7 Common Marketing Challenges + How to Solve Them

7 Common Marketing Challenges + How to Solve Them

7 Common Marketing Challenges + How to Solve Them

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Don’t Let These Challenges Interfere with Growing Your Company

Marketing as a small business presents several challenges. Between budgetary constraints and a lack of clarity about the right ways to market a business, it’s no wonder that marketing is often a small businesses least favorite business function.

But it’s probably the most important. It’s crucial to maintain an ongoing marketing and lead generation strategy to yield beneficial outcomes for your brand. One of the keys to successfully marketing a company is consistency along with a clearly defined strategy.

Marketing is often bumped in priority when client or personnel issues arise. Over the years, we’ve witnessed a handful of challenges again and again. These challenges are common in organizations of all sizes and in different stages of the business lifecycle. By building and an awareness and understanding of these issues, you’ll be better equipped to solve these challenges when they arise.

Biggest Marketing Challenges

The challenges listed below are the most frequently encountered by small businesses, no matter the industry or offering.

Budget

Many small businesses feel the size of their budgets will restrict their marketing efforts. So why try? Big brands usually have larger budgets with more online marketing resources, making smaller companies feel like their efforts will get lost in the shuffle. Despite being a common misconception, budget size doesn’t equate to the outcome of marketing efforts. Larger budgets bring more marketing opportunities to explore, however, the execution is far more important than the budget.

Small businesses may lack the budget, but a solid marketing strategy and execution will still yield excellent results. There is plenty of room on the internet for small businesses and large corporations to co-exist and succeed no matter their budgets.   

Lack of Systems and Processes

No matter the size of the business, finding new ways to organize and streamline operations is key to successful marketing. Marketing in the digital world requires managing multiple channels where you can interact with audiences. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. Developing specific systems and processes will save precious time and ensure brand continuity along the way.

Do you have an onboarding process for new clients or new employees? Utilizing a similar approach to your marketing will ensure you have clear documentation and the foundation for scaling your marketing over time.

Ready to take action? Let’s have a conversation

Content for Sales Teams

Is your sales team fully leveraging the content you produce? Many organizations create valuable content for their audiences but fail to use it in the best manner possible. Sales teams can use content as part of the lead nurturing process to help inform prospects about the business. Not many small businesses think about repurposing their content for this purpose, but it is a great way to boost ROI on content creation.

Every great organization requires effective communication to be successful. For sales reps to start utilizing the appropriate content during their pitches, the marketing department should educate them to ensure they are aware of what’s available. Organizing content according to type, audience, and objectives will help sales teams find what they need to bolster their sales

Technology

We are surrounded by endless options for software and hardware to support our companies. There is quite literally an application or technological solution for every aspect of digital marketing. The sheer number of options can lead to paralysis by analysis. And after choosing a specific solution, integrating the technology takes time and expertise to ensure it is implemented properly.

This challenge (and the next three) requires you to either commit to building in-house expertise, or to finding a trustworthy partner who can supplement your team. If these tasks aren’t in your wheelhouse, you should strongly consider partnering with an agency who can build and execute a successful strategy. Having experts in your corner will support online visibility and will naturally assist with lead acquisition.

Ongoing Education

Trying to keep up with the latest trends in marketing is a full-time job. The internet moves quickly, and marketing is constantly evolving. Just as small businesses catch up, the industry evolves again. Remaining on top of the best marketing techniques requires ongoing education that many small businesses simply can’t handle.

Lack of Time

Is there ever enough time in the day? Most organizations are stretched thin on time and resources, which leaves little time to invest in marketing and to further grow the business. If you consistently push-off your marketing, then you should consider an agency partner that can do the time-intensive work on your behalf.  

Lack of Consistency

Every marketer will tell you consistency is the key to success. Unfortunately, consistency is also one of the problematic elements of marketing for small businesses. Small businesses often are forced to sideline marketing for other priorities.

Your Next Steps

Small businesses are constantly facing new challenges when trying to market their products and services. The lack of expertise can result in many missed opportunities for growth. To keep up with the ongoing marketing trends, small businesses can significantly benefit by partnering with an agency with the right resources and expertise. 

For additional insight, check out our articles about what to look for in an outsourced marketing team and what to look for in an SEO agency.

We hope the tips above are helpful in improving your campaigns. Have more questions about partnering with an agency? Reach out to us directly.

Liz-headshot

Meet the Author

Liz Hersh is the founder of Hersh PR and Marketing, a digital marketing agency. Together with a team of marketing professionals she helps clients generate leads and increase revenue. 

Read 
More Articles.

Read 
More Articles.

Writing High-Impact B2B Case Studies

Writing High-Impact B2B Case Studies

Marketing as a small business presents several challenges. Between budgetary constraints and a lack of clarity about the right ways to market a business, it’s no wonder that marketing is often a small businesses least favorite business function. But it’s probably the most important. It’s crucial to maintain an ongoing marketing and lead generation strategy to yield beneficial outcomes for your brand.

read more
7 Common Marketing Challenges + How to Solve Them

7 Common Marketing Challenges + How to Solve Them

Marketing as a small business presents several challenges. Between budgetary constraints and a lack of clarity about the right ways to market a business, it’s no wonder that marketing is often a small businesses least favorite business function. But it’s probably the most important. It’s crucial to maintain an ongoing marketing and lead generation strategy to yield beneficial outcomes for your brand.

read more
7 Things to Look for in an Outsourced Marketing Team

7 Things to Look for in an Outsourced Marketing Team

Outsourcing your marketing is one of the best decisions you can make for your small business. Traditional in-house marketing teams are a great solution for larger organizations that have the resources available to employee experts in the 10+ roles that it takes to run an effective department.

read more

Subscribe to Get The Latest Insights.

What makes marketing so challenging?

Trying to keep-up with the tools, technology and the limited attention span of your target market are all challenging. Get our tips on how to grow leads and revenue, delivered directly to your inbox.

Join The List

Request a Demo.

Are you ready to take action? Let's see how we can reach your
goals with a 20-minute introductory call.

7 Things to Look for in an Outsourced Marketing Team

7 Things to Look for in an Outsourced Marketing Team

7 Things to Look for in an Outsourced Marketing Team

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An Outsourced Marketing Team can be a Smart Investment

Outsourcing your marketing is one of the best decisions you can make for your small business. Traditional in-house marketing teams are a great solution for larger organizations that have the resources available to employ experts in the 10+ roles that it takes to run an effective department. Unfortunately, small businesses face a shortage of time and staffing that often places marketing on the back burner.

An outsourced marketing team delivers many benefits.

Save Time: The most restrictive resource every business has is time. There’s never enough time in a day to handle all your business’s needs and still effectively market your services. With an outsourced team, you can focus on the best and highest use of your time as the business owner.

Reduce Costs: To make money, you have to spend, but how much you should spend is the real question. Marketing can become a costly endeavor depending on your industry and strategy, and the cost of hiring employees only adds to the monthly and annual expenditures. Outsourced teams typically cost half the amount of an in-house marketing team and can often produce better results.

Growth Management: Your marketing team needs to be able to drive and manage sustainable growth for your business. Outsourced marketing teams have more resources to dedicate to your marketing growth since in-house teams are limited to the resources provided.

Outside Perspective: It’s easy for business owners and in-house marketing teams to get stuck in a certain way of thinking and doing things. Working with an external team gives you a fresh perspective on your company, product offerings and branding. This will help create more robust marketing initiatives along with an ability to see aspects of your marketing that can be improved.

Ready to take action? Let’s have a conversation

What to Look for When Hiring a Marketing Agency

Anyone who begins looking for an outsourced marketing team will quickly become overwhelmed with the thousands of agencies available. Finding the right team for your business is challenging, but knowing what to look for will help you quickly narrow down the top choices. Here are some helpful indicators to look for when you’re ready to find the right outsourced marketing agency.

No. 1 – Reviews, Testimonials, and Case Studies

One of the quickest ways to determine how well an agency will fulfill expectations is through reviews, testimonials, and case studies. These types of feedback and proof will give you a good idea of what a prospective agency can do for your business.

There’s no better way to know if an agency will follow through on its word than by reading and hearing about the experiences of current and former clients. Understanding what an agency has done for businesses similar to yours will help narrow your search. 

No. 2 – Staff Expertise

When looking for the right agency for your business, it’s important to understand who will be directly involved with working on your account. You want to know that the staff members who will be in charge of your company’s marketing campaigns have the experience, professionalism and skills to ensure that your business is taken care of effectively.

Many agencies make big promises but don’t actually have staff with the right expertise to follow through on those promises. Vetting an agency’s team will give you additional insight to determine if they are going to be the right fit for your business or not.

No. 3 – Specialties and Focus

Just as there are different types of marketing campaigns, there are also different types of marketing agencies that specialize in working with certain types of businesses or marketing campaigns. Do you need a pay-per-click campaign or a perhaps a content-heavy thought leadership campaign? An honest agency will be upfront about what’s in their wheelhouse and when they’ll make an introduction or bring in a strategic partner to ensure that the right minds are at the table.

No. 4 – Systems and Processes

There will always be more than one way to approach marketing for any business. Your prospective agency needs to have clearly defined systems and processes to execute a strategy that will get results. A scattershot approach is never effective. Agencies are responsible for attracting and helping retain customers through streamlined processes that allow the customer to move seamlessly through the buyer’s journey.

Thousands of different marketing-related cloud software solutions are currently available to help businesses streamline their processes. Researching the technologies an agency uses for managing their projects will help you better determine whether an agency’s processes will blend well with your own.

No. 5 – Communication and Availability

Marketing and business are non-stop, around-the-clock operations that can drastically shift directions at any given moment. How available will a prospective agency be for you when you need them most? Will they require you to schedule a meeting or will they provide a direct line of communication for you? Understanding the agency’s communication protocols and the accessibility of your marketing team is key to ensuring that you won’t be caught surprised in a critical moment.

No. 6 – Reports and Analyses

With the oversaturation of the marketplace with content and advertising of all kinds, basic or routine participation is not enough anymore. To see the fruits of your marketing labor pay off, you must consistently analyze your campaign performance to see what’s working, what’s not and make continuous improvements. Will your prospective agency show you monthly reports and analysis on their progress, or will you remain in the dark?

It’s imperative to know how well your marketing team’s efforts are performing, so you can see the direct return on your investment. A good agency is transparent about results and will show you that they’re serious about holding themselves accountable.

No. 7 – Access to Assets

When you start working with a digital marketing agency, it’s important to clarify which assets are already in place and which ones need to be built. Every activity generates data, graphics, content and more, and it’s important for you to maintain access to all your assets and channels. Access to historical data and insights can also help improve your business over time, no matter who you choose to work with. Be sure that provisions are made to give you access to all your social channels, website, graphics, content, data, analytics and so on.

No. 8 – Compatibility (Bonus!)

Do you enjoy conversations with a prospective agency team? Do you feel confident they’ll produce the results your business needs to grow? An important factor in choosing an agency is having a good rapport and to feel like you can effectively communicate with your marketing team. Outsourcing marketing will undoubtedly take an enormous responsibility off your shoulders, but it still requires collaboration and commitment from both parties to work.

Your Next Steps

Delegating your business’s marketing to an outsourced team will take a significant burden off your shoulders. You’ll enjoy the benefits of being able to save time and energy while experiencing growth from the results your marketing team will produce. Starting the search for an outsourced marketing team can be intimidating, but empowering yourself with relevant background information will make your choice easier.

We hope the tips above are helpful in improving your campaigns. Have more questions about partnering with an agency? Reach out to us directly.

Liz-headshot

Meet the Author

Liz Hersh is the founder of Hersh PR and Marketing, a digital marketing agency. Together with a team of marketing professionals she helps clients generate leads and increase revenue. 

Read 
More Articles.

Read 
More Articles.

Writing High-Impact B2B Case Studies

Writing High-Impact B2B Case Studies

Marketing as a small business presents several challenges. Between budgetary constraints and a lack of clarity about the right ways to market a business, it’s no wonder that marketing is often a small businesses least favorite business function. But it’s probably the most important. It’s crucial to maintain an ongoing marketing and lead generation strategy to yield beneficial outcomes for your brand.

read more
7 Common Marketing Challenges + How to Solve Them

7 Common Marketing Challenges + How to Solve Them

Marketing as a small business presents several challenges. Between budgetary constraints and a lack of clarity about the right ways to market a business, it’s no wonder that marketing is often a small businesses least favorite business function. But it’s probably the most important. It’s crucial to maintain an ongoing marketing and lead generation strategy to yield beneficial outcomes for your brand.

read more
7 Things to Look for in an Outsourced Marketing Team

7 Things to Look for in an Outsourced Marketing Team

Outsourcing your marketing is one of the best decisions you can make for your small business. Traditional in-house marketing teams are a great solution for larger organizations that have the resources available to employee experts in the 10+ roles that it takes to run an effective department.

read more

Subscribe to Get The Latest Insights.

What makes marketing so challenging?

Trying to keep-up with the tools, technology and the limited attention span of your target market are all challenging. Get our tips on how to grow leads and revenue, delivered directly to your inbox.

Join The List

Request a Demo.

Are you ready to take action? Let's see how we can reach your
goals with a 20-minute introductory call.

Local vs. National SEO: A Beginner’s Guide

Local vs. National SEO: A Beginner’s Guide

Local vs. National SEO: A Beginner’s Guide

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Discover the Right Approach for Your SEO Strategy

Local businesses and nationwide companies have a few things in common regarding SEO. They both want to rank on the top of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for specific keywords.

No matter who you target, SEO principles are relatively the same across the board—keyword research, relevant content creation with organic keyword integration and consistent execution of your strategy.

However, when it comes to targeting locally or nationally, the execution tends to differ slightly. It can become tiresome for a small business in Cleveland to target keywords that have no relevance to audiences in Nashville. A large corporation with a national footprint will likely want to target such keywords, which is where audience and keyword relevancy come into play.

Understanding where your business should focus its effort will yield results that place your website high on search rankings and achieve a better ROI.

Similarities Between Local and National SEO

When comparing a local and national SEO approach, the goal remains the same: Rank First!

Whether you’re a locally owned small business or a national brand serving customers across the country, the steps you take are still the same.

You still need to conduct keyword research and create relevant, optimized content that integrates the keywords organically. It would be best if you obtained credible backlinks from authoritative sources and continually updated on-page elements and image alt tags.

Ready to take action? Let’s have a conversation

When Does Local SEO Come Into Play?

Knowing when to focus on local or national SEO tactics depends solely on your business and who you serve. There’s no advantage to targeting potential customers in a state next to you if your business cannot serve those people.

If your target audience is in the same city or metropolitan area as your business, that’s an excellent indication to shift your efforts to local SEO. Typically these businesses include local service providers like contractors and tradesmen, restaurants and brick-and-mortar retail stores.

Local SEO best serves small to medium-size companies that only reach a specific physical area. While there are many similarities between the two approaches, your audience and their search intent will determine how you implement your strategy. Make sure you have a solid understanding of your audience with detailed client personas that can help guide your strategy. 

How Does a Google Business Profile fit Into This?

Did you know that 46% of searches on Google are seeking local information? This is why Google Business listings are prominently featured in SERPs, giving users quick access to the most relevant information.

No one wants a bad dining experience, so what do we do? Turn to Google and search for restaurants in our area. Google Business Profiles help identify local businesses in your area that provide whatever you may be searching for — information such as location, operating hours, Google reviews, a website and services offer almost everything users need to know to decide.

When the Hersh PR team implements a local SEO campaign, we place an emphasis on Google Business Profiles. Giving Google and its properties consistent attention is critical to a successful Local SEO campaign. When your local business is up to date with the freshest information, you empower potential customers with the information they need to make the right decisions to visit your business over everyone else.

How Does Keyword Research fit Into This?

Aside from knowing your target audience, how you approach your keyword research is the deciding variable between taking a Local or National SEO approach.

The keywords you target are determined by where your audience is located and what keywords will help target those areas. It doesn’t serve your local business well if you constantly target keywords that national brands target.

National brands will have the means to reach a larger audience based on various geographic locations. Local SEO keyword research will include more geographic-based keywords, and those keywords will be incorporated through the website. 

Here are some best practices when it comes to keyword research:

Understand User Intent:  Consider your customer’s intent when shopping for a service or product you offer. Evaluate different high-level topics that could shape your strategy. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and understand their journey from start to finish. These understandings will build a more solid SEO foundation.

Use Professional Keyword Tools: Use the right tools to help you research your keywords. There’s no need to bootstrap your keyword research when there are tools designed specifically for this task. Having an agency who knows how to use these tools properly for keyword research is going to yield the best possible results.

Implement and Test Your Strategy: Mapping keywords to specific pages and creating a detailed content calendar will help ensure success. Remember that SEO is not a one-shot effort; you must continuously try different keywords to get the most out of your campaigns.

Bringing It Together

Climbing to the top of a SERP won’t occur overnight given the intense competition online. But with the right strategy and an SEO expert in your corner, you’ll be well positioned for boosting website traffic and ranking.

The best place to start is by determining whether or not you should take a local or national SEO approach. The steps you take to execute local and national SEO campaigns remain relatively the same.

The most significant difference between the two depends on the type of business you have and your customers’ location. Small to medium-size businesses don’t get as much out of their SEO campaigns if they target nationwide keywords.

Constantly updating your Google Business Profile, re-optimizing old content, testing keywords and content, conducting new keyword research, and creating unique content requires significant bandwidth that you may not have in-house. Partnering with an agency gives your business the advantage it deserves while allowing you to focus on running and managing the growth of your business.

Hopefully the tips above will help improve your local or national SEO campaigns. Have more questions about partnering with an agency? Reach out to us directly.

Liz-headshot

Meet the Author

Liz Hersh is the founder of Hersh PR and Marketing, a digital marketing agency. Together with a team of marketing professionals she helps clients generate leads and increase revenue. 

Read 
More Articles.

Read 
More Articles.

Writing High-Impact B2B Case Studies

Writing High-Impact B2B Case Studies

Marketing as a small business presents several challenges. Between budgetary constraints and a lack of clarity about the right ways to market a business, it’s no wonder that marketing is often a small businesses least favorite business function. But it’s probably the most important. It’s crucial to maintain an ongoing marketing and lead generation strategy to yield beneficial outcomes for your brand.

read more
7 Common Marketing Challenges + How to Solve Them

7 Common Marketing Challenges + How to Solve Them

Marketing as a small business presents several challenges. Between budgetary constraints and a lack of clarity about the right ways to market a business, it’s no wonder that marketing is often a small businesses least favorite business function. But it’s probably the most important. It’s crucial to maintain an ongoing marketing and lead generation strategy to yield beneficial outcomes for your brand.

read more
7 Things to Look for in an Outsourced Marketing Team

7 Things to Look for in an Outsourced Marketing Team

Outsourcing your marketing is one of the best decisions you can make for your small business. Traditional in-house marketing teams are a great solution for larger organizations that have the resources available to employee experts in the 10+ roles that it takes to run an effective department.

read more

Subscribe to Get The Latest Insights.

What makes marketing so challenging?

Trying to keep-up with the tools, technology and the limited attention span of your target market are all challenging. Get our tips on how to grow leads and revenue, delivered directly to your inbox.

Join The List

Request a Demo.

Are you ready to take action? Let's see how we can reach your
goals with a 20-minute introductory call.

Best Practices to Maximize Your Content’s Impact

Best Practices to Maximize Your Content’s Impact

Best Practices to Maximize Your Content’s Impact

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Content is a Fundamental Part of Your Digital Strategy

How much are you prioritizing content creation and promotion for your organization? Creating strong content is a staple in digital marketing and savvy brands continue to make it a priority. Today’s modern buyers quickly turn to websites or social media channels to gain better insight into a business’s purpose, ethics, and social approval — so it’s imperative that brands showcase fresh and relevant content.

Gone are the days of creating generic content merely to show participation. Content creation is an opportunity for businesses to show off industry expertise, improve search engine ranking and even increase their overall online presence. But, how can you create content that pushes the bounds of regular vanity key performance indicators? This article will break down the best practices to get the most out of your content.

Creating Content

When it comes to creating high-quality content, you must take into account two factors: intent and planning. As the old saying goes, “failing to plan is planning to fail,” and it’s never been more true than when it comes to content creation.

Disregarding a content strategy will strip you from a better understanding of your purpose for creating each piece of content and how you will share it with the world. Take the time to understand why each part of the content you want to create is important and how you plan on distributing it to your audience.

When developing a content strategy, consider the following factors to get the best results possible for your business:

 

  • Consider your target market and the issues they face. Your organization solves a problem. This is your opportunity to provide a solution that your target market needs help overcoming.
  • Next, you’ll want to consider your customer’s journey and how each piece of content will fit accordingly.
  • Finally, the numbers don’t lie! Analyze current content’s performance data to determine the message and create a well-rounded strategy.

Pro Tip: Consider the Pareto Principle for your content strategy. Spend 20 percent of your effort creating content and 80 percent promoting it.

Ready to take action? Let’s have a conversation

Publishing Content

When it comes to publishing content, you don’t want to take the shoot-in-the-dark approach for many reasons. Always strive to put as much thought behind your content distribution as you do into your content creation.

Here are a few quick reminders when trying to publish content optimally:

 

  • Save the stress, and don’t publish your content on every possible platform. This is overwhelming and will undoubtedly lead to burnout. Instead, focus on a few of the most relevant platforms for your content and let yourself grow.
  • Another frequently overlooked consideration is leveraging third-party channels like guest posting and user-generated content. These are great ways to gain social credibility and get your name and content out in front of other relevant audiences.
  • When you’re first starting, your content will take time to gain traction, but don’t let this get you down. Find a frequent publishing schedule that you can keep because consistency is the overall key, especially at the beginning of your content creation journey.
  • Be strategic about which platforms you publish content on, and don’t be afraid to move on if needed. Understanding which platforms are best for your business starts with knowing where your target audience hangs out online. If you find your content isn’t performing well no matter how many changes you make, then it might be time to try publishing elsewhere.

Promoting Your Content

If no one knows you’re posting, then does it count? Of course, it does! However, promoting your content is equally important as creating content. Promotion doesn’t stop after one post; there should be a thoughtful strategy for optimally promoting content after publishing.

To get the best promotion for your content, consider the following:

 

  • Re-purposing content will help you gain the most mileage from one source of content. This method will save you time and stress when looking at a barren content calendar. You can re-optimize or reformat content for different platforms and mediums. For example, if you publish a video, turning the same messaging into a blog post will provide you additional content without too much extra effort.
  • Re-marketing is often a dreaded yet highly effective method of promoting content. Be open to spending a little money to stretch the potential of your content.
  • Finally, getting your content out to the most people is nowhere near as effective as getting the most relevant people. This is where leveraging influencers who speak and already have credibility with your target audience will give you the results you need!

Bringing It Together

Bringing together a solid content strategy will help your business get the notoriety and publicity it deserves. A catered plan will carefully detail the intention of each piece of content that speaks to your target audience versus just anyone who happens to scroll by. Only focusing on these few platforms will help you get the best results instead of spreading yourself thin across multiple platforms. Finally, focusing on strategic promotion will be the ultimate deciding factor on how far your content goes in the digital ecosystem.

Repurposing old content for other platforms where you find your target audience will help you get the most out of your content. Maintaining a consistent flow of high-quality content will be the best step to take when starting or reconsidering your strategy. Maximizing your content’s impact will help grow your company’s brand and leave you feeling happy as you see a positive return on your content investment.

Hopefully the tips above will help improve your content marketing campaigns. Have more questions about partnering with an agency? Reach out to us directly.

Liz-headshot

Meet the Author

Liz Hersh is the founder of Hersh PR and Marketing, a digital marketing agency. Together with a team of marketing professionals she helps clients generate leads and increase revenue. 

Read  More Articles.

Read  More Articles.

Writing High-Impact B2B Case Studies

Writing High-Impact B2B Case Studies

Marketing as a small business presents several challenges. Between budgetary constraints and a lack of clarity about the right ways to market a business, it’s no wonder that marketing is often a small businesses least favorite business function. But it’s probably the most important. It’s crucial to maintain an ongoing marketing and lead generation strategy to yield beneficial outcomes for your brand.

read more
7 Common Marketing Challenges + How to Solve Them

7 Common Marketing Challenges + How to Solve Them

Marketing as a small business presents several challenges. Between budgetary constraints and a lack of clarity about the right ways to market a business, it’s no wonder that marketing is often a small businesses least favorite business function. But it’s probably the most important. It’s crucial to maintain an ongoing marketing and lead generation strategy to yield beneficial outcomes for your brand.

read more
7 Things to Look for in an Outsourced Marketing Team

7 Things to Look for in an Outsourced Marketing Team

Outsourcing your marketing is one of the best decisions you can make for your small business. Traditional in-house marketing teams are a great solution for larger organizations that have the resources available to employee experts in the 10+ roles that it takes to run an effective department.

read more

Subscribe to Get The Latest Insights.

What makes marketing so challenging?

Trying to keep-up with the tools, technology and the limited attention span of your target market are all challenging. Get our tips on how to grow leads and revenue, delivered directly to your inbox.

Join The List

Request a Demo.

Are you ready to take action? Let's see how we can reach your
goals with a 20-minute introductory call.

Creating High-Value Content for Your Sales Team

Creating High-Value Content for Your Sales Team

Creating High-Value Content for Your Sales Team

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Content Marketing Can Fill Gaps in Your Sales Cycle

The digital marketing landscape is ever-changing, constantly challenging marketers to learn new ways to reach their audiences. Most businesses that are determined to succeed incorporate some form of content marketing. An often overlooked benefit to creating compelling content is equipping your sales team with the right resources to fill gaps in the sales cycle and increase their close rate.

Your Content Must Be Worthwhile

Getting the most out of your content means not only is your target audience able to find value, but so is your sales team. The relationship between sales and content is so closely interlinked that 95 percent of buyers choose a service provider who delivers the content to help them navigate through each stage of the buying process. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that just any piece of content will work; the content needs to provide genuine value to the audience otherwise, it may have damaging effects.

Most of your content marketing strategy should focus on client-facing content such as blogs, videos, podcasts and webinars. Internal content such as pre-call sales checklists and sales manuals have their place in a content strategy, but this article focuses on client-facing content.

Why Don’t Sales Reps Use Content?

In a perfect world, sales reps can use provided content during outreach, lead qualification and to help support proposals. Perspective clients can walk away well-informed and ready to make the right decision. However, this isn’t necessarily the reality because sales teams repeatedly miss the opportunity to provide prospects with the valuable content your marketing team has created.

Some reasons that sales reps don’t use content are:

  • They don’t know if the content is up to date
  • Finding the right content among the waves of existing content is time-consuming and daunting
  • They’re unsure what content is best for the specific stage of the sales process (in some cases, the content could be too “high-level” for initial discovery meetings.)

Pro Tip: As of 2020, 70 percent of marketers are actively investing in content marketing, which means it might be time you did the same to stay competitive.

Ready to take action? Let’s have a conversation

How Can Sales Teams Start to Incorporate Content?

Every great organization requires effective communication to be successful. For sales reps to start utilizing the appropriate content during their pitches, the marketing department should educate them to ensure they are aware of what’s available. Organizing content according to type, audience, and objectives will help sales teams find what they need to bolster their sales. In addition to better organization, consider the steps below to help facilitate good communication and collaboration among internal teams.  

Meet with Your Sales Team

They are on the front lines, fielding common concerns and questions which means they have a slew of pain points your clients are constantly facing. Frequently connecting with your sales team will enable your marketing department to better understand what content can help increase overall sales. 

You’ll also better understand:

  • Prospect feedback on your products/services
  • Common objections sales reps face
  • Find gaps in sales strategies that you can fill with helpful content

Audit Existing Content

After meeting with your sales team, you should have a better idea of what is working well, and where your content can be improved. As marketers, we also have access to massive amounts of data. Have you tracked the metrics on the content your team has already created? The internet is constantly moving, which means the shelf life for pre-existing content doesn’t last long and may need to be re-optimized. Additionally, sales teams can’t use out-of-date content during their sales calls, so it’s equally important to create content and revitalize old content.

Set Clear Goals

Working with your sales team, you can establish clear goals that promote a harmonious relationship between the marketing and sales departments. While you might have an overall sales goal that’s driving your plan, also consider smaller KPIs related to engagement that can indicate if a piece of content is in fact helping prospects through the buyer’s journey.

Creating High-Value Content

When it comes time to create content, pulling a topic out of a hat or an online topic generator is no longer enough. Marketing departments have many different areas of their organization they need to evaluate before deciding on content topics. Remember that creating content takes time, and unless you’re bootstrapping, it will require an investment of time and money. It can take upwards of 50 hours per month to create high-quality content, which is why many organizations opt to partner with a content agency.

Bringing It All Together

If your sales team isn’t using the content you’ve created, then both the company and the sales reps are losing out on substantial growth. Content marketing is not only meant to attract and inform prospects but also to arm sales teams with more tools to have a well-rounded sales process.

 Keeping content current and filled with value will enable sales reps to increase close rates by providing prospects with a clear picture of the products/services your organization offers. Over time as the sales and marketing departments continue to work together, they’ll learn how to maximize each other’s gains and promote overall company growth.

Hopefully the tips above will help improve your content marketing campaigns. Have more questions about partnering with an agency? Reach out to us directly.

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Meet the Author

Liz Hersh is the founder of Hersh PR and Marketing, a digital marketing agency. Together with a team of marketing professionals she helps clients generate leads and increase revenue. 

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