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.)

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.

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.

The pace of change requires marketing teams to stay agile 

The last several years have been dynamic and disruptive for manufacturers, forcing many to embrace more digital marketing tactics to compete and survive. Yet maintaining a sense of relevance with your audience has never been more challenging. Supply chain challenges and radically shifting buying behaviors requires organizations to be agile.

Marketers who can quickly adjust strategies and tactics based on the shifting landscape can generate measurable results, remain ahead of the competition and deliver an experience that aligns with customer expectations.

With that in mind, we’re sharing three trends that marketers in manufacturing should focus on: creating an amazing customer experience, using brevity in your message and incorporating personalization.

Customer Experience

B2C industries embraced a strong customer experience (CX) years ago and manufacturing is finally catching up. Today’s business buyer wants a consumer-like experience. In fact, in a Salesforce survey, 74% of manufacturers said they believe customer experience to be a key competitive differentiator. Delivering a superior experience creates operational efficiencies and generates more revenue.

 Developing a strong CX isn’t solely the responsibility of the marketing department. But given our access to various tools and data, we play an integral part in determining the right time for engagement. We can understand when sales and marketing teams should swiftly engage qualified buyers, or when we can turn a steady customer into a true promoter of the business.

By partnering with other internal teams, manufacturers can create an amazing CX throughout the entire customer journey.

Brevity

Content marketing allows for an extensive explanation of any product or service. Most marketers want to pack as much information into their content or ad space as possible. But let’s face it, our audience doesn’t want to power through a 2,000-word white paper. According to Microsoft, human attention span has dropped 25% in the last several years. 

The more succinctly you can convey your message, the more likely your audience will engage with you. Say what you need to say but do it effectively and concisely.

Explore where you can incorporate brevity into your marketing — whether that’s simplifying your website to focus on the essentials or crafting content that hits directly on pain points and solutions without the unnecessary fluff.

Personalization

The days of relying on generic sell sheets and one-size-fits-all catalogs are over. Manufacturing companies need to adopt more B2C marketing tactics to maximize revenue growth. Today’s business buyer wants marketing and advertising that speaks directly to them.

Account based marketing, although not new, offers a chance to get closer to your prospects and customers by taking time to understand their needs, tailor the outreach and connect on a more personal level. Investing in a more personalized content strategy can lead to greater payoff.

Another trend in manufacturing is foregoing print catalogs in favor of interactive online catalogs that can simplify quoting and ordering. Sales teams can communicate with prospective customers more efficiently during the sales cycle, better understand their needs and ultimately sell more.

Your Next Steps

Marketing teams must continually remain ahead of the curve, and manufacturers still have room to engage B2B decision makers with personalized messaging and an amazing experience.  By taking a proactive approach that incorporates key trends, organizations can position themselves to meet the ever-changing needs of their buyers.

Hopefully the tips above will help improve your digital marketing. Have more questions about developing and implementing an effective marketing strategy? Reach out to us directly.

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.