The B2B Marketing Funnel Revolution: Did You Miss It?

The B2B funnel seemed like one of the few bedrocks of marketing and advertising you could count on. Since the turn of the century, AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) made sense as a shorthand description of the events leading buyers through what was labeled alternatively as a marketing, purchase or sales funnel. But the events and steps leading to a purchase decision have changed, and time-pressed business owners and managers at SMBs, small-to-midsize business, can easily underestimate the extent of the change. Did you know that today more than 90% of B2B buyers start their purchasing cycle by looking for solutions and suppliers on the Internet?

In Case You Missed It

The evidence has been building so in 2013 the case is quite clear that the B2B funnel for marketing and sales has changed irrevocably.

“The hardest thing about B2B selling today is that customers don’t need you the way they used to.”
[Harvard Business Review]
“Two-thirds to 90% of the buying cycle is completed before a B2B buyer ever speaks with a sales rep.” [Forrester]
“70% of business technology buyers are at the RFP stage by the time the vendor becomes aware of the opportunity.” [UBM Techweb.]
“Business buyers spend just 21% of buying cycle in conversations with salespeople, instead spending 23% of the time in conversations with peers and colleagues, and 56% of the buying cycle searching for and engaging with content.” [IDG Connect.]

Whoa, what about the sales team? What happened?

The Rise of Inbound Marketing

Olglivy and others forecast the change several years ago, but businesses large and small have been struck by the speed by which power passed to the buyer. Marketing and sales have had to adjust to the power transfer by turning to inbound marketing. “Inbound Marketing attracts prospects to a company’s website through a combination of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC), and Social Media Marketing (SMM), then engages them with thought-leadership content, converts them to identified sales leads through the completion of forms, and then nurtures them through a program of drip marketing until prospects are determined to be “sales ready”.

The B2B Funnel: Where Are We Now?

So the B2B funnelthe simple acronym AIDA has become A-C-I-C-D-C-A — where the “C” stands for the drip conversions necessary to help buyers along the way until on average “two-thirds to 90%” through their journey, they are ready to speak to a salesperson. The so-called marketing funnel has become an exercise in creating a clear breadcrumb trail while being very careful not to put any obstacles or barriers in the way of the buyer’s journey.

It may be time to re-examine your B2B funnel and marketing-sales process. Are you putting barriers in your buyer’s path?