We mentioned that a website is not only for display but also for selling on the previous article. For a B2B company website, the goal of selling on a website is to get sales leads. With this goal in mind, when we plan the website structure, we should implement a marketing funnel on the whole website structure.

What is marketing funnel  

Marketing funnel is the process of getting potential customers to make purchasing decision. You can find different types of marketing funnel on the internet. But all of them have the basic 4 steps: 1. Awareness  2. Interest  3. Desire  4. Action.

I won’t go into the details of marketing funnel since you can find lots of information on the internet. I will address more on how to integrate marketing funnel into the website.

The goal of a B2B website marketing funnel

For B2B or professional service, e.g. consulting or manufacturing company websites, potential customers won’t make a purchase decision when browsing your websites. It always involves the process of communication with the prospects either in-person or online before reaching the decision to buy.

The goal of B2B website marketing funnel is to get sales leads, not to get potential clients paying online immediately.   

How potential clients leave sales leads

When you plan or design your website, the first thing you should think is how you want potential clients to contact you. If you think about this clearly, you would know which part you should address on the website design and planning.

There are generally five ways that potential clients can contact you on the B2B website.   

1. Contact us form. The potential clients can fill out a form on the website. The information will be saved to the back-end of the website or emailed to the salesperson.  
2. Email.  It is the most popular approach. All you need to do is to leave an email address on the website. The potential clients can email you. The risk here is that the email might not be able to deliver to your inbox for some reason. If you use the contact form, this can be prevented. 
3. Phone call. Some potential clients still prefer to make a phone call. If you want to put the phone number on the website, the better way is to put it on the contact us page as well as other pages.
4. Social media. Social media is also the channel where potential clients can reach you. If you want to have more potential clients to engage with your company social media accounts, remember to put social media account icons on your homepage.
5. Online chat. Online chat is also the way how potential clients reach you. In the past, online chat service is just a program to chat with potential clients online. Nowadays online chat program, e.g. Intercom and Drift, can be integrated with CRM system. It is much more powerful than it was in the past. However, the downside of having online Chat program is that you need to have someone online to interact with clients immediately during business hour. It will require extra resources.

How to map your website marketing funnel

When you decide which channel you want potential clients to reach you, you can start to map your marketing funnel into your website.

Every B2B website has a marketing a funnel.

If your website has been running for a while, there is a marketing funnel at your website, you just don’t know it. If you installed web analytics program on your website, it can be easy to identify.

The simple way is to look at your user flow from web analytics program. It will give you a simple view of your current marketing funnel. Then you can start to fine-tune it from there.

Plan your user flow when you build up your website  

User flow is crucial for a B2B website. When you plan your website, you need to think about what your visitors need to see and how you expect them to navigate around your website.

• User flow chart. After defining the website sitemap, you should draw a user flow chart. This chart will indicate how you expect the users to navigate around your website.
• Integrate user flow chart with web design.  When you finalize your flowchart, you should discuss it with the web designer and copywriter. The web designer will know what to stress on each page to direct visitors to the next page. The copywriter will know what key message to put on each page.
• More than one user flows. There could be several user flows for your marketing funnel. You can design different user flows according to your and visitors’ goals.
• Integrate marketing funnel with user flows Remember we mentioned marketing funnel earlier. The user flow should be connected with marketing funnel. Each web page on your user flow should be part of your marketing funnel.

Watch your analytics data  

After you launch your website, you need to track your user flow and marketing funnels. The advantage of digital marketing is it is always easy to get the data about your target audience.

You can find all the data through web analytics service, like Google Analytics. You need to keep tracking all the data and modifying your user flow and marketing funnel.

How to fit Marketing funnel to Drupal B2B website

Now it is the time to apply the funnel to your website. We will apply the AIDA (1. Awareness 2. Interest 3. Desire 4. Action) marketing funnel to a simple B2B website as an example. Let's say your website structure is the homepage, solution, industry, product, industry, and blog sections.

Homepage/Awareness  

The homepage should be the most visited page on your website. You should put the most important information to get the visitors to stay here first. It should bring visitors awareness to keep digging your website.   

Products/Desire

The product page should be the section to gain visitors’ interest and motivate them to find out more. The product information should let visitors know how to solve their problem. It is all about them, not us.

Solutions/Awareness  

The solutions page should bring visitor awareness and to keep looking at your products. The solution is all about what problems your products can solve and how you can solve their problem. It is not about the products per se.

Industry/Awareness  

The industry page also should bring visitors awareness. It focuses on what problems your product can solve for specific industries. We can add case studies here. The goal is also to encourage visitors to visit your product pages.   

Blog Or News/Awareness  

Blog or news sections could be the most updated pages on your website. These sections should be more flexible to have information on your products for your companies. The goals here is to encourage your visitors to understand your products.

About Us/Awareness

About Us page is the second most visited page for a b2b website. But it is easy to be ignored. Most companies don't take advantage of this page enough. The page should be like blog sections to encourage visitors to understand your products.

Contact Us/Action

Contact Us page is all about call-to-action. In fact, the link to Contact Us page should be everywhere on the website. We need to keep asking visitors to take action. It is the last-meter push.

Wrap-up  

It is not difficult to apply a marketing funnel to your website at the beginning. The difficult part is you need to keep optimizing your funnel in the long run.

Most companies fail to do that. It is just like doing SEO for B2B website. It is all about the process and continuous improvement.