The bottom-of-the-funnel marketing focuses on targeting your ready-to-buy leads with content that helps them in marking the final decision. After understanding the top and middle of the funnel, it is time to learn how to turn those leads into buyers finally.
In this article, I will cover the definition, different content types you can use at the bottom of the funnel, and how marketing should work with sales to convert marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads.
So let’s start.
What is Bottom of the Funnel Marketing?
At the bottom of the funnel (BoFu), prospects have researched their problem, found how they can get their problem fixed, and weighed different types of solutions, and they’re in the decision stage and need some convincing before they sign the dotted line.
Your job is to convert a marketing-qualified lead (MQL) from a previous stage to a sales-qualified lead (SQL).
The importance of bottom of the funnel marketing
Bottom-of-funnel marketing is an essential component of a comprehensive marketing strategy. It focuses on engaging with potential customers in the final stages of the buying process before making a purchase decision. This stage is often referred to as the decision or conversion stage. Here are several reasons why bottom-of-funnel marketing is important:
1. Increased Conversion Rates: It targets individuals who have already shown interest in a product or service. Delivering highly relevant and targeted content helps nurture these leads and increases the likelihood of conversion. By addressing any remaining concerns or objections, you can guide potential customers toward making a purchase.
2. Higher Return on Investment (ROI): Bottom-of-funnel marketing requires less investment than top-of-funnel activities such as awareness campaigns. Since you target individuals closer to making a purchase, the conversion rates tend to be higher. As a result, you can achieve a better ROI by focusing your marketing efforts on this stage.
3. Personalized and Relevant Content: At the bottom of the funnel, prospects require more specific information to make an informed decision. By tailoring your marketing messages to address their specific needs, pain points, and objections, you can provide valuable funnel content that helps them move forward in their buyer's journey. Personalization builds trust, demonstrates expertise, and increases the likelihood of conversion.
4. Shorter Sales Cycle: By engaging with leads at the bottom of the funnel, you can help accelerate the sales process. These prospects have already done their research and are closer to deciding. You can help them overcome any remaining barriers and expedite the conversion process by providing them with the right information and incentives.
5. Improved Customer Retention: It is about acquiring new customers and nurturing existing ones. You can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing a positive experience during the decision-making process and after the purchase. Satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat customers, provide positive referrals, and contribute to the long-term success of your business.
How does marketing work in practice for a typical B2B business?
Let’s understand a lead reaches the bottom of the funnel with the help of two typical B2B business scenarios:
Scenario 1
A visitor reads a blog article at the top of the funnel stage and also goes on to download a checklist. Using marketing automation, we can nurture this lead into a marketing-qualified lead by offering engaging content via emails. Using lead scoring, we identify which leads are marketing qualified.
To identify them as sales-qualified, a couple of things have to happen. The business development managers can check lead scores or use other signals from LinkedIn to identify their company size, industry, years in business, etc.
They can also use a tool like Hubspot or ActiveCampaign to understand:
- Content the lead has downloaded
- Website pages they’ve viewed
- Emails they’ve opened and clicked
- Whether they’ve viewed trigger pages that may indicate they’re in a buying process (e.g., solutions and pricing pages), etc.
Once a lead has been identified as sales qualified, the team can reach out to them via various channels like email marketing, social media sites, content marketing, etc.
Scenario 2
A prospect lands directly on your high-intent landing page and fills out a free consultation form. We talked about this in our last stage, and we know these leads are marketing qualified.
Because these leads have shown high intent by reaching out with a problem here, the business development manager can check for similar signals and qualify them as sales qualified, and reach out to them to confirm if they are worth pursuing.
Comparing scenarios 1 and 2
In the first scenario, the prospect became a marketing-qualified lead as a result of clever marketing automation. While in scenario 2, prospects reached out directly and enquired. So both these scenarios play out slightly different but eventually end up with the sales team, who will work towards converting them into paid customers.
Marketing Bottom of the Funnel Content
Since SQLs are ready to buy. Your aim should be now to offer them more value by highlighting your value proposition and how you are different from other vendors.
Here are some examples of the bottom of the funnel effective content strategy that you can use to convert SQLs to Customers.
For B2B Consulting companies, I would recommend:
- Webinars
- Specific Case Studies / Success Stories
- Consultations
- Reviews and Customer Testimonials
- New Customer Discounts
For B2B Saas companies, my recommendation would be to use:
- Success Kits
- Discounts
- Bundled Offers
- Comparison (vs) landing pages
- Calculators
- Advanced Ebooks
- Explainer Videos
Strategies for Nurturing Bottom of the Funnel Leads
(i) Nurture Through Email Marketing Automation and Retargeting
Just like in the middle of the funnel, marketing automation can be your secret weapon to convert leads to customers.
It can start with an email that offers resources to further educate the prospect on the company and includes a link to book a consultation call via, e.g. Calendly. With clever lead scoring, you can automatically nurture leads, and depending on their job title, industry, and company size, you can move from the middle to the bottom of the funnel.
For SaaS companies, marketing automation for sales-qualified leads could mean offering discounts/coupons to nurture leads to buy or send reminders to sign up for the full offer.
You can also combine retargeting with marketing automation and make your campaign stronger. Show bottom-of-the-funnel ads highlighting discounts/free consultations, etc., to your qualified leads.
(ii) Nurture leads via phone calls
Marketing and sales teams should work together to qualify marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads.
With the right tools in place sales team can check:
- Browsing history
- Email history
- Download history
- Client activity
It helps them in learning everything they can about the prospect. The aim is to reach out to leads, do more fact-finding, and learn more about their objectives or problems via phone.
So both email and phone calls get used to chase leads in a timely manner.
(iii) Nurture Leads via LinkedIn
You can add LinkedIn into the mix here.
You can send prospects a message on LinkedIn saying you can help them. As LinkedIn prospecting and lead generation is a topic in itself, I will cover it in the future.
(iv) Running Bottom of the Funnel Campaigns
When running Google Ads, you can target very high-intent keywords that show potential customers’ willingness to buy.
e.g. when running ad campaigns for our agency, we target bottom of funnel keywords like:
a. Hire Landing Page Designer
b. Unbounce Landing Page Designer
For these keywords customers:
- Already know what landing pages are
- They have a problem their existing web pages don’t work
- They are looking for a vendor or a specialist who can solve their problem
So we send this traffic over to our landing page.
After filling out the form, we capture:
- Name
- Phone number
- Information about their project
With some clever Zapier actions, we pull more info about the lead.
Info like no. of Employees, industry, location, fit score, etc.
All these signals help to qualify the MQL as a SQL. We call these leads the same day if they are Sales Qualified. If they do not fit our qualification process, we add them to our nurture sequence for qualification.
If you’d like to learn more about the Zapier Lead Scoring system, leave a comment below, and I’ll cover it in a future blog.
Ending Note
Bottom-of-the-funnel marketing is the last stage of a sales cycle. Strategies like email marketing, lead scoring, and lead nurturing, go hand-in-hand with middle and bottom-of-the-funnel marketing.
By thoughtful utilisation of your bottom-of-the-funnel assets and marketing automation tools, you can boost your prospects’ confidence for making the final decision.
I hope this read was helpful to you. I have also created a sales funnel mindmap that shows various examples of content ideas you need at each sales funnel stage. You can use it for reference whenever you get stuck at any sales stage.
Also Check:
B2B Lead Nurturing: The Ultimate Guide
5 Steps To Win Back Lost Leads With Lead Nurturing
How to Generate Leads Through the Blog
Optimizing Lead Nurturing for Higher Qualified Leads
What are Unqualified Leads: Identification and Management