The B2B Demand Generation Funnel: A Complete Guide

Creating a B2B demand generation funnel should be all about building a revenue system that converts buyers from product awareness to closed deals. Effective funnels aren’t only about finding leads; they’re also focused on being tailored to specific buying groups and ICPs. 

In this new era of demand generation, B2B marketers and RevOps teams must now oversee more than just campaign metrics. They must also evaluate pipeline metrics, conversion speeds, and efficiency of workflows. This guide breaks down how to construct a funnel that turns marketing volume into measurable growth and revenue. 

Align Your Funnel to Revenue, Buying Groups, and ICP

The demand generation funnel should be built to meet revenue targets, not leads. Determine pipeline and channel requirements to meet ARR goals. Clearly define your ICP as well as stakeholders that may impact buying decisions. This can include finance, compliance, IT, technical, and end users. Once completed, ensure that internal teams (RevOps, marketing, and sales) are in alignment with who will own various tasks, expectations for enforcing SLAs, and characteristics of MQL, SQL, and SQOs. End by determining which portions will be self-serve versus seller-assisted to cater to different types of buyers. 

Define stages that reflect real B2B buying

Make sure that your funnel depicts how buying actually happens. Consider using stages that include awareness, consideration, intent, evaluation, conversion, and expansion. For each stage, consider what buyers would want to accomplish and why, making sure to offer a mix of both self-serve and expert-assisted guidance, as research from Gartner has shown this hybrid approach to be correlated with more beneficial outcomes. 

Track slowdowns by capturing stage velocity data, evaluating the number of days in specific stages in relation to the number of opportunities, and comparing it to the prior period. Significant slowdowns should be flagged for resolution. Also, verify the stages you’ve used have clear criteria for entry and exit, and that there are no missing buyer group roles.

Adopt account-level funnel reporting (with contact detail underneath)

To more accurately understand buying activity and eliminate the possibility of inflated contact signals, progress should be measured at the account level. CaliberMind recommends AQL/AQA structures that combine outbound, inbound, and product-led sources. Activities like page visits and demo requests should be lumped into a single intent signal, with the account being routed once it reaches a specified threshold. An AQA to SQA rate greater than 20% is typically indicative of strong intent. For nuances pertaining to SaaS, explore our B2B demand generation SaaS guide. 

Set SLAs and routing to protect high intent

High-intent pages and demo resources should be considered critical to an effective demand gen funnel. Buyers with high-intent signals should be handled with urgency and should quickly be routed to the right representative. Fall back on SDRs if anything is uncertain, such as fit or territory. Companies that have response times of less than 5 minutes often see higher conversion rates to meetings held. Make sure forms are not time-consuming, and be sure to track speed-to-lead and meeting-held metrics to determine overall effectiveness.

Step-By-Step Playbook: Build Your Funnel in 8 Moves (90-Day Plan)

The steps below will allow you to create a B2B demand generation funnel capable of generating actual results in the form of revenue in as little as 90 days. Each step builds upon the previous stage, resulting in a model that supports sustainable growth. 

1. 1. Confirm revenue math: Determine your required pipeline by considering your ARR target, expected win rate, and ACV. Then, determine how much of the pipeline must be sourced by Marketing and Sales. 
   2. Define structure: Clearly define buying groups and ICPs, as well as outlining criteria for various stages. Ensure alignment on SLAs concerning response times and routing expectations. 
   3. Map programs: Distinguish demand creation versus demand capture across different stages in your funnel. Limit programs to a handful to enhance testability and execution. Consider programs like SEO, paid search, social, and events. 
   4. Create infrastructure: Develop the assets that will ultimately convert buyer interest into revenue. Consider typical high-intent assets like pricing and comparison pages, as well as interactive demos and trials. 
   5. Release creation engines: Build content that helps establish trust and credibility with buyers upfront. Case studies and webinars that discuss how your product solves challenges are common. Take it further by repurposing that content into social media posts and community discussions. 
   6. Instrumentation: Ensure every channel and conversion point is tracked and measured. Automate SQOs and configure offline conversions to tie back to campaigns. Finally, build a centralized dashboard so that teams can get on the same page regarding what’s working and what’s not. 
   7. Run tests: Run controlled tests to identify drivers of success, and reallocate resources as needed to winners. 
   8. Evaluate and adjust: Regularly evaluate across teams, namely Sales and Finance, to identify overall performance. Top performers should have additional resources allocated, with low performers being cut. 

QA checklist and common pitfalls

Having a robust QA process is key to ensuring that everything works before launch. Routing functionality should all be tested, and direct-booking features should work flawlessly. Track meeting-held rates and be sure to consistently use AQA/SQA definitions in reports. Launching too many channels can result in information overload, and gating documents can result in lost interest from buyers.

B2B Demand Generation Funnel Stages: Tactics That Move Buyers

Each stage of an effective B2B demand generation funnel should bring more buyers closer to revenue recognition. The right content and CTAs, along with the right mix of product-led and seller-assisted experiences, can be what separates good from great funnels. SEO, paid search, social, and webinars all play vital roles in educating and guiding buyers to be confident in taking the next step. 

Awareness → Consideration (create demand)

The initial stages of the funnel should be dedicated to building credibility by educating buyers about the problem and its solution. Ungated material is preferable as it allows a quicker, more seamless method for buyers to gain access to content that helps them define the problem and evaluate solutions. B2B buyers generally average 36 interactions prior to a purchase, according to Oktopost, making repetition instrumental in conversions. 

Measure assisted pipeline numbers from SEO and social, and see how many meetings result from nurtured audiences. Ultimately, avoid early gating of material as well as content that does not clearly define solutions or buyer problems. Those new to these topics can further consider our discussion on what is demand generation for more context. 

Intent → Evaluation (capture demand)

Given buyers with clear intent, offering them speed and clarity can significantly boost conversion rates and engagement. Make it simple for buyers to get pricing information and make product comparisons. A conversion hub could be highly effective here – resources for pricing, ROI calculators, comparison, and interactive demos eliminate common roadblocks and delays. 

To gauge progress, measure pipeline per visit by page type, number of demos requested, number of meetings held, and SQO numbers by source. Performance here can be kept high by avoiding hidden pricing, eliminating generic CTAs, and following up quickly with interested buyers to ensure speed-to-lead. Check out our demand generation vs lead generation resource to clarify capture vs creation metrics. 

Conversion → Expansion (accelerate and scale)

Buyers in the bottom funnel stages can cross the line with confidence more quickly if given role-specific assets to validate their choice. CFOs may benefit from ROI paperwork, while compliance and security FAQs could be more beneficial for IT teams. Webinars can be used as an important tool, as ON24 reports that they drive conversion when used to nurture leads, as opposed to just spreading awareness or gaining visibility. 

Post-webinar activities could involve routing high-intent accounts to field dinners or follow-up meetings. While not all will be successful, track loss reasons to identify trends for adjustments that can be made to boost conversion rates. Explore our B2B demand generation SaaS guide for specific expansion tactics that can be used. 

Measurement and Reporting: Prove Impact Stage by Stage

To be taken seriously, your B2B demand generation funnel must offer confidence that marketing drives revenue. Results should be tracked in each stage, with a focus on metrics that have a material impact on the business. Having an account-level dashboard, alignment with definitions, and a weekly scorecard allows for transparency and speed when it comes to evaluating performance and reallocating resources when necessary. 

KPIs that matter

Measure what truly drives revenue. KPIs that don’t track revenue just create background noise and increase the likelihood of overlooking an important item. MQL counts are commonly overestimated and should be forgotten. Focus on SQOs, pipeline value, win rate, CAC payback, and the impact of expansion. To make reporting more useful for leaders, implement fewer funnel stages, as per insight from CaliberMind. This should be built by RevOps, with weekly reviews from leadership. For ideas on efficiently implementing reporting, consider our b2b demand generation agency. 

Attribution and incrementality

Being able to attribute items in determining cause-and-effect doesn’t require perfection, as long as the general trend and direction are accurate. Use multi-touch attribution, whether it was an email, social post, or ad click, to identify which channels are more effective. Then, conduct geo or holdout tests as part of the validation process. LinkedIn ads, for instance, could be paused in certain geographic locations, then later compared against a control group. 

Capture metrics like incremental pipeline lift, cost per additional SQO, and ROI by channel. RevOps and Demand Analytics functions are ideal for taking ownership of managing these tests. For assistance in setting up tests and experiments to gain these key insights, work with any of our demand generation agencies.  

Data quality and instrumentation

Capturing clean data is key to actionable insights. Standardize UTMs, campaign IDs, and tracking for various stages. Promote transparency and alignment among teams by ensuring that the data is easily accessible to various departments. Cognism and CaliberMind touch on how funnel reporting can be difficult to understand or take action on in the event of unorganized record-keeping and data management. 

Run weekly audits to ensure data integrity, along with an evaluation of key metrics like percentage of records with complete data, buying roles identified, and SLA adherence.   To better understand how this differs from lead generation reporting, check out our discussion on demand generation vs lead generation. 

Channel Portfolio that Feeds the Funnel (Search, Social, Webinars)

A well-run B2B demand generation funnel is dependent on channels that have consistently high conversion rates. Focus on proven winners like SEO and paid search for findability, social and creator programs for reach and establishing credibility, and webinars and field events for conversion. Each builds upon the others to allow for appropriate routing, targeting, and customized approaches. 

SEO + paid search as one findability system

SEO and paid search could be treated as a single system, as each plays a crucial role in ensuring buyers can find you. To this end, make sure data is shared freely between the two. Specifically, query, creative, and conversion information. What provides valuable insight for one team could also pay dividends for the other. Paid search data, for instance, can be used to determine what topics SEO should cover. 

Track how much of the pipeline is sourced from non-brand searches, as well as how often SEO-assisted leads are converted into SQLs. Trust the data and avoid keywords that may seem relevant, but don’t meaningfully contribute to qualified leads. Our B2B demand generation SaaS guide has SaaS-specific search tips you can use. 

Webinars and events that convert

Webinars, field dinners, and other in-person events should be treated as opportunities to funnel more leads and sales into your pipeline. Each event should be designed to attract your target audience, capture their interest, and facilitate quick follow-ups. Research from ON24 shows that utilizing engagement data, such as chat activity or poll results, is beneficial in identifying hot leads. This could be accomplished by hosting something like a quarterly webinar, and then inviting the most engaged individuals to personalized demos or trials. 

Following these events, share material summarizing key points and a plan of action to give buyers the motivation and confidence to move forward. Measure your success by tracking meetings booked per 100 attendees, SQO rates, and the pipeline created in relation to the cost of the event. For event guidance, consider our b2b demand generation agency. 

Social and creator distribution

Your internal experts can serve as the best promoters of your product. Have them share their expertise and perspectives on social media or other websites like LinkedIn. Webinars covering insights and tips are a good starting point. Consistently getting in front of buyers boosts conversion rates. 

You can start small with just a handful of experts. Have them post regularly, host AMA sessions online, or share short video clips highlighting demos and other ROI tools. Keep track of the number of leads that come as a result of social engagement, as well as which posts or avenues resulted in meetings being booked. Partner with any of several reputable demand generation agencies to save time in setting up these programs. 

To take the next steps in creating a revenue-generating machine, book a strategy call with our b2b demand generation team today.