When businesses start publishing, they are always interested in reaching a certain quota. But whether you put out one story per day or two per week, that pacing is irrelevant if you're not driving tangible ROI with your content marketing.
In the world of B2B Marketing, quality prevails over quantity.
“Of course quantity helps get your name out there,” said Alessandra Ceresa, chief marketing officer of GreenRope said , a customer relationship management platform. “But that doesn't mean these are qualified leads. ”
Use content to support sales — the process of integrating sales and marketing in B2B companies — all to increase sales effectiveness. Instead of asking salespeople to call, content does most of the work for them.
After six months of leveraging sales-enabled content, Greenrope's conversion rate doubled from about 20 percent to 40 percent while product cancellations dropped.
“The right type of content can continue to drive that lead,” Jennifer Burak, vice president of marketing for interactive video company Rapt Media , speak. ). “They are almost ready to buy.”
(Full disclosure: Rapt Media is a Contently client.)
And that's not how the theory works. The power of content in driving sales has proven its worth to many B2B organizations.
Take GreenRope for example. After six months of leveraging sales-enabled content, the company's conversion rate doubled from about 20 percent to 40 percent while product cancellations dropped.
Michael Passanante, marketing director at BESLER Consulting , echoing that point: “We generate sales from these campaigns. It's not just a matter of trying to get appointments or asking people to download things. We have taken people from not even knowing about us to completing important transactions with them in a relatively short amount of time. ”
The advantage of super targeting
Successful sales enablement content depends on who it is developed for and how it is distributed. Audience targeting is crucial for all content marketing, but it's especially true for B2B sales support. Not only do marketers need to reach the right business at the right time, but they also need to target the right people within the organization.
“Are they sales managers? Are they business owners? ' Ceres said. “Each of those roles want to learn different things about software.”
GreenRope develops segmented drip campaigns to address individual company concerns and interests. In turn, these engaged readers will be more open to talking to salespeople.
For Passanante and BESLER Consulting, audience targeting is even more granular. Since the company only provides consulting services to a few hospitals that use a specific inpatient billing system, their sales team targets a single person — usually the Chief Financial Officer — at each hospital.
“Put together a focused program that includes both marketing and sales points to establish contact with targets that tend to be a little bit firewalled,” he says.
In many cases, the people BESLER want to reach are hidden behind assistants who read and filter their emails and phone calls. However, the company's research-backed thought leadership has helped the company capture the attention of senior decision-makers in a way that cold calls never could.
When content and sales synergize
Although some people misunderstand sales ability as a one-way street towards sales, when successfully implemented, the process is symbiotic. It's a partnership between content marketing and end-to-end sales. Sales helps marketing know who to target, while marketing creates and distributes content that drives qualified leads back to sales.
“What we created was a program where marketing didn't just say to the sales department, 'This is your campaign,'” explains Passanante. “What we're doing is working with them in an organized way to say, 'This is how and when we deliver content to potential customers,' and they agree to be a participant. positive.”
Many support campaigns are set up to notify salespeople when a lead is ripe for contact. But with the right analytics — like knowing who clicked on a link, how much they read, and whether they recently visited a company's website — marketing teams can gauge whether their content is effective or not.
At GreenRope, Ceresa sends targeted emails to potential customers, giving them a chance to sign up for a demo or trial. When a potential customer requests more information, they're put into a separate drip campaign that provides valuable content to the reader.
“We are really strict about not spamming our users and making sure they want the content we deliver,” says Ceresa.
Providing that helpful content serves two important purposes. In addition to providing qualified leads for sales, it provides marketing insights into audience behavior. “I can see what they are most interested in,” says Burak. “We can see how much content they have.”
Create great content to sell
Most great sales enablement content begins with planning. Marketers, who may not be aware of their customer's needs, sit down with the sales team to learn about the pain points and desires of the target audience.
“I work a lot with our sales team, it's important to make sure what we're doing is actually talking to [the customers’ needs],” said Ceresa, “ instead of just putting content out there and hoping people like it. ”
As for what to create, content typically ranges from broader thought-provoking sections at the top of the funnel to more specific product or service-based information at the bottom, such as why a particular service is available. particular service works fine.
At Rapt Media, Burak outlined his strategy in advance using 70 – 20 – 10 breakouts. 70% of the content is about practical advice, 10% is about top thought leadership, and 20 percent of the output deals with mid-channel activities like licensing and meetings. Webinar about the company's products.
"Even if you don't know the specifics of the content you'll be producing, you can organize and allocate your resources to support those content teams," says Burak.
While this type of content may not lead to a traffic spike, the B2B benefits in the form of qualified leads, higher conversion rates, and greater sales performance are worth it. worth more than a viral hit.
“We find that leads are coming to us more willing to buy,” says Burak.
And that's content that's worth the revenue.
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