The massive investment of money and time to build attractive sales funnels to nurture, qualify, and convert the generated leads to customers, should focus on delivering high ROI
However, the reality is very different, as only a few marketers have full funnels that perform seamlessly and flawlessly. There is a “friction” in the funnel that always exists to limit or prohibit the free flow of leads from mere attraction to engagement and then conversion. Of course, most of the marketers do agree that it’s simpler to attract leads to the top of the funnel, and the process gets more complicated as the leads move through it. Marketers struggle to identify where exactly the things go wrong and how they can be fixed to get ahead.
B2B Marketers Must Prioritize ABM Solutions
A recent survey by GetResponse and Demand Metric took a closer look at the friction created at each stage of the sales funnel. The study also considered which digital marketing tactics are the most effective at addressing and resolving these issues at each step in the funnel.
Three main takeaways from the survey are:
- Fewer than 20% of marketers report having complete integration of the top, middle as well as the bottom of the funnel.
- Lesser than 30% have a precise understanding of how ROI is derived out of the Marketing funnels.
- Lesser than 20% of marketers report most to complete automation for any part across the funnel.
This means that the Marketing funnels remain an ideal strategy, but they’re not delivering expectedly.
The survey also revealed that considering the top of the funnel, the best results were derived from online marketing tactics like event marketing, content marketing, and referral marketing. However, the widely used channels were – owned media, email marketing, and events marketing.
Towards the middle of the funnel, the tactics that perform best are referral marketing, in-rank order, followed by email marketing and events marketing. But, the prevalent marketing channels remain email marketing, followed by content marketing and owned media.
B2B Marketers Increase Spending on Technology
At the bottom, the most robust performing marketing tactics are video marketing, referral marketing, and events marketing. But, considering this stage of the funnel, the most common tactics remain email marketing, followed by a tie between referral marketing and events marketing. Another crucial conclusion was that as leads move further into the funnel, the focus on marketing tactics decreases instead of increasing.
Regardless of the mix of martech tactics and challenges that are employed throughout the sales cycle – by automating the funnel, marketers can almost double the performance of the campaign pushing the ROI further. Moreover, integrating the funnel helps marketers to yield up to 3X performance gains.
