Inbound Marketing Funnel 101: And How to Create One on LinkedIn

Are the majority of your clients from your own outreach via cold email or LinkedIn messaging?

Wouldn’t it be nice if the leads just came to you instead, asking about your business with an interest you didn’t need to send a 100 cold emails for?.

That’s the magic of an inbound marketing funnel.

If done right, you could get hundreds of high-quality leads and curious prospects sending YOU LinkedIn connection requests and emails, hoping for a yes.

Sounds too good to be true? I’m telling you it’s really possible.

We’ll tackle,

• What are the four stages of the Inbound Marketing Funnel?
• What are the Inbound Marketing Channels?
• How do you build your own Inbound Marketing Funnel?
• How to create an Inbound sales funnel?
• What are the best Inbound Marketing tools?

You’ll know every nook and corner about inbound strategies by the end of this blog, so get ready.

Autobots, roll out!

What is an Inbound Marketing Funnel?

An Inbound Marketing funnel is basically a business strategy where the leads come to you instead of you reaching out first.

This usually happens through SEO, social media posts (like LinkedIn posts), participating in relevant forums , webinars etc.

Ever seen an innovative Instagram ad and clicked on the profile to check it out? Then you’ve been ‘inbound market-ed’.

The best part about it is that the visitors are already interested from the start, so you don’t need to filter prospects further.

And we can break this funnel down into 4 main stages. Let’s check it out.

What are the four stages of the Inbound Marketing Funnel?

Within just four key stages, an Inbound funnel changes a stranger on the internet to a customer and a promoter of your product.

It’s like a caterpillar growing into a butterfly, but the wings are 5-star reviews of your product or service online.

1. Attract

This is the part where you grab their attention or curiosity, they can’t click on your LinkedIn post if you never post in the first place.

You need to take advantage of LinkedIn posts, comments, SEO marketing, blogs, Webinars, whatever puts you out there.

Show off your brand and reach the widest audience possible, especially on LinkedIn.

Why?

LinkedIn has over 1 billion members and is the largest professional database in the world.

It’s got posts, networks, events, sales tools and so much more that will support your entire marketing funnel.

LinkedIn gives you a huge reach and you can get a ton of leads from just a couple posts a week.

I’m speaking from experience, each team member of our SalesRobot team was getting 50k impressions on LinkedIn posts last month.

We did this through analysing our target audience, creating quality posts for each part of the funnel and reaching out to hundreds of prospects.

And that’s completely organically, if you had to pay– that comes out to roughly $3500 - $4000 every month in ad costs.

I’ll give you a helping hand, you can try our free LinkedIn Post generator and see what results you get.

Once they’re interested, you can begin guiding them on the next step.

2. Convert

“Sign up for a free trial”, “Check out our website”, “Hit the subscribe button”, they’re all clear examples of a Call to Action.

It can also be a meeting link, a google form, just adding someone as a contact etc.

All of these are basically converting an interested visitor to a lead. These are valuable future customers.

And with Inbound marketing, all your leads are likely much more interested than outreach clients, since they found you first.

3. Close

This is the most important and sometimes most difficult part of sales.

Converting your interested leads to an actual customer.

Just grabbing people’s attention or curiosity is not what makes money, you need to close a deal.

This is a common step in both Inbound and Outbound marketing, you’ll likely have a meeting or a call and discuss the deal.

You’ll likely have to follow-up on messages, send personalized messages, engage with their account etc.

In the end, it’s both a matter of luck and skill to finally convert an interested lead into a customer.

Inbound leads have converted at a 13% average close rate for us, while outbound leads have only converted at 2%

4. Delight

The party isn’t over just because they’re a customer now, you have to make them a happy customer.

You can send feedback forms, follow-up at regular intervals, and provide quick and helpful customer support.

And if your customer is really happy with your service then they will contribute by promoting your brand themselves.

This can be through reviews, word of mouth, social media posts and more.

It’s like fixing the TV for your grandpa, suddenly you’ve become the go-to IT guy for the neighborhood!  

Keeping these four stages in mind should give you a good inbound marketing strategy to follow.

But your actual funnel also needs a little structure to be effective,

What is the structure of a marketing funnel?

Your marketing funnel structure is mainly dependent on your target audience.

There are mainly three parts to it and they all cater to a different type of prospect, here we go:

1. TOFU

No, not the food.

TOFU or Top of the Funnel generally focuses on marketing to the least qualified leads. They will generally need some convincing and the majority of them will not convert.

These are people who have some pain points and they’re trying to learn or find out more about potential solutions.

It’s difficult to directly sell to TOFU leads and you’ll need to nurture them before you can fully do a sales pitch.

LinkedIn posts are super effective here to put yourself out there and reach a lot of people in the industry.

For example,

This TOFU post of ours does two things,

• Shows the user our success and results of our lead-building process
• A free giveaway for our playbook to replicate it

Everybody loves free stuff, and people also love to hear success stories. So naturally, you’ll get a lot of engagement.

Your goal should be getting them curious to know more.

It’s a clear example of reaching for a broad audience and thus, we got 2k+ comments in a matter of days.

Some other effective approaches are,

• Create helpful blogs: Instead of trying to pitch a product, market some helpful blogs that answer their questions. (Psst.. we’re doing that right now)
• White papers
• Ebooks

Your concern should be to provide some free help and build trust first since most of the TOFU audience will not convert.

However, it is usually also a much larger sample size than the rest of the funnel.

So if you’re doing your TOFU right, you will still be seeing a lot more green in the bank account.

2. MOFU

MOFU or Middle of the Funnel leads know what their pain points are and are actively trying to find a solution.

These are very valuable leads and have decent chances of converting to a customer, since they have a demand and you could be the supply.

However, you still don’t want to come off too strong yet as they haven’t reached the final stage of the funnel.

You don’t ask your partner to buy a dog with you on the first date right? Same thing.

A great way to target your MOFU audience is through case studies and comparison posts.

For example,

In this post, I talk about a case study with a recent client. An executive coach who closed $25k revenue in just 3 months.

Compared to the TOFU post, this is more specific to the industry and a specific problem that the MOFU audience has.

The post does a deep dive into,

• Who was the client and what have they tried?
• What are their main pain points and problems?
• What was the solution to all their problems?
• Finally, the results with numbers and facts.

This wraps up a good case study and tells a story that people can get inspired by.

And in this case, they’ll want to know more about the solution, which is you. That’s how you get a meeting, and eventually, a customer.

This kind of information is priceless for a lot of the community, especially people starting out.

Talk about these in your posts and social media and you’ll quickly see a lot of positive responses.

Your concern should be providing examples of solutions to specific problems (that you can solve) and you can also lightly start to pitch your own business.

The main goal is to get them to the next stage.

3. BOFU

Bottom of the funnel leads are ready to come out of the end as your happy customers.

They are called highly qualified leads and are usually in the market searching to purchase.

However, they’ve probably also identified your competitors and are trying to narrow down on one solution.

So your goal is to market your product, target specific pain points and provide the solution to them.

How?

Make posts that highlight what you do and use CTAs.

For example,

In this post, I target the pain points of several sales executives, marketing agencies, small founders– rejection and low results on outreach.

I talk about a recent rejection during our email outreach campaigns, where the client was very impressed by our dedication and effort.

I continue to say that the main point is to overcome the rejection and improve your outreach through:

• Testing new pain points
• Doubling cold email volume
• Increase LinkedIn outreach volume

All these can be done by SalesRobot, which is what we’re leading to with our post.

By highlighting the pain points and telling people you’re the answer, they’re more inclined to want a meeting.

Make sure you include a Call to Action so that they can take the next step and convert from stranger to customer.

Besides that, it’s also important to make:

• Vendor comparisons
• Review and Alternatives blogs
• Live demos
• Trials

Your main goal is to convince your BOFU leads that your product is the best fit for them, so go all out.

Talk about your services, provide credibility, trials and highlight all the key features.

You can compare your product with your competitors, allowing you to expand your position in the market.

Make sure you remain honest and fair though, bad publicity is hard to wipe off.

We’ve gone through a lot about the structure and stages of the funnel, but how do you actually start seeing results?

First, you need to identify the channels that work for your service.

What are the Inbound Marketing Channels?

A marketing channel is basically the method through which your business and the prospects outside of it come in touch.

In Inbound marketing, you could say it’s the place that prospects first engage with you.

1. Blogs

Blogs and SEO optimized content are my favorite way of getting results with Inbound marketing.

You can hit all 3 key parts of the funnel using just blogs, for example:

• TOFU- Create helpful blogs that provide information about a topic
• MOFU- Create how-to and comparison blogs that answer a specific question while promoting your business
• BOFU- Create review and alternatives blogs that compare your business with competitors

If you’re writing good and informative blogs, you can drive a lot of engagement to your website.

Make sure you keep it captivating, friendly and even include some jokes here and there to keep your readers hooked

2. LinkedIn Posts

While social media in general is a great channel for inbound marketing, LinkedIn is the biggest professional platform in the world.

If you consistently post on LinkedIn with quality information, personal success stories, experiences etc., you’ll grab people’s attention.

In addition to getting leads to check out your brand, you can also grow your network and get more 1st and 2nd degree connections.

This boosts your credibility, increases opportunities and makes you visible in the industry.

3. Landing Pages

Your business probably has a website, but have you ever taken a look at your bounce rate?

Your bounce rate is the number of people who visit your landing page and never navigate further.

A landing page with an engaging catchline, a friendly UI and an attractive CTA is extremely important.

This will boost the chances of a person staying on your website, learning more about your product and eventually converting.

Picture the landing page as the front of a grocery store, no one wants to walk into some dirty old hut on the street.

But I never see an empty Walmart or Apple store.

4. Social Media

Posts and comments on Reddit, X, Instagram etc. can also be a modern channel for Inbound marketing.

This especially applies if your target audience is on the younger side.

Social media marketing has a broad range of channels within it, but it mainly comes down to posts and comments.

If the top comment on a “What’s the best LinkedIn automation tool” reddit thread says, ‘SalesRobot’-- then you know it’s good. (It is!

Don’t knock it till you try it, it just might work.

Using these marketing channels, you’re sure to reach the vast majority of the prospect pool.

These are all your roads, now we just need to get the car.

How to build your own Inbound Marketing Funnel? 5 unique methods to get your creative juices flowing

Every business has a different type of inbound marketing strategy, there’s no one-size-fits-all all solution.

But what I can do is tell you what worked for me.

1. Reach out to LinkedIn post commenters

Suppose you get a hit post on LinkedIn, or maybe another influencer in your industry has just gone viral.

Every single commenter is an active user engaging with the topic and business.

In other words, there’s a lot of qualified leads you can reach out to, and you’ll have pretty good chances.

And if you don’t want to manually connect, wait for the acceptance, send a message, blah blah blah..

SalesRobot can automatically import all commenters of any post and then run a messaging campaign on them.

You just have to create a campaign with “Add All Post Commenters” ,

Then copy the post link from LinkedIn

And just import it into SalesRobot where it will scrape all the commenters' profiles and add them to your automated message campaign!

2. Do some attractive giveaways!

Everyone loves free stuff, I know I do. Your target audience isn’t any different either.

Giveaway posts can get a lot of traction on LinkedIn, especially if it's something people want.

It’s best if it’s something specific and in your expertise, since that shows people you know what you’re doing.

Consequently, they’ll want to talk to you.

For example, if you’re doing growth marketing on LinkedIn: you can give out some free message templates.

Give away something attractive and impossible to ignore, you’ll get a lot in return.

3. Leave thoughtful comments on large creator posts!

Let’s face it, you’re probably not the biggest LinkedIn influencer out there.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t get the same reach as some of the biggest names there.

You can leave a unique opinion, or your own personal insights as a thoughtful comment on other viral posts.

For example, Justin Welsh is a huge LinkedIn influencer with 700k+ followers.

He regularly posts on LinkedIn every day and gets tens of millions of impressions per month.

A lot of those eyes are also on his comment section, providing you a platform to showcase your personal brand.

By putting your own voice in the picture, people will click on your profile and see what you do.

It’s natural curiosity. It’s also called inbound marketing.

4. Host LinkedIn events!

LinkedIn events are a fantastic way to drive more eyes to you and what you do.

They can be a webinar, a talk, collaborations, demos, whatever. The important thing is that you showcase your brand.

Every single attendee is a potential customer, you just need to maximise the number of people who see it.

Promotion of your LinkedIn event is an absolute must, it’s even more important than the actual presentation.

And SalesRobot can help you there a lot.

You can create an outreach campaign to a list of people in your industry, leaders, prospects, anyone who would be interested.

For example, if I was running an event on the topic of “Using AI in B2B sales prospecting”, I’d just search for all the B2B sales professionals in the US and tell them about my event.

It’s obviously difficult to reach out to all 97,000 search results here. But not for SalesRobot.

You can just copy the URL and paste it into the box, SalesRobot will handle the rest.

5. Create your own community!

LinkedIn Groups are communities that have the same interests and are usually in the same industry.

These are basically hotspots of prospects that you can invite to your own community.

You can share your insights, engage with and have discussions with this community.

This boosts your network and also provides a flow of inbound leads to convert.

For example, if you have Sales Navigator, you can specify the industry and the particular groups people are a part of

This provides you hundreds of group members that are now your potential community members.

How do you reach out to all of them? Again, SalesRobot has got a neat “Add from Sales Navigator Search” feature just for that.

You can directly import prospects with just the URL of your search.

And as usual, create a campaign and let it run completely automatically, safely and on the cloud.

These will definitely get you up and running, but I can get a little bit more specific.

My expertise lies in sales, so it would be a crime if I didn’t let you in on a few trade secrets.

How to create an Inbound Marketing Sales Funnel?

1. Identify your ideal customer persona.

Your ideal customer persona or ICP will define your entire sales strategy, so you need to have a clear idea of who you’re trying to find.

There can be multiple personas depending on your service or product, but they usually have overlapping pain points.

For example, a growth marketer would target LinkedIn influencers, smaller startup founders, etc.

These personas will be the huge majority of your customer base, so define their identity, pain points and approach strategies.

You can also amend this as you grow in size and learn more about what works and what doesn’t.

2. Keywords, SEO and ‘People also Ask’

The first step most people do when they have a question is google it.

If your blogs, website or posts show up on the first page of Google, then you’re naturally going to get a lot of visitors.

By implementing SEO strategies, using popular keywords and answering common questions, you can boost your rankings a ton.

Not only does this bring in more leads, it also levels up your credibility and brand awareness.

3. Incorporate CTAs

Even if people are seeing your content, be it in blogs or your website or a webinar you hosted,

You still need to encourage them to take the next step in your funnel. This happens through CTAs or Calls to Action.

This can be telling someone to sign up for a free trial or maybe book a quick 15 minute call.

Either way, you need to prompt them to continue further or they might just move on to the next article.

4. Use Inbound Marketing tools

There’s several tools out there that can help you do inbound marketing effortlessly.

For example, SalesRobot will automatically make endorsements, post likes and comments and keep your LinkedIn network growing even if you’re not at the computer.

If you want to save some time and effort on your various sales strategies, it’s a good idea to give a tool a try.

And I’ve got a neat list to make that easier for you.

What are the best Inbound Marketing tools?

1. SalesRobot

SalesRobot is a LinkedIn + Email automation tool that can create personalized message campaigns, follow-ups and automate all LinkedIn actions.

I know what you’re thinking, isn’t this an outreach tool?

Technically, you’re right. You will still have to create blogs and host webinars all by yourself.

But SalesRobot will send out hundreds of personalized messages, connection requests, emails and even AI-lookalike features.

It lets you generate leads from the ‘People also Viewed’ section of LinkedIn.

You can also efficiently manage your LinkedIn inboxes in one place so you never miss out on a great lead.

You can create message campaigns targeted to all members of a group, event, CSV file or more.

SalesRobot will reach out with an extra personal touch, guaranteeing a good impression with almost all your leads.

And the best part is you can set up your entire message campaign within just 5 minutes with SalesGPT.

In the end, if you’re looking to really get a bump on the lead growth, SalesRobot is your pal.

An extensive 14-day free trial should show you some real results to prove it. (We don’t ask for credit card or phone number)

2. Taplio

Taplio is a great tool for inbound marketing on LinkedIn since it comes with a huge variety of features.

These range from AI powered content creation, writing and scheduling posts, a chat assistant, automatic carousels etc.

Taplio focuses on growing your brand on LinkedIn and reaching a wider audience.

It also provides extensive metrics to keep track of your inbound strategy and progress, so you can know what works and what doesn't.

3. Hubspot

Hubspot is a fantastic customer platform with a huge range of integrations to bring your sales and marketing tools together.

Hubspot provides Marketing Hub, which is their AI powered software that automates marketing actions, create forms, SMS marketing and social media promotions.

It has a ton of AI features and also automates Email sequencing, allowing for multi-channel reach.

Finally, it provides tons of analytics with a dashboard and important data-backed decisions with metrics.

Conclusion

Having an effective inbound marketing funnel is guaranteed to grow your business and bring in more leads.

There’s mainly four stages to it,

• Attract, bringing in curious strangers for the first time
• Convert, showcasing your product or services, converting them to leads
• Close, finalize a deal as your leads become paying customers
• Delight, keep your customers happy and they will promote you for free

Besides the four stages, the funnel is made up of three key sections:

• TOFU, least qualified leads- the largest population who may not be too interested
• MOFU- slightly more qualified- they have identified their problem and are looking for solutions
• BOFU - highly qualified leads- they are actively searching for vendors and are likely to close a deal

By planning your marketing strategy around these sections and also using the most suitable channels, you’ll see results.

Channels can be just LinkedIn posts and SEO marketing or even Instagram reels and large posters.

Either way, the goal is to get more eyes on your brand and get them to come to you.

And to really grow the number of future-customers of your business– consider SalesRobot.

Through hyper-personalized campaigns on both LinkedIn and Email, sequencing and follow-ups as well as automatic LinkedIn actions, it will keep your business booming.

You don’t have to take my word for it, check out our wonderful reviews on G2!

Good luck!