Has the B2B Funnel Outlived its Usefulness?

As it turns out, I’m not the only B2B marketer who has been wondering if the funnel has outlived its usefulness. And if so, what comes next?

Brian Balfour at Reforge has been writing about acquisition loops as an alternative to the growth funnel for years, explaining the same problems we’ve all been running into:

“Marketing owns acquisition. Product owns retention. Sales (if B2B) owns revenue. Then each one of those teams is given a metric that corresponds to that layer of the funnel.

The problem is that the teams then optimize at the expense of each other in order to reach their siloed goal. Marketing brings in low-quality users/leads at top of the funnel to hit their goal, but that tanks retention or further down funnel metrics. All sorts of checks and balances get put in place over time to try and fix this, which ends up complicating the understanding and goal setting of the metrics.”

We also have the brilliant SaaS growth consultants over at “Forget the Funnel”, who have been proclaiming the funnel’s obsolescence for a while.

Drift boldly stated that the “Demand Gen” Era ended in 2019. They’ve abandoned “the antiquated processes that put acronyms before people and leads before revenue” and no longer talk about MQLs but rather “Interested People”. Their new marketing goals are to connect buyers and sellers around conversations.

Need more proof? Kevin Kruse interviewed a bunch of B2B SaaS marketers whose companies are achieving extraordinary success and found that many of them have abandoned the MQL entirely, tracking sales accepted leads (SALs) and conversion rates instead. 

Slowly but surely, forward-thinking B2B tech marketers are shifting away from the funnel. But why? What’s wrong with it?

My own journey through the funnel

I was a pretty green content writer when I started learning about the B2B marketing funnel. I had just been hired at a marketing agency that funnel-washed all new recruits. I was an instant convert. 

In retrospect, I might have been a little thirsty for an erudite approach to marketing, freshly out of a short, awful PR internship where my main duties had been to colour-categorize Green and Black’s chocolate bars and count retweets for an Oreo-One Direction campaign (not even write, count). 

So when I started learning about the funnel, the sheer nerdy brilliance of mapping social posts, blogs, reports against the awareness-consideration-conversion framework delighted me. The whole thing seemed like an elegant triumph of buying psychology and marketing analytics. 

For a while, measuring success seemed very simple in my content writing world.  Success= downloads. While different clients scored and graded leads differently, blog impressions, time on page, clicks in emails were generally good signs of engagement.

Of course, it got more complicated when I started working in-house as a content marketing manager.

I got really obsessed with attribution, had my team implement Uberflip, and spent hours poring over engagement reports in GoToWebinar. Although most days I felt buried in marketing analytics, they were all useful leading indicators, right? After all, I needed to know if we were generating marketing-qualified leads (MQL). And we were, consistently.

So why was the sales team so crabby about the TON of leads we heaved over the wall to them each month? Why weren’t they converting? This was my next important funnel lesson: that lead quality is actually paramount. 

Fast-forward to when I cut loose as an independent content strategist, the queen of my own castle (ahem), solopreneurship. I started asking new questions.  Questions that I hadn’t had the courage to ask when operating under the funnel model that made all the executives feel comfortable. Better questions.

But, questions that could quite possibly, radically overturn the entire marketing and sales system we leaned on to progress deals.

Questions like:

• Are MQLs really the best measure of marketing success? Attracting lots and lots of semi-interested leads on a broad swath of content topics sure makes us look like we’re doing our job as a marketing team. Then we can deflect the blame to sales if they don't convert our MQLs. And yet, Forrester reported that less than 1% of MQLs move through to closed deals.

• How do I build a content strategy that helps poor-fit leads self-qualify out of our funnel? Essentially weeding themselves out sooner rather than later, so we wind up with fewer leads but those who are likelier to buy from us. 

• How do we use content as a signal to plot the progression of buyers on their journey? Rather than assuming that any content download means that they are hot and ready to engage with us.

• Should we even be gating content? Measuring MQLs?? Is it time to forget the funnel???

I’ve been pondering these questions and a few weeks ago, I asked 4 senior B2B marketers for their perspectives. We landed on 7 fascinating funnel myths (and reality-checks). And some principles to guide a better model to progress B2B deals and drive pipeline revenue. Let’s go!

Myth #1: The Tidy, Step-by-Step Progression of Leads

Reality-check: The funnel is nothing more than a little machine we’ve built to measure the progression of leads, which does not necessarily equal progression on a buyer’s journey.

What’s wrong with the implied step-by-step progression of leads through the funnel? Eben Meyer, Managing Director at The Social Effect shared his perspective:

“The funnel model shows the most blatant disregard for how buying actually happens. We think that we have the power to then move someone step-by-step through this sequence, but that incentivizes all the wrong kinds of behaviour. Google’s “messy middle” of the purchase journey makes a lot more sense. 

The funnel is a tool that we've built as marketers, to enhance our own sense of control, to meet our own outcomes and targets, whether it’s leads, pipeline or revenue. But the funnel is essentially a fictional little machine but doesn't actually describe what's actually going on during the buying process.

What’s actually going on: Buyers are navigating a lot of information on how to solve their problems. Each vendor presents its own 'authoritative' take on the situation, and it's up to the buyer to make sense of this. Then, they present a case back to the larger buying group for validation and group consensus. And this process repeats as needed when new information is discovered.

For the buyer, it’s more like herding cats (back and forth) than stepping through funnel stages (linear).

If you can measure a lead, you will generate a lead, but if you could measure where buyers are in their (cat-herding) journey, wouldn’t you rather do that?”

Myth #2: MQLs Are Ready to Engage with Sales

Reality-check: Just because a prospect has downloaded an “awareness-stage” piece of content doesn’t necessarily mean that they are ready to engage with sales.

Picture this: A prospect downloads a TOFU ebook. Naturally, marketing assumes they are interested=MQL. An SDR tries to follow up and book a call. Three emails later, they can’t even get the MQL to answer an email. What’s wrong with this picture (besides the fact that there are too many acronyms involved)? The prospect is not ready to engage and simply carries on his merry way through his buying process, ignoring our aggressive advances. 

Eben called out a serious disconnect between expectations and reality when we assume that a prospect who has downloaded our “awareness content” is ready to engage with sales. This is why it falls apart, he says:

 “Customers are, on average, 57% of the way through a typical purchase process prior to proactively reaching out to a suppliers’ sales rep for direct input on whatever it is that they’re doing (The Challenger Customer).  But most marketers are trying to capture the earliest sign of engagement as quickly as they possibly can. This is the disconnect. 

And since marketers are incentivized on that MQL, the SQL and the opportunity, of course, they're going to try and get those leads and treat them like they are ‘ready to engage’”.

Myth #3: The Funnel Framework is a Reassuring Model

Reality-check: But we all know that nobody actually goes through a funnel. And getting stuck in this sales framework can hold us back from digging in and understanding the deeper, psychological challenges of our audience.

“The B2B funnel is probably as old as the internet” shared Paul Cash, Founder at Rooster Punk and author of ‘Humanizing B2B’. 

“So why does it exist? We all want the reassurance of being able to put people through a model because it makes sense of how we use different tools, techniques and channels. But in reality, I think we all know that nobody goes through a funnel. B2B buyers bounce around all over the place. 

I try to think of it more in terms of the psychological framework of the audience’s experience, as opposed to the sales model framework. 

I don't necessarily focus on the funnel, but rather on the challenges of B2B buyers and decision-makers. I think they live in what I call the FEAR zone:

Frustration. Many B2B decision-makers are incredibly frustrated in their roles, with the lack of time, resources, investment, and ability to integrate with other departments.

Evasiveness. They’re basically experts in counterespionage, in terms of being able to avoid being contacted by suppliers. They use ad blockers, they don't answer their phones, they've learned that it's better to be evasive than it is to talk to vendors because you get the same old spiel time and time again. 

Apathy. In every category, the top 5-6 brands are all stuck in the rut of saying the same old, same old all over again. And buyers are just bored of hearing it. 

Risk-averse. Most B2B buyers feel extremely scared of making the wrong decision.”

Myth #4: Brand is a Top-of-Funnel Nice-to-Have for B2B

Reality-check: Brand is of critical importance and needs to be omnipresent throughout the whole customer journey.

Jason Talbot, Managing Director at The Croc Agency stated that brand is not a top-of-funnel nice-to-have, but must have a “necessary presence” in the B2B buying cycle, “particularly to preserve price and salience”. 

He explained:  “All too often, the funnel translates into a ‘colour by numbers’ style of short-term, tactical marketing. Awareness/brand step, consideration step, then a short-list with an implied 3 to 6-month timing. Yet, the average enterprise buying cycle takes over a year and can consist of 20+ people distributed around the world. Brand has a huge role to play throughout the buying journey and can create advantages far beyond hammering features and functions alone. This isn’t a case of one or the other, the opportunity lies within a balance of both brand and sales activation.

The car industry is a beautiful B2C example of this. We see commercials selling prestige and heart and then we’ve got dealer marketing running alongside that, promoting 0% APR.

One of the biggest problems with 90% of B2B marketing is you can interchange the logo across hundreds of campaigns. It’s all variations on the theme of quicker, better, faster, cheaper.  Brand creates the opportunity to build human connections and reasons to believe above and beyond product features, all things being equal it can be the deciding factor - “I simply like that brand better”. 

Myth #4: All Decision-makers Progress Through the Funnel at the Same Rate.

Reality-check:  With a large decision-making committee, different buyers may move through the buying process at different rates. This is another reason why you need a solid, omnipresent brand.

Paul Cash elaborated on the importance of the role of brand in B2B, particularly in large enterprise deals with huge decision-making committees, where different buyers may move through the buying process at different rates.

 “Realistically, you're only able to get access to probably 3 of them. So how do you go about trying to influence those people? After a 2-year buying cycle, where 3 people have championed a vendor into the business, and they've gone through all the due diligence and done all the reports. And as it comes to the crux of making a decision, C-suite people are brought in to review these 3 companies. 

And the CEO goes on to one website and says ‘Well, I just like these guys better’. And the decision can be as whimsical as that.  

This is the reality: You've done all your hard work, working with the mobilizers in the business, but you've got a sh*t website, and no brand to back you up, and no sense of who you are the sense of vision in the market, and everything you do can fall apart on that.   

This is where I get really passionate about the role of brand in B2B. 

B2B isn't as logical or rational as we think it is, it can be as irrational as a CEO making a decision on a 2M pound contract, just because he likes the website.

It's not all about lead generation and moving people through the funnel. 

It's also about understanding that one decision-maker with equal-decision making power could be coming into the top of the funnel while the rest are at the bottom of the funnel”.

Myth #5: All We Have to Do is Fire out Content and Trick People into Giving us Their Data

Reality-check: Although most of us have been doing it for a while, controlling access to the insightful content marketing we produce presents a bit of a moral dilemma. Instead, we should “market unto others as you would have them market unto you”.

Chris McLellan Director of Category Design at Cinchy used a simple example to elaborate on the moral issue of gating marketing content in exchange for an email address.

“Imagine explaining this to a child. Why can’t I read the book? Well, because you haven't told me your deepest secret yet. Tell me your deepest secret and I'll give you this comic book.’

What kind of world is this? Did we invent the internet to hide knowledge in exchange for an email address? As a marketer, I find it sad that many of my peers participate in perpetuating such a reality. We have the world's biggest oracle of information, and we're packaging up little insights and demanding personal information to get access to it. 

All because your CEO watched a HubSpot video and said, ‘All we’ve got to do is fire out content and trap people into giving you their data. And then we'll phone them until they submit. The whole notion of it is ridiculous”.

Myth #6:  Everything is Measurable, and We Own Customer Data

Reality-check: Unified attribution is a pipedream for most marketers. There are just too many apps and too much data fragmentation for it to be feasible. And with more and more regulations focusing on data ownership looming on the horizon, the future of the funnel (as we know it) is limited.

Chris brought up some valid points on the question of digital marketing attribution, which has been floating around for 20 years. 

“In the digital marketing world, you need to connect the dots between data points, but every martech app has its own database. So data is fragmented because apps are fragmented. And that means your customer data is on hundreds of systems that don’t talk to each other. Bringing them together usually takes about two years and five million bucks. It's called data integration, and it's a nightmare.

Marketers are expected to knit together a coherent, sensible data strategy, but few have access to deep IT resources required to put together a 360 customer view. We've been led down a path of forgetting about establishing personal relationships and instead we hope that stitching together multiple apps is going to solve the growth for us. It won’t. If there was a successful formula for an integrated marketing stack that could automatically drive new customers, we'd all be doing it”.

He continued to explain how data protection will influence the funnel of the future. “Even if the fragmentation issue of apps was solvable, even if you had the best content in the world, and you could generate leads, the reality is that personal data is gradually being reclaimed by its rightful owners, and there’s no stopping this trend.  

It means that as marketers we’re going to have to seriously rethink how we use customer data. And it means the funnel is in jeopardy because the funnel is there to grab that data, not protect it.

GDPR used to be an annoying buzzword and a thing you put in your footer. And then it was something you added in your privacy policy that you secretly knew nobody reads.  At that point, data protection was an annoying fly that could be swatted away. But now that little fly is turning into a dragon. It breathes fire and it has claws and it's coming for marketers and it's called data ownership. And we can't swat it away. This thing will not only kill our marketing programs but it will kill our entire businesses if we ignore it. So we can no longer depend on taking people's data and using it any way we want.”

Myth #7: Your Funnel= The Buyer Journey

Reality-check: The funnel is a marketing and sales framework that hoodwinks marketers into seeing the buyer journey relative to us as a vendor. But actually, our buyers are on a journey that starts LONG before we arrive on the scene. 

Since I was a junior B2B copywriter learning about “top of funnel, mid-funnel, bottom-of-funnel” content, I’ve come to realize that this is a very vendor-centric way to describe content strategy.

And I’ve grown to detest that language because it hoodwinks marketers into a woolly mindset where we only ever consider our buyers’ journey relative to us as a vendor.

The reality is that your buyer is on a journey that starts LONG before you arrive on the scene. 

Your buyer and their buying group are struggling to quantify a problem in their business, explore solutions, and create consensus about what type of solution will best fit their needs. Often, all this is happening before they reach out to you as a supplier. This is what The Challenger Customer refers to when they say that prospects are 57% of the way through a typical purchase process before they engage with sales. 

While the vendor-centric mindset allows us to pretend that deal viability rests on us qualifying leads, the reality is that once your buyer gets to the “supplier selection” phase of their journey, it’s actually US (the vendor) who may get disqualified! 

When we create content purely to serve our marketing goals--like building awareness and generating leads--we miss the opportunity to step into our buyer’s shoes and help them build a business case for this purchase.

So...Is there a better way to progress B2B deals and grow pipeline revenue?

For all the excellent reasons above (and probably a few more), it’s high time to rethink the funnel model.  But while it’s easy to identify the problems, I think we’d all like to know if there is a better way to progress B2B deals and grow pipeline revenue. 

In our discussions around solutions, 5 guiding principles came up: 

1. Dig in and really understand the REAL buyer journey

2. Empower the mobilizer with buyer enablement content, via sales “educators”

3. Set up your digital estate to make yourself accessible and discoverable

4. Develop a learning ecosystem (including partners) to share content with buyers

5. Allow buyers to navigate content freely and remain anonymous until they are ready to engage

Dig in and really understand the REAL buyer journey 

I see a future where marketing and sales have a higher calling: To truly understand the real-life struggles, challenges and obstacles our buyers encounter when making a complex purchase decision. In short, the REAL buyer’s journey. 

Instead of focusing on processing MQLs through the funnel like sheep, we need to a step back and start to learn about what our buyers go through in order to buy from us. We need to ask better questions like:

• How long does this process take? 

• Who is involved? What are their informational needs? 

• What results are buyers anticipating?

• What obstacles do buyers face when trying to create consensus? 

• What tools would help buyers quantify this problem in their business?

• How can we help buyers figure out which type of solution is best for their needs?

Understanding the buyer journey will require us to see that our buyers are humans. To get there, we’ll have to talk to our buyers like people, listen with empathy, and adopt a “buyer enablement” vs “thought-leadership” or “sales enablement” mindset with our website messaging and content strategy.

This is what is going to help us begin to develop that invaluable currency of brand trust, long before a prospect raises their hand looking for pricing or a demo.

Empower the mobilizer with buyer enablement content, via sales “educators”

Paul touched on the critical nuances of buyer enablement content, and how it should be used by savvy salespeople to progress B2B deals. 

“The distinction is this: we're not trying to sell to you, we're trying to enable you to move forward. The best salespeople get this. Sometimes we get lost in creating content that has no purpose or meaning and you spend all this time writing it, it’s gets downloaded but no one ever reads it”.

He explained that content opens the door, but it’s also about salespeople showing up as real educators (not just relationship-builders), and going in to help organizations to understand how they can use technology successfully.

Set up your digital estate to make yourself accessible and discoverable

If we all accept that buyer journeys are nonlinear, setting up your digital estate to make yourself “accessible and discoverable” is critical, according to Jason.

“The brands that we love and use have figured a way of doing that, haven't they? The answer isn't ‘Oh, that's really clever’, the answer is, ‘oh, it just works’. Whatever the buyer's behaviour or action, you want to be accessible and discoverable.  It’s essential to keep building your digital estate over time so that you simply become discoverable and can create more moments of serendipity”.

Develop a learning ecosystem (including partners) to share content with buyers

Chris shared that he feels that the future of content marketing lies in building platforms more akin to learning management systems with educational outcomes.

“The outcomes should go beyond what you need to buy, and be based more on what you want to become, or what you want to achieve. And we could compose logical buying paths that treat you like a human. 

For example, ideally, we would treat you as a person that's going on a business trip, not somebody who needs a plane ticket. And there are opportunities to create these paths, this ecosystem, based on what you and your partners have to offer and how it’s relevant to your buyers’ needs”.

Allow buyers to navigate content freely and remain anonymous until they are ready to engage

The majority of B2B buyers prefer to remain anonymous and so “it’s no surprise that buyers don’t want to interact with brands until they are ready” shared Eben. “When they are, they want real-time feedback or insights to help answer their questions.

For the most part, buyers don’t see sales, they just see the brand. That is until they're ready to escalate things and ask for a trial or demo, or trial. 

While previously, marketing’s role was to acquire the lead and then throw it over to sales, now marketing is doing a lot more of the heavy lifting before the customer gets to the point of reaching out to sales.

For marketing, a better way would be to stop trying to capture everyone and focus on better qualifying them. In practice, what this really means is that we need to give away more for free and allow your potential buyers to remain anonymous while navigating your content”.

A parting thought: Your buyers don’t want to become MQLs 

Before I wind this up, I want to share a quote I love from Mark Kilens, VP of Marketing, Drift:

“Buyers want solutions to their business problems and answers to their questions. Your buyers certainly don’t want to become MQLs. They know that filling out a web form will only drown them in marketing emails and annoying follow-up calls from inexperienced SDRs. Not fun, and definitely not worth whatever is behind that form”.

I couldn’t agree more. The more empathy we practice in the way we market and sell, the more trust we’ll build with buyers, earlier in the buying process.

Flex. Your. Humanity.