Tips for connecting product development and marketing

The broader tech and startup world has seen a significant hiring contraction over the last few years. Some of the biggest names in the space (Meta, Google, and Microsoft, for example) eliminated thousands of jobs and cut back on adding new employees. Recent data published by CNBC shows that tech layoffs in 2023 are up 38,487% compared to last year. 2023 is on track to be the worst year for tech layoffs since the Dotcom bubble burst in 2001.

Layoffs and contractions can be challenging, but they can also free companies to create efficiencies and innovations for role responsibilities across the organization.

Layoffs and contractions can be challenging, but they can also free companies to create efficiencies and innovations. Share on X

One result of this situation is the creation of hybrid-type positions that combine roles from several different traditional positions. These positions have been around for many years in some industries, but new ones are being created across various fields all the time. 

Business layoffs and contraction certainly aren’t the only reasons for hybrid positions. And not just a single team member who fills multiple roles on your team out of necessity. This particular article focuses on a unique connection: marketing and product development. While these two departments should always be closely connected, in reality, there’s often a lot more distance than there should be.

Whether you’re looking to bring on a hybrid team member, broaden the responsibilities of existing departments, or simply ensure these two parts of your business are more connected, this article will help.

What Are Marketing and Product Development?

Both functions focus on a larger concept: your company’s product or service. 

Product marketing refers to getting your brand and its offerings in front of the right people to encourage them to enter your sales funnel. Product development refers to all the people and processes involved in designing, launching, and updating the offering.

They’re both vital to the overall health of your business. You’ll hear arguments from proponents of both sides about how marketing or product development is more important. But you must be effective at both for optimal success in today’s business environment. You can develop an industry-leading, cutting-edge solution – but if you’re not getting it in front of the right people, its success will be limited. On the other hand, if you have a poor-quality product but great marketing, you’ll find customer complaints and frustrations everywhere. As the legendary ad man David Ogilvy once said, “Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.”

Connecting Marketing and Product Development in the Business

Now that you understand the two ideas better let’s review some practical strategies for making them work better together.

Clearly Define Roles From the Beginning

When was the last time you sat down and listed the specific duties and roles of team members working in each function? If you’re like most startups, it’s probably been quite a long time. If you want your team to work more effectively together, it’s essential that each team member knows what they should and shouldn’t be doing. One of the most significant sources of friction in the modern workplace is when people feel like they are doing a job someone else should be doing.

Only you can know for sure which particular job roles fall into these two categories, but here are a few common ones to start with:

  • Marketing Manager
  • Marketing Analyst
  • SEO Strategist
  • Content Marketer
  • Social Media Manager
  • Graphic Designer
  • Product Manager
  • Backend Developer
  • Product designer
  • Go-to Market Manager
  • Product Development Coordinator

Remember, this applies not just to internal roles but also to members of the team who may be contract or freelance.

Make a Preferred Meeting Cadence 

For two teams to work well together, they have to communicate regularly. Luckily, thanks to today’s technology, there are more options than ever before for how that meeting takes place. With the prevalence of agile principles, many companies are implementing “stand-up” meetings – quick check-ins that may only last 15 minutes to provide quick progress updates and highlight any specific sticking points.

We can’t tell you exactly how to have meetings within your business, but we can tell you how to decide: evaluate the people involved. Because your marketing team may have different preferences and requirements than people on the product side, doing this may stir up some challenges. The key is coming to a happy medium that can satisfy (at least partially) both sides’ requirements. Some companies have even been able to go entirely away from meetings, relying on async chat and messenger tools to communicate. Whatever style you choose, be confident it helps the maximum number of people on your team work efficiently. 

Define Shared Goals and Data

Even though the product and marketing teams are ultimately working towards similar ends, they may feel distant from people in other departments. This distance often happens because the tools, information, and objectives vary across business functions.

To overcome this obstacle and attain a more cohesive working style, ensure you have at least a few goals shared by those in different functions at the company. These goals should be related to the product and its marketing, but they should also be controllable by both sides. The marketing team can’t do much to influence code sprints, just like the development team may not be able to help your latest social media ad campaign meet your desired numbers. 

To set practical cross-disciplinary goals, recall the idea of lagging and leading indicators. You cannot directly change the lagging indicators any more than you can your weight on a scale or quarterly revenue. There’s no way to force more people to buy your product or service. But if you focus on the factors you can control for leading indicators – the time you spend tweaking your offering – you’ll find that the lagging indicators eventually get where you want them to be.

Final Thoughts on Merging Product Development and Marketing

If you’ve never even thought about connecting these two essential functions of your business, the ideas in this article may seem a little overwhelming. And while it’s certainly possible to survive and even grow as a company, if your departments aren’t working cohesively, you’ll eventually find a ceiling on the level of efficiency and size you can achieve.

For best results, you should consciously connect team members across departments or even consider hiring hybrid-type employees, as we described in the intro. Downsizing and layoffs aren’t the main drivers for this kind of cross-disciplinary interaction – instead, it’s intended to achieve maximum internal efficiency and reach as many clients as possible.

Looking for some help attaining this kind of connection at your own firm? Our team at FunnelEnvy can help. We have many years of experience working with companies of all sizes who want their marketing and product development teams to work better together for the good of the overall business. To get started, click here to fill out a short quiz so we can learn more about your specific problems and determine the best way to assist.

By |2025-05-12T04:37:07-07:00July 10th, 2023|Full-Funnel Optimization|0 Comments
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How to Make Your Ads Less Expensive

Paid advertising campaigns on one of today’s many prominent digital media channels can be a valuable part of any funnel. One of the key advantages of paid ads (also called PPC) is that they offer quicker access to a larger audience than organic strategies like SEO and referral marketing. In this sense, building a massive audience almost “overnight” is possible, often reducing the time it takes to achieve your KPIs.

But like every strategy to promote your funnel and company offerings, paid advertising has a downside: cost. Investing in paid placement on social media networks and search engines can get expensive, especially if you aren’t sure about the return you’re getting.

Based on our experiences working with clients incorporating paid advertising campaigns into their funnel, we’ve found a few specific strategies work best for cost reduction.

Tweak Audience Targeting

On most paid advertising platforms – especially social media networks – one of the first things you’ll do is set up a target audience that dictates what kind of people will see your ads. One significant determining factor is often location: some companies running ads will want to restrict them to people in a specific location. For many software and digital services companies, geography is no longer significant in determining their target audience for paid ads.  

However, you can still use geography as a variable as you adjust your audience targeting until you can find an ideal audience set that gets you the results needed for sufficient ROI. Here are a few other ways to adjust your audience targeting:

  • By device. While it’s essential to ensure all elements of your funnel are accessible from any device, it’s sufficient to experiment and see if one particular device works better for generating engagement and visitors.
  • Browsing time. Each PPC platform will allow you to target the time of day or browsing windows slightly differently. You may find it best to break up these metrics into six or 8-hour periods and see which timing works best.
  • Lookalike audience. A lookalike audience is a predictive feature that allows a network to list people who share the same characteristics as another group of people who have already shown interest in your audience. For example, on Facebook, you might use “Fans of the Business Page” as a lookalike audience to draw on for an ad campaign.
For many software and digital services companies, geography is no longer significant in determining their target audience for paid ads. Share on X

Make the Offer Better

Another big element of getting more traffic from each ad campaign – thus lowering overall costs – is the offer; how do you intend to attract people into your funnel? It starts by getting them to click on the ad while browsing the platform on which it appears; an action sometimes referred to as a “clickthrough.” It is an important first step in any paid ad campaign. No matter how well-optimized your audience targeting or how great your ad creative is, you’ll struggle to bring in enough prospects if your offer isn’t as compelling as it should be.

There are many ways to improve your offer, but we’ve found a simple and quick way to upgrade substantially: keep your current offer but expand what you provide. For example, if you offer a 15% discount on an initial package, you may increase that discount to 20%. If you’re offering a 20-minute evaluation, maybe change it to 30 minutes. 

If these adjustments don’t bring about sufficient improvement, you may want to consider completely changing the nature of the offer. In these situations, look to competitors or companies who work in related industries to see the most successful paid advertising offers.

Strengthen the Hook

In this context, the offer’s ” hook ” refers to the ad’s elements that bring in prospects. Usually, this consists of an image, a headline, and a “sub-headline” element that appears at the bottom. There’s also usually a CTA button that entices users to click and take the next step in the ad’s funnel.

Bringing as many prospects into the funnel as possible is crucial to minimize the amount of money you invest in each ad campaign. One way to do this is by improving the elements listed above. Pick an individual component to work on – like the headline – and go through some testing to determine an ideal version. From there, you can open up the testing to other ad creative elements. For example, should your subheadline be a question that piques readers’ curiosity or a bold statement that challenges their beliefs on an important subject? Either could be practical, depending on your specific needs and target audience.

Call in a Specialist as Needed

As is the case with most elements of a digital marketing campaign, sometimes it’s hard to have the right perspective when you are so close to the internal workings of your funnel. You and your team may have strong opinions about what is or isn’t working for your ad campaigns and the rest of your digital efforts, but you may be missing one key piece of perspective that’s hard to find inside your own business.

These are situations in which outside experience can be precious to your marketing efforts. Cost is a big factor here – there’s no point in reducing the amount of money you’re spending on paid ads for your funnel just to replace that spend with money going towards a consultant or expensive agency. And it’s true that in some cases, bringing in an outside party to review your ad campaigns can make things more convoluted and frustrating.

There are two keys here: first, you must seek assistance on a level that makes sense for your business and your budget. As a smaller startup just beginning to experiment with paid ads to bring in revenue, one probably doesn’t need to rush out to lock down a yearlong agreement with a boutique agency with a five-figure monthly retainer. Even a casual “brain-picking” session with a respected mentor or expert in their field can sometimes be enough to shed new light on a problem that helps you take steps towards solving it.

At FunnelEnvy, our team has many collective years of helping clients in all kinds of industries address challenges related to their marketing funnels, whether it involves paid ads, landing page optimization, or making forms more efficient for visitors. We use this background to give each client personalized attention to help them meet their goals. Whether that’s ensuring they spend less on advertising in favor of other methods or optimizing their current expenses to ensure they get as much return as possible from their ad campaigns, we can help.

If you’re interested in learning more about FunnelEnvy and how we work with our clients, click here to fill out a brief quiz that will allow us to learn more about your business and determine if we’d be a good fit to help with your funnel optimization needs.

By |2025-05-12T04:37:05-07:00April 3rd, 2023|Full-Funnel Optimization|0 Comments
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Optimizing Your Funnel With Video Content

If you aren’t already taking advantage of the power of video content, you’re missing out on one of the most important channels for any type of marketing – especially B2B. Research shows that video makes for some of the most engaging content. Over 9 in 10 marketers already use video in their funnels to help capture the right audience and serve them relevant, helpful content that allows them to accomplish their business goals. Moreover, nearly the same number of consumers report that watching a brand video has convinced them to buy a product.

At this point, it’s far from groundbreaking to say that video should be a key element of any organization’s marketing funnel. Clients often experience difficulty with the specifics of video content and understanding the optimization process. How exactly should you use video in your funnel? What kinds of videos should you make? And how will you know if your videos are effective?

Clients often experience difficulty with the specifics of video content and understanding the optimization process. Share on X

Though it’s tough to definitively answer these questions for any company without specific knowledge of their campaigns, we can offer some advice based on the trends we’ve seen working with clients to help them wisely incorporate video into their existing strategies. Let’s jump in.

Select the Right Kind of Videos

There are dozens of different kinds of video types and endless variations or tweaks you can put on those types to make them even more unique. Just spend a few minutes on YouTube, and you’ll see exactly how diverse video content can be! 

In a business marketing context, we can generally group videos into one of three buckets:

  • Quick snippets are meant to explain one specific concept or express a single idea. Software companies often create these using a screenshare that shows off a particular feature.
  • Medium-length videos are longer and go more in-depth on a broader area. These videos are anywhere from five to 20 minutes in length. For example, one type of feature video could be a medical research company showing off different parts of its facility.
  • Feature videos are anything longer than about 20 minutes. These are often pre-recorded speeches or conference sessions shared with the audience.

Again, these categories aren’t perfect, and you can probably come up with endless video types. Don’t get caught up in the specific traits of one type or another – instead, use them as a springboard to think about which type of video may be best for your business. As you go through the process of creating, promoting, and analyzing your video content, be sure to sort them by type so you can get more data on the effectiveness of each kind.

Let Your Prospects See Themselves

Think about some of the best movies, books, or television shows you’ve consumed over the last few years. For many people, the stories in these mediums are much more effective when they feel a connection to the characters in them. That could mean their job, geographic location, family status, etc.

The best marketers have figured out that this concept doesn’t just apply at the box office or the bookstore – it also works in a B2B marketing funnel. Whether you’re planning to create half-hour explainer videos with multiple scenes and people speaking, or you simply want to run a 45-second screenshare showing a single feature, do what you can to ensure your prospects connect with something. You could use language they recognize, name a process they frequently use in their business, or something completely different.

A case study or testimonial-style video is the best video to achieve this connection. Just be aware that many viewers are naturally skeptical of testimonial videos, so you should strive to include an authentic, balanced evaluation of your company and its offering. 

Connect Performance, Budget, and Analytics

Even after you’ve decided on a particular type of video to use, planned its production, and included it in the right channels, your job is still unfinished. The time after you’ve placed your videos into your funnel and published them on social media, your newsletter, etc., is one of the most critical periods for determining the overall success of your video efforts.

That’s because this is when you can get honest feedback from prospects about how effective your videos are at helping you achieve business goals. This feedback comes in the form of data – views, conversions, form abandonments, meetings booked, and so on. Ideally, you can compare this data with a preexisting, deep data set. 

Once you’ve analyzed the numbers and determined which kinds of videos are performing best for you, double down on them by redirecting more of your budget toward making them. Unless you have a specific reason, there’s no point continuing to spend money on content that doesn’t maximize the return.

An easy way to think of video is a virtuous cycle with three parts: budget, analytics, and performance. The cycle starts when you invest marketing dollars into creating a video (budget), continues when you dive into the numbers and metrics behind the video (analytics), and finishes with an ultimate evaluation of the video’s effectiveness in helping you achieve business goals (performance).

From there, the cycle starts over with the budgetary phase. As each part of the cycle becomes more and more optimized, it carries over to the other parts of the video cycle, helping them improve. 

Final Thoughts on How to Optimize a Funnel With Video

In 2023, it’s essential to get beyond just “doing video” and into optimizing your video for maximum funnel success. Barriers for video have dropped so much that you should already be incorporating them into your funnels.

To reach the next level of success with video, you need to know which types of videos your prospects respond to, how to include a hook that connects them to the content of the video, and what steps are necessary to iterate on videos to attain continued success. After all – you probably already spend time analyzing other elements of your conversion rate, so why not devote some of the same attention to the specific performance of your video?

While it’s possible to handle all of these steps within your organization, many companies find it easier to get them taken care of with the help of an outside specialist. A well-qualified B2B marketing expert will be able to give you a broader, more strategic perspective on the way you incorporate video into your funnel. They’ll assist you in identifying which kinds of videos to produce and how to track their metrics so that you end up getting the most out of the investment you make into a video for your funnel.

FunnelEnvy has helped many clients in various industries attain greater efficiency with video production and a better grasp of whether or not their content is moving the needle. To learn more about our pricing and determine if we are a good match for your needs, click here to complete a short questionnaire.

By |2025-05-12T04:37:04-07:00March 6th, 2023|Full-Funnel Optimization|0 Comments
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3 Trends in Multi-Step Forms for B2B Funnels in 2023

Forms used in digital marketing have come a long way since the earliest days of simple radio buttons, one-line form fields, and dropdown options. Today’s users expect the forms they engage with to be as frictionless as possible, but they also want to know exactly how much of an investment of time they’ll need to make – and what kind of return that investment can bring.

In this modern environment, multi-step forms have emerged as a way for marketers to make forms more easily digestible for users. In turn, this increases the conversion rates typically seen on multi-step forms. According to some stats, multi-step forms can convert 300% more than forms with a single step.

Knowing the value of multi-step forms in today’s B2B marketing, it’s essential to construct them well and keep them updated as trends and best practices change. As the new year progresses, we’ll track multi-step form trends. 

Artificial Intelligence and Forms

There’s a lot of discussion in the media about artificial intelligence and what it will mean for the future of business. ChatGPT, a sophisticated text-based AI platform created by the prominent research firm OpenAI, has dominated headlines and social media posts thanks to its accuracy and authentic-sounding tone.

AI tools are exciting to discuss but are still far from being a core element of any B2B marketing campaign or funnel. One of the most common deployments of AI in multi-step forms comes with chatbots, which can be helpful tools for certain prospects but aren’t a panacea for all sales needs.    

Specifically, AI tools like chatbots can help when a visitor has a straightforward question about an element of a form but aren’t as valuable for complex inquiries. Throw in the technical complexity and high-dollar amount often associated with B2B purchases, and you can see why many prospects may not want AI heavily involved in their transactions. Despite this, we anticipate AI tools becoming more and more helpful for their predictive capabilities in the early parts of forms when users may need a straightforward clarification or additional detail.

Increase in Social Proof

Since the earliest days of business, social proof – or validation of a product or service from other buyers – has always been a valuable marketing source, especially for companies selling complex and high-dollar solutions. In the economic conditions of 2023, where budgets are likely tight due to pressure on supply chains and other global factors, B2B buyers may want even more social proof before committing to a specific vendor.

In 2023, we expect the changes to multi-step forms in this category to be more related to the specific nature of the social proof provided. For example, we’re already seeing more videos used as social proof throughout marketing funnels. Some studies show that two out of three people would be more willing to purchase after watching a testimonial video showing how a product or service helped someone else like them.      

Another important social proof indicator for 2023 will be the participation in industry groups and organizations. These associations and trade organizations are increasingly effective in certain industries – like healthcare and medical technology – and should continue to grow in importance throughout the year. If your form can remind visitors of your participation in well-respected associations or industry forums, it may increase your conversion rate and improve your overall marketing results.

Progress Indicators & Dynamic Forms

For many years, studies by major research organizations have shown the value of using progress bars, indicators, or icons somewhere on your form. These elements show people where they are in a multi-step form and how much they have left before completion. Research indicates that these elements extend the attention span of users and may make them more likely to finish the form.

Throughout the rest of the year, we expect these elements to become even more prominent throughout B2B forms. Look for leading marketers to deploy these elements in slick, user-friendly ways that don’t detract from the experience. For example, you might incorporate additional information about a form behind a hover icon near the progress bar.

Along the same lines, we’re also projecting an increase in the importance of dynamic forms. Everyone has had the experience of filling out a long form with multiple unnecessary questions that may or may not even apply to their situation. Dynamic forms that adjust based on user-provided information are a valuable solution to this problem. If your forms aren’t adaptable based on specific details that people provide, you may be adding friction to the process and making it less likely that people will complete the form.

Going forward this year, we expect dynamic forms to become even more popular and wide-reaching in their applications. One of the more popular dynamic form use cases involves providing extra content to give prospects even more details about a specific solution. Combining these ideas with technology like automated follow-up tools can create a powerful push to get prospects through your funnel.  

One last note on this point – remember that there’s a fine line between helpful form add-ons and excess clutter that distracts a user from completing the form. With multi-step forms that already require a larger investment of time and energy, it’s crucial to be mindful of clutter or wasted elements. Finding the correct balance requires testing and input from real prospects and customers.

Remember that there’s a fine line between helpful form add-ons and excess clutter that distracts a user from completing the form. Share on X

Incorporating Multi-Step Form Trends Into Your Funnel

As is always the case when we discuss trends, developments, or best practices in a particular area, we aren’t suggesting that you rush to incorporate these three ideas into your campaigns as quickly as possible. Not all of these ideas may be right for your multi-step forms, or you may already have some in current funnels.

Instead, it’s critical to identify which concepts make the most sense for your forms and then thoughtfully plan a strategy for adding them to your campaigns. Multi-step forms may not be the sleekest or most exciting elements of your marketing funnels, but they can be vital to the success of your campaigns. A minor tweak to a multi-step form can cause a significant improvement in its conversion rate, leading to massive results in your business.

If you’re looking to apply one or more of these ideas to your multi-step forms but aren’t exactly sure how getting help from an experienced advisor can be valuable. Our team at FunnelEnvy has many years of experience helping clients plan, develop, and optimize multi-step forms that move prospects along their funnel. Whether you want to improve a mid-campaign form that helps existing prospects or you want to optimize your lead capture form, we can help you incorporate all the elements your form needs to be user-friendly, concise, and persuasive to all prospects who use it.

Fill out this brief form to get more details about our pricing structure and learn more about how we can help your organization.

By |2025-05-12T04:37:03-07:00January 9th, 2023|Full-Funnel Optimization|0 Comments
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4 Best Practices for Creating Engaging B2B Content

There’s a massive amount of content on the web today. Even before the global pandemic that forced everyone to stay home, reports indicated that over two-thirds of all data on the web was created sometime in the last few years.

Unfortunately, a lot of that data isn’t practical. The same is true in the world of B2B content. Many companies are embracing the practice – more than 4 in 5 B2B marketers use content marketing as a strategy, according to HubSpot surveys from 2021.

The problem? Not enough companies are doing content well. The prevalence of content marketing strategy means that many organizations are rushing to put out content simply “to have something there,” or even worse, just as a way to game SEO algorithms to increase their page rankings.

If this sounds like your company’s strategy, it needs to make a change. Whether creating content for a specific part of your funnel or more generalized marketing content, here are four tips to give you a better chance of engaging your audience.

Remove Fluff and Filler Ruthlessly

If you’ve done any kind of search recently related to any type of marketing or digital business phrase, you’ve probably noticed a common issue. There’s a lot of useless content out there. Sure, you can still find valuable stuff on any subject, and Google has been trying its hardest to update its algorithm quickly enough to weed out low-quality search results. But the proliferation of content and search engine marketing means there are still plenty of pages designed just to help the publisher move up search engine results – not to help someone in their target audience.

There are two simple (but not always easy) methods for making your content more valuable. First, you have to cut all fluff and filler from your content. Be ruthless – if there’s a question about whether or not something is worth including, you should probably scrap it. This ruthlessness even extends to things writers love, like using outside anecdotes or drawn-out metaphors.

It’s particularly important to make your content easy to interpret and valuable when it’s being used further down your B2B funnel. Decision-makers at companies making significant purchases usually want to maximize their time considering different vendors and solutions. Sifting through unnecessarily long content doesn’t give them a positive perspective of your company or its offering.

It’s particularly important to make your content easy to interpret and valuable when it’s being used further down your B2B funnel. Share on X

The second important step in removing fluff and filler is making your content more digestible so prospects can scan and read it more quickly. This method is called “scannable content.” According to Microsoft, a few essential strategies for scannable content include:

  • Put your most important content above the fold or the part of the page the user doesn’t need to scroll down to see.
  • Be brief, clear, and concise. Don’t use more words than you need.
  • Include navigation options for a long document.

You might also think about using progress bars or page numbers so users know how much more they have left in the content. Some more modern publications will even estimate how long it will take to read a piece of written content.

Use the Right Hook

By its nature, B2B content has to be highly customized. Buyers in this sector have specific and dynamic needs regarding what they’re looking for out of a business solution. These discerning needs are part of the reason tactics like content and account-based marketing are so popular with B2B marketers in the first place.

And while the personalized requirements of B2B content marketing might make the process more difficult in some ways, in another sense, it makes creating engaging content easier. Knowing a lot about your prospect’s specific needs and challenges means you can present more relevant information.

In content marketing parlance, a “hook” immediately grabs users’ attention and makes them want to continue consuming the content. Whether it’s a headline, the first sentence of a blog article or social media post, or the initial words of a video, a good hook can be the difference between someone consuming an entire piece of content or bouncing out of it quickly. In any B2B content setting, you want to make your hook as personalized as possible. In the best-case scenario, a prospect should feel like you’re speaking directly to them.

Be Interactive

This tip isn’t always fully applicable, depending on the channel you use for your content. But if you’re using a platform where interaction is a big component – such as social media – it’s important to include an avenue for users to engage with the content. In the B2B setting, it’s common to see posts on social media that ask users to share their own experiences, for example.

If you can’t make your content directly interactive for users, try to help them imagine themselves in the same situation. Visualization is one of the most powerful psychological tools available to us as humans. Putting your content’s audience in a position to visualize themselves using your product or service is one of the best ways to help nurture them closer to converting into customers. Whether you achieve this by including a few poignant questions at the end of an article, or some interesting visuals in an infographic or video, it’s critical to draw the user into becoming more than just a passive consumer of your content.

Measure and Analyze the Right Metrics


These steps are fantastic, but some may work better for you than others. Some may not work at all! How will you know if this is the case and which tactics may or may not apply? There’s only one way: measuring and analyzing how well it performs.

The big challenge many companies face is not necessarily analyzing metrics – it’s choosing the right metrics to follow. We see numerous prospects encountering the same problem: their high-level metrics like views, click-through rates, and session time numbers are good, but they aren’t leading to conversions or sales. 

That’s why it’s so important to track the correct numbers. In the hugely broad, dynamic world of business data, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by fancy metrics or numbers that seem important but don’t tell you much about your content. To overcome this challenge, think intentionally about a few of the most critical numbers that matter to your business and its content efforts, then make sure you stick to tracking just those numbers. It’s okay to revisit your core metrics from time to time to ensure they are still working the way you need, but don’t be swayed from measuring the KPIs you initially decided were most important.

And if you need any help figuring out which metrics to track or how to keep your content engaging, our expert team at FunnelEnvy is ready to help. We have several years of experience working with B2B companies to optimize their funnel content and ensure they can stand out in today’s noisy content marketing sector. Click here to fill out a short questionnaire and learn more about our pricing structure.

By |2025-05-12T04:37:01-07:00November 28th, 2022|Full-Funnel Optimization|0 Comments
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Creating Effective Paid Ads for Modern Buyers

B2B marketers who have been around a while might recognize the early and mid-2010s as a golden era of paid advertising. Costs per click were less expensive, and budgets could go much further. As we move into 2023, paid ads are still an excellent way to attract a targeted audience. However, the channel has grown more complex and dynamic regarding drawing in the right people.

It’s still possible to successfully incorporate paid ads into your funnel and make them a positive investment in your marketing. You’ll just need to calibrate your approach a bit more carefully. The strategies and tips below will help.

Ensure All Ads Are Responsive

Responsive design ensures that content is accessible, viewable, and properly usable on all kinds of devices and has been around as a web design principle for a while. Still, considering the recent changes in the B2B audience, it’s critical to ensure all elements of your ad funnel operate well on all kinds of devices. According to data from Google, 70% or more of B2B searches originate on mobile devices. Many people from Generation Z who grew up using mobile devices their entire lives are now moving into professional roles related to B2B purchasing.

It’s not enough for an ad or landing page to load on a smartphone or tablet – it also has to be clickable, with accessibility for forms if your ad requires collecting information. Think about the usable elements of your ad funnel when someone squeezes and taps with their fingers instead of using a mouse.

Incorporate Multimedia Content

For a long time, standard ad formats have involved a main image, headline, and some text underneath the picture. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this format, today, several other forms of media are gaining popularity in advertising. Social networks like TikTok and Instagram, which emphasize video, are becoming much more popular than traditional options.

Think about the usable elements of your ad funnel when someone squeezes and taps with their fingers instead of using a mouse. Share on X

If you don’t think TikTok is the right place for your brand, you might be surprised. Over 40% of TikTok users are between 30 and 49 years old. TikTok also boasts higher retention rates than most other networks. There are lots of devoted TikTokers of all ages – you probably know a few yourself – and while they may not specifically use it for B2B purposes, that doesn’t mean TikTok can’t work as an effective platform for that kind of marketing.

If you aren’t sure how to get started with videos in your ads, try starting with simple smartphone videos that you can record with basic equipment like a tripod or stabilizer device. Thanks to technology, you don’t need to invest five figures in a studio or production company to make quality B2B ad videos.

Include a Hard-Hitting Fact, Stat, or Statement

Attention-grabbing sentences are common in loads of marketing, from blog posts to emails to ads. It’s sometimes called a “hook” because you intend to lead the message and pull people’s attention to you. On most paid advertising platforms, users look at multiple different kinds of media, often scrolling through a home page or feed. 

The statement or statistic aims to get someone to stop scrolling and think about your ad. Not everyone who stops to look at your ad will be a good fit for your funnel, and that’s okay – the fact that your hook was able to stop and get their attention is a good sign on its own. 

What examples of hooks can you use to get someone’s attention in a paid ad campaign? Here are a few:

  • A quote from a customer testimonial
  • A statistic presented in a visual format, such as an infographic
  • Actual results from a customer case study or trial run
  • An abstract image or visual (as long as it’s at least loosely relevant to your offering)

With some creativity it’s possible to come up with a unique hook that draws in the specific audience you’re targeting. Your hook’s effectiveness is in your ad’s clickthrough rate, but you can also look into more advanced metrics for engagement, like time spent on the ad’s landing page or the number of repeat sessions with an ad campaign.

Speak Your Prospects’ Language

Whether using videos, text, or different communication tools, your content must resonate with the people you want to see your ads. You’re more likely to succeed when you use the type of words and descriptions they commonly use in their day-to-day roles. You don’t need to pack your ads and landing pages full of jargon or overly technical terms. Still, anyone who reads or hears a unique term or phrase they use often will immediately feel a connection with your ad and its associated landing page.

For the right balance, it can be helpful to include an actual quote from a client or someone in the industry, for example, a case study or expert interview. If you aren’t sure whether or not your video or ad copy has too much jargon, talk to an unbiased expert in that field. They’ll be able to tell you if your content sounds natural and normal or if it sounds like you are trying too hard to match the way a prospect might talk.

Final Thoughts on Making effective B2B ads today

On almost any social network you spend even a little bit of time on today, you’re bound to come across several different ads for advertisers in virtually any field – including B2B. You probably already know how effective these ads can be if you create them properly. You may even have purchased something or subscribed to a business because of one!

The biggest challenge with paid advertising these days is competition. Even in a relatively niche field, you likely have to deal with multiple competitors vying for the same attention on the platform. The best way to overcome this challenge is to constantly optimize your ads and create them to appeal to a particular subset of people. 

There are three key aspects to this approach you should bear in mind: 1) Make sure your ads (and all related funnel components) work well on any device. 2) Ensure you speak your prospects’ language. 3) Incorporate a hook that grabs their attention and makes them want to engage further with your ad.

Of course, this process is typically easier said than done. It usually takes time, practice, and trial and error with a specific social network to succeed at the right voice, find the right people and get them to convert once they take the next step and click on your ad.

If you’re looking for expert assistance with this entire process or want a few more sets of eyes looking at your current B2B ad campaign, FunnelEnvy can help. Our team works with B2B companies of all varieties, from tech to healthcare to finance and everything in between. If you want to learn more about our services and schedule a consultation to see if we can help your team grow, click here to complete a short quiz that will help you learn more about our pricing.

By |2025-05-12T04:37:01-07:00November 14th, 2022|Full-Funnel Optimization|0 Comments
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Optimizing Your B2B Landing Page Flow

You already know landing pages matter. The key to a successful landing page is giving page visitors what they want while also having them take desired actions that move them through your funnel. And while the design of your landing pages, their forms, and visuals are critical, how you set up these landing pages in the context of the rest of your marketing is just as important.

What happens before and after a user visits your landing page? How do these fit with the other elements in your funnel and your brand? These are important questions regarding improving B2B landing page effectiveness, but they’re often not as closely considered as traditional issues like fonts, colors, and form fields.

Below are some of our best tips and considerations for optimizing your funnel’s landing page flow.

Ensure the Landing Page is Applicable to All Lead Sources

One of the things we know for sure is that people use the internet on different kinds of devices. Not only are they using different kinds of hardware, page visitors all come from unique sources. It doesn’t matter whether someone comes from a social media ad, an email newsletter, or any other potential source: their experience with your landing page should be consistent. 

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be creating unique landing pages for each campaign you and your team come up with, or that you don’t need to worry about the different sources for leads to the same landing page. It just means that all the different versions you create need to offer consistency no matter how someone accesses the site. This is especially true when it comes to funnels related to consuming information or learning – by some measures, over 70% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. It’s important for those users to have the same thorough access to your landing page as someone on a desktop.

Don’t Neglect Your Post-conversion Thank You Page

It can seem like a relatively subtle detail, but the page that site visitors see after converting can make a big difference in both how they perceive your brand and what they do after taking the desired landing page action.

There are several different strategies to consider when it comes to a thank you page. We see plenty of marketers making the mistake of sticking with the default text. Failing to address these valuable areas where many visitors look for additional information about your business and its other components is a wasted opportunity.

The page that site visitors see after converting can make a big difference in both how they perceive your brand and what they do after taking the desired landing page action. Share on X

A few common strategies used for thank you pages:

  • Play a short video thanking the user and talking about other areas of the company – ideally ones related to the landing page’s funnel.
  • Link to another relevant area on your site. This link could be something like a mission or vision statement, a case study section, or anything else that might entice your visitors.
  • Add a link to a blog post or other popular new content that you’ve recently published. You could also share news in this section, but keep it relevant, so you don’t appear to brag. 

Remember to iterate on and test each design option you consider for your thank you page to see which one works best. Finally, don’t overload your page with so much content that people get bogged down or overwhelmed. 

If your landing page’s funnel is information-heavy and you feel it’s important to include a lot more details on your thank you page, save it for the part of your landing page flow we bring up in the next section. 

Create (or Improve) Your Follow-up Sequence

When we talk about a follow-up sequence, it doesn’t mean a confirmation email you send to a user who converts. It’s a longer set of multiple emails that is meant to do more than just reiterate that they’ll get what they were told they’d receive on the original landing page.

A follow-up sequence should provide extra context that helps nurture a prospect closer to becoming a client by giving them the kind of information that also assists them in achieving their goals.

For example: let’s say you’re a healthcare software company with a landing page funnel to book demonstration appointments. After someone books an appointment on your landing page, you could send them a technical description of the specific tool (or element of the tool) that they’ll be seeing at the upcoming demonstration.

This is also a good place to incorporate social proof in your funnel. Include quotes, reviews, or case studies with data and numbers that show evidence of business improvement and tangible results achieved by your past clients. 

Finally, after enough time has passed – and the user has completed any demonstration, appointment or other time-based objective – you can include an email in the sequence that asks for feedback. Speaking of which…

Solicit Feedback (and Use It!)

You don’t have to ask every user who converts their thoughts on the entire process, but it is important to actively ask for feedback from visitors to your landing page funnel. It could mean including a button that links to a quick web survey, or you might simply decide to follow up with a personal email or call. But one of the best ways to improve the flow around any landing page is to see what real people think about it. If you start hearing something repeated often in your feedback, it may be a sign to implement it into working versions of the landing page or funnel.

Again, it’s essential to keep your requests concise – your prospects likely have a lot of other things going on. Focus on one or two key areas of the page that you might be uncertain about or have been underperforming relative to other parts of the funnel. Remember to be gracious and thankful for any feedback a prospect is voluntarily willing to provide.

Final Thoughts on Optimizing Landing Page Flow

Landing pages are a common and vital part of any funnel. But if the parts of your funnel around your landing page aren’t working well, it will likely hold back your performance and constrain the number of leads you bring in from the funnel.

While you should always strive to improve your landing pages and the things included, it’s equally important to ensure page visitors have a good experience before, during, and after they are on the landing page. That means spending some time considering elements outside of the page itself – the emails you send to users who convert, the information you present on the confirmation page, and the way you incorporate their feedback in both individual sales relationships and improvements made to the broader business.

Looking to get expert insights into your landing pages and the elements around them? The team at FunnelEnvy can help you, whether you’re looking to plug a leaking funnel, pick up the performance of a landing page, or simply ensure that your marketing continues to perform at a sufficient level. Click here to take a short quiz that will help us learn more about how we can get you closer to your business goals.

By |2025-05-12T04:37:00-07:00October 17th, 2022|Full-Funnel Optimization|0 Comments
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Top B2B Marketing Landing Page Trends

A landing page is the critical element of a funnel upon which its broader results hinge. You could have slick visuals and top-notch marketing automation software – if an error or obstacle on your landing page prevents visitors from converting, it will constrain your results and limit the effectiveness of your digital marketing.

Even if your landing page has been working well and capturing a healthy number of people, it can always be optimized so that you can convert even more visitors. The bigger question is, how do you take steps to optimize your landing page?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Everyone’s offering and their funnel will be slightly different. However, even in the dynamic world of B2B, where there is a strong focus on customization, our team has seen certain trends emerge across several industries.

Just remember, trends in landing page design operate the same way as trends in any other industry – fashion, art, music, etc. That means you don’t need to take this blog post as a comprehensive guide to all the elements you must include on a landing page. Think of it the way you might think about trends in clothing: you wouldn’t rush out and replace your entire wardrobe with only the items trending at this year’s top fashion shows.

Instead, you would look at what kind of clothes are trending, think about your signature style, and decide how you might incorporate a few popular pieces into what you already wear. The same goes for your landing page – instead of completely overhauling a page to keep up with the latest trends, decide which of them make sense and edit your pages accordingly.

Live Messaging and Chatbots

If you’ve been on any recently-updated landing page in the last year or two, you probably noticed a recurring pattern: a chat window pops up, often on the bottom-right side of your screen, prompting you to ask a question about a product or service, or perhaps giving you details of the company’s latest sale or launch.

The rise of support via messenger and chatbot platforms on company websites has been meteoric. According to Fortune, the global chatbot industry expects to grow at a rapid clip of 22.5% between 2020 and 2027. That significant growth rate didn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of customers in many industries preferring to get their questions answered immediately via chat instead of sitting on hold or waiting around for an email inquiry to get answered. Over 40% of customers prefer getting answers from chat immediately, compared to 32% who prefer the phone and 23% who prefer email.

You don’t need to build a sophisticated AI-based chat platform from scratch. Plenty of simple chat platforms allow you to use either a real person or a basic bot to message people who have questions about your offering. Check out tools like HubSpot, Drift, Intercom, and Twilio as a starting point in your search for live messenger and chatbot solutions.

Inclusive Design

According to Adobe, inclusive design is a style that “considers the full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age, and other forms of human difference.” In other words, it’s a design that allows the broadest range of people to view and use your landing page content, even if they use adaptive technology or have some type of disability.

A great place to start regarding inclusive design is the web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG), created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Government bodies, universities, and other organizations leading the way in accessible digital content use these guidelines.

A few simple elements that you can incorporate right away to improve accessibility:

  • Add captions to all video content, whether live or pre-recorded
  • Allow users to pause and play audio and video content
  • Allow users to resize text by at least 200% without assistive technology 
  • Don’t include any images or visual elements that flash more than three times

Progress Indicators and Icons

Another common element on today’s landing pages is some type of indicator to let users know how they are progressing on a form. Percentage bars or icons representing the number of form pages completed and remaining are a great addition to almost any landing page. By some metrics, you can increase your website’s conversion rate by 30% just by adding a progress bar to your landing page. 

Ideally, you want to keep your landing page to no more than four separate pages or sub-forms. If you need to collect more information than this, think about adjusting your funnel or trying to gather extra data after the conversion event has taken place. For example, if your landing page is to book appointments, there may be some kinds of information that you can collect on your first sales call instead of on the page form. Keeping your form as short as possible and letting people know how many more sub-forms they have to complete is a great way to improve landing page conversion.

Minimalist Design

Check out this landing page from Squarespace:

Landing page trends

Notice the simplicity: it has the company’s logo, the main form, and an option that allows visitors who aren’t ready to buy to return to the home page. This type of minimalist design is everywhere on modern landing pages, from those related to the most complex B2B software to those offering the most basic B2C commodity.

If you’re going for the minimalist approach, strike a good balance between design and functionality. Don’t sacrifice important information that prospects need to know simply to include as much space as possible. However, it can be helpful to re-evaluate your landing pages with a close eye to determine if there are elements that you may be able to remove.

A final tip for the minimalist or “blank space” approach: use colors that make the main elements of your page stand out. A white background typically means using brighter colors on elements like links, buttons, and headers. Be sure to pick a color scheme that works well together and doesn’t clash or cause any readability issues for visitors.

Final Thoughts On Landing Page Trends

Remember: you don’t need to adopt any of these trends on your existing landing pages, particularly if your funnel already works well at converting visitors. However, when looking to improve your landing page’s conversion rate, it can be helpful to look at current trends in landing page design as a starting point to determine what positive changes you could make.

Our expert team at FunnelEnvy can help by evaluating your landing page and identifying a few key areas you can improve. With only minor tweaks to your page, it’s possible to increase your conversion rate by a significant percentage that expands your marketing funnel and provides real gains to your organization’s bottom line.
Click here to complete a short quiz and find out more about how FunnelEnvy may be able to assist with optimizing your funnel’s landing page to incorporate some of the latest trends and designs for better results.

By |2025-05-12T04:37:00-07:00October 3rd, 2022|Full-Funnel Optimization|0 Comments
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How to Map Content Creation to Your B2B Funnel

Anyone working in marketing today is probably aware of the importance of creating content. Thanks to the growth of content marketing over the last decade or so companies in every field are rushing to produce content they believe will drive revenue and improve their brand awareness among their target audience.

Unfortunately, many content marketers don’t get it right. They direct an internal resource or outside contractor to churn out a set number of content pieces about pre-arranged topics on a monthly or quarterly basis. Robert Rose, chief strategy officer at the Content Marketing Institute’s Content Advisory consultancy, has spoken about this issue before, calling it the “vending machine” approach to content creation. 

As Rose points out, not only does this approach not scale, it positions content as nothing more than a to-do list for the marketing department. A better approach is to first understand the goals and objectives behind each piece of content pertaining to different stages of your sales funnel. From there, you can create content in a way that aligns smoothly with your funnel and provides tangible value for your audience. 

How do you go about doing that? It’ll be slightly different for everyone depending on your specific target audience and the funnel for which you’re creating content. Below, we dive into a few tips that any marketer can apply to B2B content creation.

Revisit Personas and Funnel Steps

Before you start churning out content assets, it’s essential to take a step back and go over the fundamentals of your funnel. Begin the process by going over your buyer persona, which according to HubSpot best practices, should include information like:

  • Demographics including age, income, location, etc.
  • Communication preferences that indicate how they like to receive information and engage with potential vendors
  • Goals for both their personal and professional lives
  • Biggest challenges particularly as it relates to the product or service being marketed

As you (ideally, along with your primary content creators) review this information, remember to spend time considering whether or not anything is outdated or inaccurate. This is a great time to update your personas and make your marketing efforts more effective.

Beyond that, you should also look at each step in your funnel to see how people inside it go from a stranger unaware of your brand’s existence to the conversion action you desire. This process will also unlock a vital source of ideas for content and make it much easier to align each piece with your funnel. 

Here’s an example: let’s say visiting a landing page is an important step in the funnel for which you want to create effective content. By drawing on the existing content, language, and media on the landing page, you’ll have a starting point for content you want to map to that funnel segment. 

Experiment With Different Channels

One of the double-edged swords of modern digital marketing is the array of different kinds of media we can use to reach an audience. The most common formats are e-mail, social media, blog posts, and videos. Clever marketers can develop an endless variety of themes and formats within just these four channels.

If you haven’t already, you need to work on aligning your different marketing channels with each stage of your funnel. These insights will be key for understanding what type of content to produce for different segments of your audience.

Here’s another concrete example: you typically use video advertisements on social media networks to attract people to your brand and make them aware of your offering. This is a standard way marketers use video content for the top of their funnels.

If you haven’t already, you need to work on aligning your different marketing channels with each stage of your funnel Share on X

But what if, instead of only using video for social media ads, you also incorporated video at the later stages of your funnel? Maybe you publish a video interview with a satisfied client in which they discuss some of the most significant benefits of your offering and why it worked. In this case, you’d use video for your funnel’s middle segment.

It’s impossible to definitively say which combination will work best for your funnel and audience. Remember to measure and track the data so you can compare how each channel works for each segment of your funnel. 

Add a Personal Touch

It’s wonderful to understand your sales funnel as a progression of different steps and know what kind of content will work best for prospects at each one. But to maximize your content’s effectiveness, you must find a way to express an understanding of what your target audience is going through.

Take a look at this excerpt from a landing page for Drift, a conversational marketing tool focused on interactions via chatbot and messenger platforms:

Content for funnel

From the very first word of the copy, they ask the reader to envision how their work situation could be made better by using Drift. Sure, the message may not be as effective for people who don’t manage a sales team daily. But because the team responsible for marketing Drift has a deep understanding of their target audience, they can add this personal touch that speaks directly to the goals or challenges of their ideal prospect.

It’s vital to incorporate these kinds of highly-specific messages in your content, no matter what stage of the funnel you intend. If you don’t feel confident enough in your audience’s understanding to add these personal touches, revisit the first step in this post to deepen your knowledge.

Solicit Real Feedback

Our final piece of advice for mapping content to different funnel stages is straightforward but not always easy: ask a real person! One of the most common mistakes we see in the prospects and clients we work with is the “bubble effect.” A team of marketers gathers (virtually or in-person) to figure out the needs and challenges of an audience without any input from real people in that audience.

This approach is okay in the earliest stages of your marketing or when resources like time and money are drastically limited. However, you shouldn’t run a content marketing campaign for an extended period without getting input from the target audience. Whether you receive that input from a formal survey, a casual in-person meeting, or a quick video call, it’s critical to integrate it into your content creation efforts as soon as possible.  

Final Thoughts on Mapping Content Creation to Your Funnel

Content creation as a strategy for digital marketers probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. However, the format of that content and how you create it will change. The best-performing content marketers will be the ones who can closely match their content with the specific challenges of their audience – in a time-sensitive fashion, presented via a format that fits their lifestyle.

Are you looking to get some expert insights into how you can do a better job of matching content to different parts of your sales funnel? Click here to fill out a quick questionnaire and see if you might be a fit to work with our team at FunnelEnvy.

By |2025-05-12T04:36:59-07:00September 5th, 2022|Full-Funnel Optimization|0 Comments
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