The 5 Biggest Sales Funnel Challenges Every Marketer Faces—and How to Solve Them

By Sofia Wilton

The different stages of a sales funnel correlate to the step-by-step journey of your customers as they move down that funnel. Customers start out being mere visitors on your website, they next turn into prospects, and then ultimately become qualified business leads ready to make a purchase.

The funnel metaphor makes the entire sales process appear relatively seamless, and rarely accounts for an array of challenges marketers often face. The truth is, the journey is more nuanced and layered than it appears on the surface.

Here, we discuss five key sales funnel challenges every marketer faces and ways to overcome them effectively.

5 biggest sales funnel challenges and how to solve them

1. Generating more leads

Generating quality leads poses a perpetual concern for most marketers. Around 61% of the marketers say generating leads and traffic is their biggest sales funnel challenge, according to a report by HubSpot. Safe to say, B2B lead generation is becoming a significant challenge as more brands are competing for leads in the market every passing year.

Solution: Today, without a doubt, inbound marketing practices have become crucial to generating quality leads. Content marketing, in particular, will be your ultimate weapon. Innovative and informative content creation will put you on the radar of your ideal audience, allowing you to attract leads more easily.

Two other tactics you can employ are:

• A/B content testing to understand what type of content your prospective customers are attracted to, including content narrative, headlines, etc.
• Marketing automation software to bring more qualified leads into your sales funnel and help you nurture them to successful conversion.

2. Rising above the market noise

Increased market competition has made B2B selling incredibly harder. Regardless of how compelling your inbound marketing efforts are, you might still lose out to your competitors. Also, for most marketers, lead nurturing has become more challenging given how buying behaviors keep evolving. Furthermore, the touchpoints across customer journeys are becoming more diverse, making the process a relatively demanding task.

Solution: Outperforming the competition rests exclusively on how you differentiate your brand from others. You need to highlight your value propositions and communicate your brand offerings precisely.

Build on your brand's core competencies to attract prospects while simultaneously providing evidence of your product/service quality via case studies, testimonials, demos, etc. Craft your content and sales pitch accordingly. Having a solid value proposition will compel your ideal audience to sway in your favor rather than your competitor's.

More articles from AllBusiness.com:

• The Fundamentals of Creating an Outstanding Sales Funnel
• Get Better Leads: 5 Ways to Improve the Quality of What Goes in Your Sales Funnel
• Using the Sales Funnel Approach to Improve Your Forecasting
• 4 Low-Cost Digital Marketing Tactics for Startups
• Email Marketing: Still the Most Powerful Tool to Take Your Business to the Next Level

3. Creating persuasive content

Content creation, especially in the B2B landscape, has become the ultimate marketing mojo to drive better ROIs. Whether you cater to niche clientele or a broader network, every stage in the sales funnel demands a different type of content, and the right content can help you overcome your sales funnel challenges.

The only problem? There is a vast amount of information already available online so your content may fail to bring back the desired returns.

Solution: Remember, you're not selling to everyone. One of the best ways to create persuasive content is to first understand the problems your target audience is facing and the solutions they're looking for. Only then can you publish content they will find relevant and attract new prospects readily.

As Swedish marketing expert Jon Buscall puts it: “Content marketing is a commitment, not a campaign.” Prioritize content creation based on your current business needs to boost your website traffic and online brand presence.

4. Reducing the sales cycle

Successful conversions can be one of the biggest sales funnel challenges that B2B companies face. Why? Because the sales cycles are long and demanding. Today, B2B buying decisions are typically made by a committee of members, who resort to extensive market research and thorough internal discussions before they invest in any products/services. As such, they tend to slow down the sales cycle.

And as you may know, a lengthy sales cycle typically means increased costs, uncertainty, and lead dropouts. Sometimes, it even stretches out your budget unnecessarily.

Solution: Following up on sales leads on time can prove immensely effective. To do this, you can automate the process using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. Track leads behavior and organize prospect data to nurture them proactively as they move through your sales funnel and closer towards conversion.

A robust CRM system will also allow team members from the sales and marketing departments access to relevant prospect information anytime. As such, your teammates will always be on the same page, allowing you to streamline sales funnel activity and reduce the sales cycle in positive way.

5. Tracking performance metrics accurately

Trends in digital marketing change quite rapidly, meaning that tactics bringing results today may become obsolete tomorrow. In such a scenario, keeping track of your ROIs becomes vital to optimizing your sales funnel. But the question is: are your ROIs even trackable/traceable?

Solution: Before you start measuring ROIs, you must determine the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and goals you want to track or whether they are quantifiable. How else would you know if your efforts are paying off? You will need appropriate data to back your ROI performance and plan for your future revenue goals accordingly.

Pay attention to these following metrics:

• Click-through rates
• Website visits
• New leads acquired
• Website bounce rate
• Cost per conversion
• Search rankings

Each tracked metric will help you understand what works in your sales funnel and what requires modifications. CRM software can also ease the tracking process by helping you create well-researched reports and eliminate guesswork.

Overcome sales funnel challenges and convert more customers

Having an understanding of your sales funnel will give you insights to know where prospects can drop out, resulting in failed conversions. And by overcoming these five sales funnel challenges, you can improve your company's sales performance.

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