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Learn how to map buyer journeys, split budget, pick channels and track the right metrics so your B2B funnel turns spend into predictable, profitable growth.
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Your market, growth motion, offer and messaging are now set. The final strategic choice is your funnel: the sequence of touches that turns strangers into customers. A clear funnel strategy does three things:
Pick once, document it and execution can start tomorrow.
You cannot choose channels or budgets until you know the route a prospect travels from first nudge to signed contract. I use five stages. Keep them, rename them, or merge two if your sales cycle is shorter, but do not skip any—missing a stage leaves prospects stranded.
At this point the buyer does not feel pain; they scroll, tolerate inefficiency and move on. Your job is to surface a cost they can no longer ignore. Publish a LinkedIn carousel that says, for example, “Your team spends forty hours a month chasing missed calls.” The piece must name the pain and hint that a better way exists.
Now the prospect admits the issue and seeks context. A blog deep-dive, podcast or short webinar fits here. Walk through the numbers, case studies and lost revenue. End with a checklist the reader can use to size the problem inside their own firm. The aim is not to pitch, only to prove change is worth time and budget.
The buyer knows remedies exist but needs a lens to compare them. Offer a structured guide such as “Cloud phone system versus on-prem PBX” or a decision matrix. Lay out criteria, pros, cons and costs. Position your approach as the most practical, not the only option; credibility at this stage builds trust for the demo invite.
Prospects short-list vendors and want to test claims. Give them a concise feature page, a recorded tour or a live demo slot. Address the checklist raised in the previous asset. Highlight integrations, onboarding time, support and security. This step translates benefits into tangible screens or workflows.
Risk and bureaucracy threaten to stall progress. Arm champions with a pricing calculator, a brief technical questionnaire and two case studies matching their industry. Offer light procurement support: templated security answers, red-line ready contracts and clear payment terms. The easier you make sign-off, the faster revenue lands.
Map each stage in a single slide deck or Miro board. Under every heading write one sentence that defines success and list the asset you will build. Audit existing content, keep what fits, archive what drifts. With the buyer journey pinned down you can move to budget splits and channel choices knowing every asset has a purpose.
Early in my career I poured every euro into performance ads because the return was easy to measure. Over time I learnt that prospects shortlist brands they recognise long before a click, and those brands close deals faster. The right mix is therefore a strategic choice: invest enough in brand to stay on the radar while funding the performance engine that turns attention into pipeline.
Recommended split: 20% brand,80% performance
Keep brand spend minimal: a credible deck, a few thought-leadership posts and a landing page that proves you are real. Direct the bulk into accurate data, email infrastructure, calling software and SDR salaries. Review six-week cohorts to ensure cost per meeting and meeting-to-SQL ratios stay on target.
Recommended split: 70% brand,30% performance
Most budget goes to durable assets: deep articles, videos and webinars that rank or circulate for years. Use the remainder for paid search, remarketing or content syndication to accelerate traffic while organic reach grows. Track search impressions, then pipeline sourced per €1,000 to judge efficiency.
Recommended split: 60% brand,40% performance
Brand funds education: clear documentation, onboarding videos and community events that shorten time-to-value. Performance spend covers in-app prompts, lifecycle email tools and selective paid campaigns aimed at power users who become internal champions. Watch free-to-paid conversion and payback period to fine-tune the balance.
Recommended split: 50% brand,50% performance
Invest half in co-marketing: enablement decks, case studies and joint webinars that build shared credibility. The other half supports incentive programmes, MDF and targeted campaigns executed by partners. Monitor partner-sourced pipeline, deal velocity and average contract value to refine the allocation.
Your budget split tells you how much to spend on brand and performance; the channel mix decides where to place those euros. Think in two broad buckets:
A clear ratio keeps teams aligned: marketers know which levers to pull first, sales sees where the next wave of leads will appear, and finance can forecast cash flow with fewer surprises. Use growth motion and deal size as the guard-rails for your mix.
Recommended mix: 80% paid,20% organic
Paid channels
Organic channels
Rationale
Cold outreach burns data and tooling credits quickly, so most spend lands in paid buckets. Organic content builds rep credibility and keeps reply rates healthy.
Recommended mix: 30% paid,70% organic
Paid channels
Organic channels
Rationale
Search intent and evergreen content do the heavy lifting. Paid traffic tops up volume while organic assets climb the rankings.
Recommended mix: 40% paid,60% organic
Paid channels
Organic channels
Rationale
Product experience and referrals generate the bulk of sign-ups; paid helps widen the top of funnel or re-engage dormant users.
Recommended mix: 50% paid,50% organic
Paid channels
Organic channels
Rationale
Paid incentives attract partner mindshare; organic collaboration leverages their audience without recurring cost. Balance both to keep relationships and pipeline healthy.
With channels mapped to your growth motion, you have a concrete plan for where spend flows and which teams own which tactics.
A funnel strategy only works if you track a handful of numbers that show whether spend actually turns into revenue. Go light on vanity dashboards and heavy on metrics that expose bottlenecks fast. The goal is simple: spot leaks early, fix them quickly and prove that every euro invested in your chosen growth motion comes back with friends.
Count the number of sales-qualified leads (SQLs) accepted by sales each month. A steady, climbing SQL count proves your channel mix is filling the pipeline. Sudden dips warn that reach, targeting or offer has slipped.
Divide closed-won deals by total qualified opportunities. Low win rates signal mismatched ICPs, poor discovery or weak proposals. Improvements here boost revenue without touching acquisition spend.
Multiply average deal size, win rate and number of SQLs, then divide by average sales-cycle length in days. Velocity blends quantity, quality and speed into one figure that tells you how quickly pipeline turns into cash.
Add all acquisition costs — media, tools, salaries, commissions — and divide by new-logo gross margin per month. The result is the months it takes to recover your spend. Short payback widens cash runway, giving you licence to scale.
Estimate customer lifetime value and divide by CAC. A ratio above 3.0 shows healthy return; below 2.0 flags an unsustainable model. Track this quarterly to ensure expansion, retention and pricing keep pace with acquisition cost.
Choose three to five of these metrics, align reporting cadences with your growth motion and bake targets into team scorecards. When SQL volume climbs yet payback stretches, you know to tune spend or pricing. When velocity stalls despite strong win rates, you know to attack cycle time. Clear, comparable numbers keep everyone honest and let you scale with confidence.
A solid funnel strategy translates high-level go-to-market choices into day-to-day execution. First, map every buyer step so you create assets that move prospects forward. Next, decide how much budget flows to brand versus performance and choose channels that match your growth motion. Finally, track a tight set of metrics so you see leaks early, fix them fast and prove that each euro fuels revenue. With channels, spend and measurements locked, you can execute confidently, knowing the pipeline will grow predictably.
Hitting sales targets feels impossible, because more traffic doesn’t work (anymore). Everyone’s busy, but you don’t know what’s working.
