The B2B marketing funnel: what most businesses miss in the middle

A B2B marketing funnel is just the journey a customer takes from not knowing you exist to paying you money. That’s it. Here’s how it works in plain English, why most businesses leave the middle of it empty, and how one startup used it to add $2 million in revenue in 18 months.

Here we go again

The moment a marketer mentions funnels, something happens in the room. Lips purse. There’s a quiet internal voice: here comes the part where they tell me to spend more money on something I don’t understand.

Fair enough. Funnels have been weaponised by bad marketers for years. But a funnel is one of the most useful frameworks in business, and you should know how it works even if you leave the marketing to specialists. Most companies are leaving serious money on the table because nobody has ever explained it clearly.

I talked this through on Slideshow with Dave Hayward with Stu Lees, one of New Zealand’s leading marketing advisors. It’s a strategic conversation with unexpected depth and emotion for a business podcast. Stu is a great bloke, and bloody smart.

The three stages of a B2B marketing funnel

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio put it plainly: “We are not thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think.” Your customers decide emotionally first, then recruit their brain to justify it. So a funnel has three layers: two emotional, one rational.

The top of the funnel earns attention through emotion: a frustration your customer already feels, a fear they carry, or an outcome they want. As Stu puts it: “You won’t capture people with logic at the top of the funnel. It’s too boring.”

The middle builds the rational case: proof, comparisons, how it works and why it makes sense. This is where most businesses go completely dark.

The bottom is emotional again: the feeling of making the right call.

Six to sixty touchpoints

Here’s what most people also miss: it can take anywhere from six to sixty touchpoints before someone buys. That’s table stakes in an era of high-frequency, low-fidelity communication.

Your funnel is the system that delivers those touches, in the right order, without burning the relationship. “People don’t buy from ads,” Stu told me. “They buy from relationships.”

How one startup added $2 million in 18 months

Stu spent 18 months running marketing for a San Francisco tech startup. They emailed 40,000 people a week with pure value and no pitch. Only when someone showed clear engagement did they move them to the rational middle layer.

Two salespeople. No cold calling. $2 million in 18 months, and a 45% open rate on 9,000 warm prospects.

We’ve seen the same logic hold with our own clients. One has closed four pieces of business through multi-touch funnel marketing, with an average deal above $45,000.

Three things almost everyone neglects in their funnel

1. The emotional hook at the top. Check whether your content leads with a frustration your customer recognises, or a feature they haven’t decided to care about yet.
2. The middle layer entirely. If nothing exists between the moment someone first hears about you and the moment you ask for money, you don’t have a funnel. You have a gap.
3. A consistent, useful email. “Sending email marketing every month proves to people who aren’t yet customers that you are a solid business,” Stu said. That’s your middle of the funnel.

If you’d like help working out what’s missing from yours, see our B2B marketing services or book 30 minutes with me.

Questions people ask

What is a B2B marketing funnel?
It’s the path a business buyer takes from first hearing about you to becoming a customer, and the marketing that moves them along it.

What are the stages of a B2B funnel?
Top (attention, usually earned through emotion), middle (the rational case: proof, comparisons and how it works) and bottom (the decision, where the buyer needs to feel they’ve made the right call).

Why is the middle of the funnel so important?
Because that’s where buyers build the case for choosing you, and it’s where most businesses have nothing. Useful email, case studies and comparisons do the work here.

This article first appeared in Bright Objects, my fortnightly newsletter on brand, marketing strategy and AI for business and tech leaders. Subscribe here.

Sources and further reading

• Slideshow with Dave Hayward, Stu Lees: Evidence funnels work (Season 2, Episode 6): all episodes
• Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain