In Sales Enablement, managing content correctly is key. In fact, it is so crucial that content-based Sales Enablement strategies are a thing today. Marketing provides a wide range of digital content throughout the buyer’s journey. It can have an inbound marketing goal, when it is displayed online for prospective buyers to find and create an interest in a company’s products or services. It can also have an outbound marketing goal, when it is designed for Sales to use it whilst directly interacting with prospects. Sales Enablement content is therefore all content destined to help salespeople in every stage of the buyer’s journey.
In this context, analyzing and optimizing content regularly is a must for every organization aiming for a successful Sales Enablement strategy that achieves marketing and sales alignment.
Moreover, content has a great impact on customers : 95% of B2B buyers state that content helps them trust a business more.
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Organizing your content
Content creation for Sales Enablement is not hugely different from creating content solely for Marketing. The difference is that when working with a Sales Enablement strategy in mind, content must adapt to the different stages of the buyer’s journey. However, planning and creation should be integrated to the whole content creation schedule for different reasons:
- It contributes to Marketing and Sales alignment as both teams will have an overview and the possibility of using the content produced.
- It reinforces branding and the message conveyed across all content.
- It helps better prioritizing, organizing, and budgeting all the kind of content creation needed across the organization.
In other words, involving Sales in the content creation process is not only beneficial for Sales Enablement but for the overall content strategy. Creating content that is an asset for both marketing and sales reinforces your branding, maximizes your resources and contributes to the alignment of both departments.
4 Steps to launch your content creation for Sales Enablement process
1.Audit your content with from a Sales point of view
The first step to content creation for Sales Enablement is to audit the existing material. The idea is to identify what could be useful and interesting for Sales, and where in the buyer’s journey would that content fit. For example, content such as video product demos, case studies, or product one pagers are the types of material that can be asset from both a Sales and a Marketing point of view.
This audit keeping Sales in mind should also reveal lacks of content. Get your sales team input on what they need or wish to communicate at each stage with their products for a more detailed overview. Once this is done, prioritize the content that fits their need and work with marketing to figure out how both teams can use the new content as an asset. This will prevent repetition and therefore maximize your assets.
Don’t forget: Encourage Sales to get involved in this process as their point of view will help you identify gaps as well as synergies in content
2.Create multi-purpose content
Once all gaps have been identified, it is time to plan new content creation. As mentioned before the idea is to create as much content that is useful for both teams as possible. White papers, product demos or customer success stories are some good ideas to get started. On one hand marketing can use this type of content as part of an inbound strategy to pull in new qualified leads. On the other hand, salespeople can use this type of content directly with their prospects to better present and demonstrate the value of your product or service.
However, it is also important to keep a part of your budget to create content destined solely for Sales. Indeed, handing out quality content to your Sales team to work with has a positive impact on conversion. Good examples are templated emails or on brand sales presentations. This might not seem like it has a marketing goal on the surface, but it does. It contributes to building your brand image and therefore your credibility.
Don’t forget: Multi-purpose content that serves both teams are also a way to maximize your time and budget. It is a two birds one stone type of situation.
3.Assign Sales Enablement content
Many parties can be involved in the content creation process, even Sales. Indeed, it is a common mistake to think that marketing is the only team involved in content creation, especially when it comes to Sales Enablement. Collaboration can also come in handy here, as Sales can share powerful insights on what to showcase. At the end of the day salespeople are constantly interacting with prospects, so they have an idea of what they find alluring. For example, sales could have a valuable opinion on what features to highlight in priority on a product demo video. In the same way, Sales can contribute to finding interesting and avant-garde subjects for a white paper or an eBook.
If content creation is partially outsourced, it is wise to create a content brief for said material and take in feedback from both Marketing and Sales.
Don’t forget: Sales Enablement is a subject that can be owned by marketing, sales, both or neither (when a Sales Enablement department or position exists). This may vary according to company size, structure, or industry.
4.Measure content
Once your new content is ready and in use, it is time for continual improvement. In this context, assessment and measurement of content will come in handy to evaluate the success of the new material created.
From an analytics point of view, pull out data on how content is being perceived online by your audience to determine its success. This can be done through the number of visits, clicks on CTAs or the number of emails received by your Sales following the publication of a certain piece of content.
From a qualitative point of view, Sales should have a good idea of which content impacts prospective customers more as well as feedback from the field or even new insights.
By following these steps you make Sales-enabled content a piece of your overall content strategy.
Don’t forget: The end goal is to use your content expertise to help salespeople do what they do best, which is simply selling your product and brand.