Learn How to Build a Profitable SaaS Marketing Funnel | Step-by-step breakdown

okay so how to create a high converting SAS marketing funnel now if you don't know me my name is Liam I've been working in the SAS space for the last few years both as an employee at late stage companies early stage companies and nowadays I'm the founder of digiseed we exclusively work with B2B SAS companies helping them reduce their customer acquisition costs through high converting funnels so if you want to check us out there's a link on the screen and you can find us in the bio as well so who is this relevant for so SAS Founders whether that be just getting started or post product Market fit heads of growth demand generation teams and paid performance marketers so if you're responsible for generating leads at your company generating pipeline anything to do with conversions then this is definitely for you what we're going to be covering in this video so why funnels are important what even is a funnel the stages of a funnel how to optimize your funnel will be going through an example and then at the end if you stick around um I'll be giving you access to a free funnel masterclass that my team and I have put together based on the experiences um from scaling SAS companies so why should you care about your funnel um well it's no surprise that advertising is expensive um but that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be unprofitable new competitors are joining the market every week so it's becoming really hard and difficult to stand out especially when a lot of SAS companies essentially essentially do the same thing under the hood and if you're in the B2B space which this is more relevant for um you'll already be aware that the B2B buyer's journey is or can be extremely long and complex and it's a buyer's market nowadays with so many SAS companies out there the control is in the buyer's hands they can decide who to go with and so everybody's uh fighting for their attention and so your funnel really is how you attract and convert these people and so it's something that you should always be paying attention to um as I say the cost of acquiring a new customer continues to climb so optimizing your funnel nowadays is really a non-negotiable it's how you Captivate and persuade and sell to an audience in a digital world and so your funnel really is your your virtual sales team you know you wouldn't just hire a fresh grad throw them into the deep end with your sales process you know not on board them don't give them any training or ongoing professional development you wouldn't do that with your sales team and so you should adopt the exact same mentality with your funnel and if you do it right then you're going to have a system that enables you to acquire customers with predictability um but most importantly also significantly reduce your CPAs and your customer acquisition costs so it's not just about acquiring a bunch of customers it's about acquiring a bunch of customers and freeing up cash so you can reinvest into your marketing and acquire more customers and really the aim of the funnel and this is you know um obviously not the the reality but you know you want to get to the stage where it's inputs and outputs where you know you can put X into your funnel and you can get y out of it which is the the predictability um and why again it's so important is while competitors sacrifice you know several months of Revenue to acquire One customer which is very common in the SAS space I know some companies sacrificing you know one to two years of Revenue because their lifetime value makes sense um so while your customer while your competitors are doing that you have more cash to invest back into marketing and sales and acquire more customers because you've optimized your funnel you've you know got rid of the leaks which will go through in a second now if you're watching this you're probably in the SAS space um and there's a reason why you know the SAS industry has boomed over the last decade and it's because of recurring Revenue uh you know um software is easy to scale in comparison to the physical world and you've also got these repeating recurring Revenue business models so you acquire a customer once and they pay you every single month or every single year until they cancel and so really you know you're paying you're paying X to acquire them and they're giving you you know monthly income yearly income until they cancel so let's run through a quick example um just to really show you the importance of having an optimized funnel so let's say you're a SAS company with a customer lifetime value of 10 000 pounds so through the lifetime of a customer being with you they are going to give you ten thousand pounds and that equates to roughly 10 months right so 1 000 pounds per month there with you just to keep the math simple so in example one uh let's say your custom acquisition cost is five thousand pounds so you are paying 5K to acquire one customer that means your payback period is five months it takes you five months to break even or pay back the um the cost of acquiring that customer and this is very common in in this ass space now let's go through example two so let's say your custom acquisition cost was three thousand pounds so your payback period is three months um so significantly less than example one that means you're breaking even after month three whereas you know your competitor or maybe the old where you operated you know you were you had to wait an extra two months to acquire a customer so what does this mean really if you can drive your custom acquisition costs down even by two thousand pounds for each customer you're two thousand pounds better off you know how how much more cash is that going to give you how much more uh how much larger of a safety net does that give you to take bigger risks uh bigger plays um how much more cash to reinvest into marketing and scaling and so this is the aim of the game really it's not just about you know burning cash and occurring as many customers as you can you know some people take that approach but really you want to do it profitably you want to get a return on your marketing um and you know you want to be able to Chuck as much money into marketing as long as you know you can get a return and so really this is the importance of um optimizing your funnel you know in in a second example you've got two months extra you're getting back and so that just means you can acquire more customers now what is a a funnel and I think this is a topic that can easily be over complicated um but really every single business has a funnel whether you like it or whether you don't like it um it's compulsory and all that a funnel is is it's just a sequence of steps that turn strangers into customers so in a physical world a funnel could just be having a shop a store you know on on the local High Street and people coming into your store right that's how you attract that's how you sell to people and that's your funnel whereas now with the internet our funnels have gone online and so uh for most people this is really just sending traffic to your website you know this is your funnel that's how people find you they they might find you through Google search they might find you through ads emails but this is your funnel uh you know you're going out there you're driving awareness and there then go into your funnel and making a purchase and funnels come in all different kinds of of shapes and sizes you know this is a very simple funnel um just send in different campaigns or channels directly to your website this is what a lot of SAS companies do um and they can be as small and simple or as large and complex um as you want to make them and we'll talk through an example um of what those funnels can look like in in a few minutes um and the larger your funnel becomes the the more consideration there are for each individual step right so let's say for example at the beginning here where we're driving awareness so we've got three different campaigns you could these could also represent channels so like Google Facebook Tick Tock or these could just be like an email campaign some blogs you know some SEO and some paid ads really doesn't matter too much but each of those areas are going to have their own considerations right you know if thing if performance is dropping at this side then I'm going to be optimizing for different things than you know I would on the website and so each step in the funnel has its own considerations there's things you can do there's metrics you can measure and there's different tactics you'll use to improve those metrics across the funnel again we'll go into that in just a few minutes now the stages of the funnel so again this is something people over complicate I like to keep things simple um you know there are plenty of Frameworks and models to follow out there like the Ada framework for example however you know simply there's topper funnel there's middle or funnel and there's bottom of funnel um so there's three stages really um and you can go into into more detail here um and so at the top of the funnel this is where you're driving that awareness you're doing that lead generation so this could be you know sending emails to people it could be dming people on LinkedIn it could be posting um content on your LinkedIn or your Twitter or your Facebook you know driving awareness putting the message out there and so at the top of the funnel you want to get as much traffic as possible so the traffic comes into the top of the funnel they then get there then inside the funnel so this might be you know where you've captured an email it could just be them visiting your website you know you don't necessarily need first party data such as an email it could just be driving traffic to your website um and then in the middle of the funnel this is where you know okay they know exactly they know who you are this is where you sort of educate them about your company and you're trying to basically drive that conversion event get them onto a call get them to to start a free trial um and then bottom of the funnel this is where people have you know progressed a bit more perhaps they've hopped on that sales call perhaps they've started that trial but they you know they haven't become a customer yet they haven't reached Revenue um and so the aim here is to get that revenue is for them to become a customer and so similar to as I said above here each of these stages is going to come with their own considerations and tactics for example you know somebody's hopped on a sales call with me they're going to be far more aware of who my company is they're going to have far higher intent because they've taken the time to hop on a sales call um and so they're going to be very different to somebody who's you know not even heard of you before and they're going to have different intent and so therefore we're going to use uh different tactics which we'll talk through in a few minutes um and then so what do some of those tactics look like you know and so this is more geared towards paid funnels um but let's say for example topper funnel people don't know who your company is they don't know um who you are they don't know why you exist they don't know what problem you solve and so if we're just pitching to those people hey book a demo with us start a free trial you just sound like everyone else in the market who's in their DMS who's in their emails right I'm just cold pitching them they don't even know why they should have a solution like yours and so you want to take a slightly different approach and so some ideas for top of funnel content you want to be talking about pain points businesses exist to solve problems and so we always want to be talking about those problems agitating them so they become severe enough that people take action and look for a solution to those problems um and so at the top of the funnel we definitely don't want to be hey our product is great look at our reviews hop on our sales call because again you just sound like everyone else so you want to be tapping into those pain points really understanding our customer Avatar and some great content you can distribute here like guides checklists tools templates so just free value you're not trying to sell to them not yet and it's just about trying to alleviate some of that that pain they're experiencing you know spending too many hours a week on reporting um you know doing their manually doing their bookkeeping um manually sending emails you know these are all sort of pain points that we want to be trying to address through our top of funnel content then when they come into the middle of the funnel this is where we want to educate them on our categories so they know this problem exists they know they're you know spending too long on um creating manual dashboards and so now it's trying to educate them well hey here's this solution that means you don't have to do that anymore showing them what life looks like on the other side selling that transformation and so sharing social proof of other people experiencing that solution and it benefit in their life you know showing the quantification of how that solution has benefited them showing statistics um you know backing it up with data there there are so many baseless wild claims in in the world and so showing statistics real data of your solution um improving people's lives solving their problems and backing it up with research and then as we get to the bottom of funnel this is when you can start selling to people you know they've identified a problem in their life exists they are now aware of solutions that solve that problem now it's about introducing your product to be the solution to that problem and so this is when we start you know pushing for the sale this is where we could start showing testimonials of customers who are benefiting from your product uh social proof very um like very powerful psychological trigger uh competitor comparisons you can almost guarantee if they're at the bottom of the funnel they're already looking at competitors you know trying to get the best deal trying to find out who's best for them and so you want to be proactive answering those questions uh one-time offers this isn't great for everyone um you know quite against Edition discounts off but it doesn't have to be a discount it could be you know a volume based offer it could just be you know hopping on a demo of you and getting something in return sharing case studies so again building that Authority and third-party reviews uh on platforms like G2 um so you know they know they're unbiased you haven't influenced them you know people have actually benefited from your product coming down then so optimizing your funnel uh so big believer that um when you launch a website a marketing campaign or an advert that really is just a start um and so you know when you do that launch you know you're you start over here on the left I'm not saying you start uh at the far left but you might start over here or here um but it's very very rare to start off here right you know this is sort of you're scaling predictably um you know you're putting one dollar in you're getting two dollars out three dollars out four dollars out it's very rare to start over here right growth is an iterative process you have to test different variables so in the world of uh you know marketing funnels uh paid advertising specifically you're gonna have to test your targeting different copy variations different ad creatives um different offers different angles these are all the things you need to be testing um until you get on the to the right right hand side and so switching over to um where we build our funnels so here we've got um a funnel so like I said I've broken it down into top of funnel middle funnel and bottom of funnel to to keep it simple um and here we've just got like a really simple book a demo funnel this is what most SAS company or at least sales lead SAS companies operate so you're you've got multiple channels or campaigns here so this could be Google meta Tick Tock and email or perhaps these could just be different campaigns right you've got like um a top of funnel campaign you've got like some other campaign here um whatever you want that to be but all of this equates to traffic right you can have the greatest funnel in the world but if you're not pushing traffic to it and nobody's seeing it um you're failing you know the best the most important part of business which is which is a distribution and so the kind of metrics we're looking at here Impressions clicks CPM CTR CPA you know how many people are viewing and engaging with these campaigns that's really what you care about at this stage we then go to sort of middle of funnel again this is very basic but uh so you're pushing that traffic to your website and so the kind of metrics you're looking for here is okay well how many of those clicks turned into visits of the website there's sometimes a drop off there let's say your website has slow uh slow load speed and so people are dropping off how many leads are you getting you know if they're opting in how many people are opting in what's the opt-in rate so uh what percentage of those visitors are turning into leads bounce rate so of the people that visit your website what percent of them are just exiting the website um you know SAS companies uh generally have quite high bounce rates and what's what's the average session length so how long are people spending on your website this is a really good metric to keep an eye on um to measure lead quality you know if if people are good leads then they'll they have high higher intent and so they'll spend time looking around your website um getting educated and you know the longer somebody spends on your website the more likely they are to convert right because they're they're reading your sales argument so if they opt in yes we then start the sales process so this would be like hopping on a call with your sales team and so the kind of metrics we're looking for here is okay well how many of those sales calls were booked how many of those or what percentage of those people that book to call actually showed up so this is your show up rate and what's your win rate so out of the people who show up to a call and become a qualified sales opportunity how many of them are actually becoming customers and so really basic book a demo funnel but as I said earlier each step of this funnel comes with its own considerations and tactics you know once you've built a funnel what you should be doing before you run any tests is you should be you know monitoring it measuring it okay where are the revenue leaks where are people dropping off you know are people engaging with our adverts um our people when they visit our website are they sticking around are they opting in okay if they do opt-in is everyone turning up to the sales call um how many of those sales call or sales calls are we actually closing um and so depending on the answers to those questions um you can Veer off into many directions and so to give you a couple of examples let's say you had um low topper funnel engagement so uh on your ads you just weren't getting you're not getting many clicks you're not getting many views whatever content you're pushing uh you know not many people are getting to see this funnel again this is all irrelevant if people aren't clicking and going through to your funnels so some of the things you could consider here is your offer this is to me the most important part is like what are you offering the market and really your offer is something that you give to the market in return for their attention or money so it could be a demo that could be offer it could be a lead magnet and so you really want to be thinking about what are you offering the market is it unique is it attention grabbing does it solve a big problem uh does it sound like everyone else this is either going to contribute or take away a lot of your success of your funnel so always want to be thinking what are we giving people because when people come across your ads come across your website they're asking themselves what's in it for me what do I get out of this you know we're all naturally selfish and so you really want to be thinking what you give in the market then you want to be looking at traffic fit intent and awareness so let's say you're running ads on meta so Instagram Facebook the intent of that traffic is going to be far different than Google right because when people search for products on Google they have high intent right if they're looking for financial tracking software they're looking for a product whereas if somebody's just scrolling through Instagram looking at their friend's posts they're not looking to buy a product and so it's low intent and so you should tailor your approach based on what Channel you know what's their awareness do they know their this problem in their life even exists if not well they definitely don't know a solution exists and so you shouldn't be pitching the solution you should just be agitating the problem uh targeting are you targeting the Right audience you know an issue I see with a lot of SAS companies is they have a lot of leads but they're low quality they're struggling to convert those leads into sales opportunities so you have these inflated metrics topper funnel but then they're not growing as a company they're not getting Revenue um you know on the flip side of that some companies can't get any engagement and so are you targeting the the right audiences are you segmenting those audiences you know and this comes down to an understanding of your ICP um you know who you're targeting what problems do they have where can you find them uh really important and paid advertising copywriting and creative so is your copywriting uh does it Captivate an audience does it you know stop them while they're scrolling through Instagram and Facebook you know uh I think the average person nowadays has become numb to adverts and so copywriting is so important it's quite literally your sales team in written format right it's physically impossible for your sales team to speak to every single potential lead and so we do that through our messaging and so it's really really important to get that right the ad creative you know are you using static images versus videos versus carousels what would work better you know have you tested that and then uh testing all of that you know it's easy to make assumptions but really you should be looking at the data and that's that's going to tell you where to where to optimize as you know if you have a low click-through rate then it's probably because your ad isn't engaging enough and so that's low topple top of funnel engagement let's say then you're sending traffic to your website and you have um low low opt-in rate or low conversion so you know your ads have got great engagement High click-through rate um you know your cpms are brilliant but when they get into your website um they're just not converting and this could be because let's say in this example we've got a book a demo funnel but let's say you're sending this to everyone even to cold traffic and only a small percent of the market are actively looking to buy a solution you know three to five percent of the market so exclusively sending traffic to your website you're going to have low conversion rates because you're selling to people who don't even know a problem exists yet and so something you could do here is well instead of pushing them to a demo why don't you push them to a lead magnet instead like we talked to uh talked about in uh this document here um you know top of funnel content guide checklist tools templates is there a lead magnet you could use instead that addresses some kind of challenge that your your target audience um has and takes them a step further to their desired result um so you're not selling to them you're you know doing an exchange of value you give them like a lead magnet and in return you give them they give you their details um so perhaps putting that in place before and then if they opt in brilliant now you've got the Remo you can nurture them you can follow follow them up with email marketing continue to agitate that problem they're having introduced a solution build a relationship with them because they're going to buy eventually um and if they know like and trust you then the likelihood of them purchasing from you is is going to be higher than your competitors and you know the beauty of paid advertising if they if they don't opt in well great um you can retarget them until they do so you can just retarget website visitors or people that perhaps um you know perhaps they booked a call but they they didn't show up okay you could just retarget them and then you're pushing them to your sales process so we're just adding these mechanisms uh on the front end of your funnel so rather than just selling to people sell into the whole Market um you're now starting to get a bit more of a comprehensive marketing strategy so that's a low number of conversions now let's say um a low show up rate so let's say your Market your your funnel is is brilliant but people just aren't showing up to the sales calls and so there's things you could be doing there there's literally things you could be doing for every step in your funnel so let's say they're going to the website booking a call um now some some sort of mechanisms or steps you can put here is when they book a call rather than you know the conversation just finishing there you could send them to a thank you page and this is where you can sort of pre-frame the conversation you're about to have take them to that next step in the funnel um educate them about your products really affirm the decision they've made um so they don't cancel the call so you can have a pretty cool funnel where you're put pushing to that thank you page you're sending these email reminders SMS reminders if you want to you know 48 hours before hey really looking forward to our call here's what we're going to discuss here's an agenda or please read through these materials um so you can understand a bit better about us and so you'll just pre-framing the conversation increasing the likelihood of them showing up and then maybe once the sales call has completed what's your post cool follow-up you know giving them some action items giving them a summary giving them arming them with the right information they need to go back to to their business and justify working with you guys so here are a few ways you can optimize uh your funnel this this video has gone on a bit longer than I expected so I hope you found that valuable like I said the funnels are super super important um they're basically your sales team and so you really want to um optimize them you want to make sure that you're driving those custom acquisition costs lower and lower so you can acquire more customers profitably and you have more cash to reinvest into your marketing so like I said at the beginning um for those who hang around to the end you get access to a free funnel masterclass so if you look in the bio there'll be a link to the master class click that get access to the master class let me know what you think and I'll see you on the next video peace