If you're a B2B marketer, you are most likely familiar with the buyer funnel. It describes all the steps in a purchasing cycle, indicating a prospective customer's journey of making a purchase. Generally, the top is defined as problem awareness, the middle has consideration stages, and the bottom is product decision. What many marketers don't realize, however, is that the nature of the buyer funnel is shifting.

There used to be a clear distinction between the sales and marketing teams. Marketing would focus on creating awareness and generating leads. With changes in consumer purchasing habits, lots of marketers haven't taken the impact on the buyer funnel into consideration. They haven't adapted their marketing strategy to fit the behavioral shifts in each stage of the funnel, and their marketing suffers.

What is Full Funnel Marketing?

Full funnel marketing means that businesses create marketing strategies that target consumers at each stage of the funnel. Because valuable customers require a different approach at every stage of the buyer funnel, it's important to adjust marketing strategies accordingly.

Awareness

Tactics like online display, pre-roll video ads and content marketing are great for generating brand awareness and shifting brands to a top of mind status.

Consideration

The consideration phase has to do with your customers finding a reason to trust your brand and choose it.

Conversion

The conversion funnel is considered the last push to help a business convince a customer on its services and products.

Retention Stage

In this stage, your goal is driving conversions and prospects into paying customers. From there, encourage them to become repeat customers.

How Full Funnel Marketing Works

This includes things like social media platforms, search engines, related websites, online communities, and news sites. The first step in a full-funnel marketing strategy is ensuring prospects can find you and then convince them to visit your site.

Generate Prospect Interest

A website is a business's primary tool for lead generation. This means it must grab the audience's attention, provide an adequate amount of educational information and also generate enough trust that the customer reaches out.

Nurture New Leads

While your site should be able to build new leads, it's important that the majority of these leads are early on in the buyer journey. Nurturing campaigns is vital for moving leads further down the buyer funnel. It also provides additional offers to those who have already expressed interest in a product or service and prepares leads for sales opportunities.

Guide the Decision-making Process

While businesses certainly can't force prospects to make a purchase, they can provide insight while they make their decision. This helps guide the customer to the end of their buyer journey, with a favorable outcome for the brand.

Converting Customers with Manta

In this age of longer, more nuanced buyer journeys, it's important for marketers to cater to leads at different stages of the marketing funnel.