Marketing conversion rates benchmarks: How to improve your B2B marketing funnel

The sales industry doesn’t lack competition. So it’s no wonder every executive and sales op wants to know how their conversion rates compare to the rest of the market. This isn’t competition for competition’s sake. Benchmarking your conversion rates to an industry average can highlight the areas you need to improve.

In this article, we'll provide an analysis of our own conversion rates and benchmark them against other B2B businesses worldwide. Keep in mind that conversion rates can vary based on your industry and marketing efforts. However, these benchmarks will provide a useful guideline for you.

What are conversion rates?

Conversion rates are a measure of how effective your marketing efforts are at converting potential customers into actual customers. You can calculate conversion rates at any stage of your funnel, from the number of website visitors who become leads, to the number of leads that convert into opportunities and deals.

Our inbound marketing conversion rates

We've compiled our inbound marketing conversion rates for each stage of the funnel, starting with MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads).

Funnel Stage	Average Conversion Rate
MQL > Pre-Sales Meeting	44%
Pre-Sales Meeting > SAL	73%
SAL > Opportunity	63%
Opportunity > Deal	32%

Defining marketing waterfall metrics

To accurately compare our conversion rates with others, we need to clarify how we define each stage of the marketing waterfall. An MQL is an account that has interacted with our website or content and has the potential to convert.

If the MQL agrees to a Pre-Sales Meeting, we view them as a Sales Qualified Lead. Our marketing team or SDRs will qualify them to book a meeting.

If our sales reps are happy with the lead after the pre-sales meeting and agree to nurture them, they become a SAL or Sales Accepted Lead.

After a few more meetings, the sales executive can determine if the lead has a pain point we can solve. If so, the lead becomes an Opportunity to close the account, and we'll spend more time nurturing the account.

Opportunities turn into Deals when the account signs the contract.

Other benchmark marketing conversion rates

We're not the only organisation to release conversion rate data. Here are some conversion rates from other B2B SaaS startups:

Upscope cover top of the funnel marketing conversion rates in their blog post. Here’s a quick overview of the conversion rates they’re seeing:

Funnel Stage	Average Conversion Rate
Blog visitor > Landing page visitor	4.5%
Landing page visitor > Sign up	11.1%
Sign up > Buyer	33.3%

On Tuesday, 5th March 2019, 573 people landed on the Upscope blog. Of those 573 people, 26 clicked through the main Upscope website. Three of those visitors signed up via the landing page. About one-third of everyone who signs up becomes an Upscope customer.

Kalungi has also compiled conversion metrics from several B2B SaaS startups.

Funnel Stage	Average Conversion Rate
Visitor > Subscriber	5%
Subscriber > MQL	20%
MQL > SAL	43.75%
SAL > SQL	63.33%
SQL > Opportunity	43.33%
Opportunity > Deal	31.25%

There are a few similarities between all of these stats:

Aim for a 5% conversion rate on your landing page
Convert 30%-40% of MQLs to SALs
Turn half of your SALs into opportunities
Close 33% of those opportunities

Improving your conversion rates

The best way to improve your B2B marketing conversion rates is to attract better quality leads. Regardless of how you attract them, whether through SEO, PPC ads, ABM, or any other strategy, the better the leads you attract, the more likely they are to convert at every stage of your funnel.

One way to attract better quality leads is by adding an intelligent intent data platform to your martech stack. By sorting your current leads by intent, you can identify those most likely to buy and optimise your campaigns to target similar accounts.

This strategy is why our marketing conversion rates are higher than some of the other benchmarks we've provided. By using our own intent tool, we can actively market to companies we know are likely to buy and increase the ratio of high-quality MQLs to low-quality MQLs.

In conclusion, by benchmarking your conversion rates against the industry standards and improving your lead quality, you can optimise your marketing funnel to drive more conversions and revenue for your business.