funnel Marketing
How to influence the buyer journey with full-funnel marketing and the role of marketing in full-funnel operations.
In today’s newsletter we share:
Full-funnel B2B marketing: how to influence the buyer journey
(7 stages explained in detail)Role of marketing in full-funnel operations
How to create a full-funnel GTM strategy
We all have heard multiple times that the buying process is not linear, and you can't push buyers. But how then can you influence it?
This is what we are going to cover in detail today.
Get step-by-step guidance in our Full-Funnel GTM strategy course.
can youAlign your marketing, sales, and executives on the focus target market, positioning, channels, campaigns, and content to land ideal customers, grow your deal size, and accelerate your pipeline.
Inside you'll find:
Short and actionable training videos
Market segmentation template
Ideal Customer Profile template
Unique value proposition formulas and validation questionnaire
Marketing plan template
Buying journey template
Lifetime future updates
Full-funnel B2B marketing
In a nutshell, full-funnel marketing is a replication of the full cycle buyer journey: from creating awareness to retention and expansion.
We started to popularize the concept of full-funnel marketing with
7 years ago. It started from this diagram in my Moleskine 😁.Here are 7 stages:
Full-funnel marketing strategy - fundamental layer
Creating awareness
Demand generation
Demand capturing
Activation: pipeline generation programs with sales
Client success
Expansion
It helps to influence the entire buyer journey (check this guide where we reveal the buyer journey of one of our clients).
Below, I’ll review each of the stages in detail, including the role of marketing.
1. FULL-FUNNEL MARKETING STRATEGY - FUNDAMENTAL LAYER.
There are 2 extreme B2B camps.
One camp evangelizes the idea that marketing strategy is all about brand values, mission, voice of communication, etc. without answering the core question: HOW ARE WE GOING TO GROW?
The second camp fiercely evangelizes one motion against others: product-led, sales-led, community-led, ABM-led, demand gen-led, whatever-led.
I don't believe in siloed motions. Siloed motion influences only a tiny part of the buyer journey, but not the complete process.
I believe in a holistic approach based on how B2B customers buy.
Marketing is responsible for work on fundamental GTM elements.
Market segmentation: identifying segments and clusters with higher ACV, win rates and shorter sales cycles
ICP (ideal customer profile) including account qualification, buying committee and firmographics
Buyer journey of different buying committee members including buying triggers
Positioning, messaging and value proposition
Channel and partner strategy
Creating and managing cross-functional teams
Brand strategy (including category planning)
Budgeting
Reporting and analytics
Regular alignment with stakeholders, sales, product and client success on points above
Hit your pipeline and revenue targets with full-funnel ABM.
If any of these challenges sound familiar:
You are aligned in theory with sales but don’t do anything in practice aside from receiving wish lists from sales and sharing with them your marketing plan. In reality, you work in silos and miss the revenue targets and are being pressured by your executives.
You understand that your marketing and sales playbook is broken (mqls, gated content) but despite many attempts you don’t know how to fix it.
Your outbound, paid ads and organic pipeline drastically decreased while CAC increased mostly because most of your market is problem unaware and not buying.
You lack brand awareness among target accounts and sales can’t get even a reply.
You clearly see that you're already behind your revenue targets.
You tried ABM and demand generation, but despite investments in tools, the program failed.
We can help.
We'll develop a custom full-funnel ABM strategy aligned with your resources, budget and stack and execute it together to drive results THIS quarter.
2. CREATING AWARENESS.
Buyer journey stage: Out of market. Basically, buyers are not buyers, and are only looking for info on professional development.
Wait, out of market? Why even bother?
Because 86% of enterprise buyers short-listed a product they'd already heard of BEFORE starting the research process.
Creating awareness = making your target buyers know that your product exists and associate with specific challenges they might face.
Role of marketing:
Develop and run programs aligned with three levels of demand (demand for content, demand for solution, demand for vendor)
Creating content and programs that are:
Aligned with jobs-to-be-done and buying triggers of your target buyers
Help to create "awareness of existence."
Associate product or vendor with potential (pre-existing) buyer challenges.
Demonstrate what value your product can offer.
Develop nurturing programs to stay top of mind for accounts that are not currently in the market.
3. GENERATING DEMAND.
Buyer journey stage: buying triggers, challenges, opportunities, category consideration.
Demand generation = making your target buyers believe your product is one of the best possible solutions for their needs.
Role of marketing:
Clear messaging on how you're different and worth buying
Detailed case studies and customer use cases divided by verticals or jobs-to-be-done
Practical overview of solutions to typical challenges and use-cases (natively featuring your product)
4. CAPTURING DEMAND.
Buyer journey stage: buyers that are ready to buy, and have chosen to include you in the consideration set, will reach out to you.
A lot of opportunities are lost beforehand because your buyers:
Can't find the necessary information.
Understand how your product can help with their specific needs
Sell your product to their team and stakeholders
Interview core customers about their vendor evaluation and internal buying process, and create content that helps your Champions to sell product internally.
Role of marketing:
Create product-related content hubs, webinars, email courses and nurtures
Track demand for vendor and buying signals on high-intent web-pages and review platforms.
Run retargeting programs and ads on high-intent channels.
Remove friction points
5. ACTIVATION: PIPELINE GENERATION WITH SALES.
Buyer journey stage: Buyers might evaluate different vendors and get critical questions from their colleagues.
Stop the inbound vs outbound debate. You need to establish ALLBOUND playbooks.
The real marketing and sales alignment happens not on paper but when B2B marketers roll their sleeves and work together with sales.
Work together on:
Program planning and execution
Territory planning and account selection
Warm-up activities
Account research and necessary insights
Leading indicators
Tracking demand for vendor and buying signals on high-intent web-pages and review platforms
Define engagement triggers to involve sales for proactive relationship building, progressive profiling across the touchpoints and with interviews and creating personalized offers
6. CUSTOMER SUCCESS & ADVOCACY.
Buyer journey stage: implementation, change management.
After winning a deal, the real relationship only starts.
Role of marketing:
Make sure to accelerate time to value, onboard core users, help your customers create impact, and turn their success into internal word-of-mouth.
Whenever you see they get results, invite them for a debriefing call. You can create a case study and get insights about key initiatives + validate upsell hypotheses.
7. RETENTION AND EXPANSION.
Buyer journey stage: scaling, new use-cases.
Most B2B companies never do it and just passively wait until the client requests more licenses.
Role of marketing:
Work with Client Success and Account Managers to understand:
The evolving needs of your customers.
Show them how they can support the new use-cases with your product.
Amplify the success of your initial buying group across the other buying centers to expand into new business units or regions.
Get your brand in front of thousands of B2B marketing leaders through collaborations with us.
We launch an official sponsorship and collaboration model. We don't just mention our sponsors (which is not really efficient). We do cross-platform education to our audience on how and why to leverage your product or service.
Every month we’ll have only 2 sponsors. Until the end of the year we have an agreement with Dealfront.
Want to work with us?
Fill in the form to get a sponsorship deck with our audience overview and examples of thought leadership collaboration we did with Chili Piper, Dealfront and Dreamdata.