In fact, studies show that sales reps armed with the right training and resources see 32% higher sales quota attainment.
Starting from crafting unique buyer personas to providing your sales team with solid product training, scripts, competitive insights, as well as real life case studies, powerful content is what you need.
In this article, we’ll guide you through the internal and external sales enablement materials that should be part of your toolkit, the type of content to include for maximum impact, and some actionable tips for building a sales enablement content marketing strategy that works.
We’ll also explore how content marketing can strengthen sales enablement by aligning your marketing and sales teams as well as several tools and technology that can help you create, manage, and measure your sales enablement program more efficiently.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the practice of crafting valuable, relevant and consistent content for attracting and retaining your target audience. The aim of content marketing is to drive profitable customer acquisition. Several companies focus solely on hard selling, but content marketing provides value to the audience, as it offers helpful information and educates the people, fostering a sense of trust.
What is Sales Enablement?
Sales enablement refers to the various tools, resources as well as content that helps in empowering sales teams and engage buyers more effectively. The process of sales enablement includes providing the sales team with everything they need to sell the product or service at a greater margin. This can include product training, messaging, sales playbooks, and other well crafted content assets, which can resonate well with the prospects at each stage of the sales cycle.
Here are some of the most popular format of sales enablement content assets:
E-Books and Whitepapers – Ebooks and whitepapers are popular sales enablement content formats that work as lead magnets to provide your sales team with a means to engage high-value prospects successfully. This is critical in presenting your brand’s value well and also serves as a sales pitch subsequently.
Blog Posts, Articles, and Thought Leadership Content – Blog posts and articles are versatile tools that are used in various phases of the sales funnel. These types of content can help educate as well as raise brand awareness around your brand. They are easy to produce, share, and also provide valuable sales materials for your sales team.
Case Studies
Case Studies are customer-centric pieces that offer potential clients as well as your sales team with a clear view of your business’s impact. They help explain how your product or service has successfully catered to the customer’s needs and fulfilled the market gap. They are highly effective in the latter half sales funnel, working as a proof of your brand’s value.
Social Media Content and Email Campaigns
Marketers use these powerful tools to create entertaining, useful, as well as informative content which is great in fostering meaningful relationships with prospects.
Sales Playbooks
Sales playbook is primarily a guide, consisting of key product details, competitor insights, branding guidelines and several sales techniques. To keep a sales playbook relevant, it is essential to update it regularly vis a vis the pricing, new product features, competitive analysis, etc.
Explainer Videos
Explainer videos simplify complex concepts and demonstrate the use cases of the product or service in an engaging way, which is useful at any stage of the sales process. They are generally 2-3 minutes long which helps maintain the viewer’s interests.
Apart from these, there are also other types of sales enablement content formats like product sell sheet, proposals, sales presentations, webinars, testimonials, sales battle cards, etc
Why is Sales Enablement Content Strategy Important
Sales enablement content plays a crucial role in boosting the confidence of the sellers, enhancing the prospect’s interaction as well as driving a greater revenue growth.
Here are some reasons why designing a powerful sales enablement content strategy is important.
Streaming the Sales Process – It helps equip prospects with knowledge and valuable insights before they can even connect with a representative, which ensures that the sales team is prepared to make a strong first impression
Boost Go-to-Market Alignment – A sales enablement content when crafted well, ensures that every sales representative is aligned with key information like audience insights, brand messaging, product details, etc.
Enhance Seller Performance – A great aspect of sales enablement content is that it empowers the reps to overcome challenges, by presenting solutions, which help improve efficiency. They might provide templates, scripts or other types of resources which reduces the manual effort required, and allows a more effective and broader outreach
Creating Content for the Sales Funnel
While crafting content for the sales funnel, it is not only necessary to tailor it to cater your target audience, but also necessary to craft it according to the sales funnel stage. There can be several types of content, as mentioned, which includes blogs posts, social media updates, and newsletters that are considered highly valuable for lead generation.
However, they should be optimized for search engines too, which can make them easily discoverable by prospects. There are also several other tools like lead magnets, ebooks and whitepapers, which serve a similar purpose, helping sales teams connect with high-quality leads
Challenges in Sales Enablement
As per reports, it is seen that 65% of content is unused, putting the pressure on the sales team, who are often required to search across multiple platforms to find their resources. The major challenges that are typically faced in sales enablement are:
- A lot of effort is put by the marketing team while crafting valuable content, but they often forget to share it with the sales team
- The sales team may also not find the marketing content or study it properly.
- This reflects on the fact that both teams are busy with their respective tasks, which leads to lack of communication
Overcoming these challenges is not always easy, as old habits are a bit hard to change, and the process of progressing might worsen if your organization struggles with busy schedules, or silos. However, implementing the right tactics can turn the tables, and help sort this problem out.
Transforming the Relationship between Sales and Marketing
As you see, to fight out the challenges in sales enablement, it is necessary to enhance the collaboration between your sales and marketing teams. It is necessary to shift the way the two teams interact, and here’s how you can achieve that –
- Incorporate your marketing and your sales team as part of a single unit. This way, they can work together on your organization’s goal of demonstrating the value of your business to your target audience
- Let your marketing team develop solutions to the challenges that might pop up, to help the sales team create effective sales enablement content, but will also help them present those solutions to the customers.
Key Content Marketing Strategies for Sales Enablement
Content Personalization
The more you tailor your content specifically for your audience, the higher chances of people connecting with your brand. Create content that addresses the needs and challenges of your target audience. This will allow you to enhance audience engagement and drive a greater number of conversions.
Content Creation for Lead Generation
Creating content for generating leads involves the process of attracting as well as converting prospects into buyers with the help of strategically curated content assets. Hence effective content creation is necessary as it aids in identifying the problems of the prospects as well as addressing them. Some of the effective content types that boosts lead generation are –
- Blog Posts and Articles: Answering common questions in your industry or offering actionable advice.
- Whitepapers and eBooks: Offering more in-depth insights into specific topics, which can be gated to collect information from potential leads.
- Webinars and Virtual Events: Hosting free webinars or online workshops where prospects can learn more about your services.
Content Distribution Channels
Even the best content won’t help you if no one sees it. Therefore, selecting the right distribution channels is critical to ensuring that your content reaches the right audience. Common content distribution channels include:
- Social Media: Sharing your content on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, etc.
- Email Marketing: Nurturing leads via email newsletters and drip campaigns.
- Website: Hosting content in the form of blog posts, case studies, and downloadable resources.
Aligning Content Marketing with Sales Goals
Content marketing should not be a one-off effort, but part of a broader strategy to guide prospects from awareness through to the decision-making process. To align content marketing with sales goals, focus on creating a content journey that mirrors the stages of the buyer’s journey:
- Awareness: At this stage, prospects are just becoming aware of their challenges and are seeking general information. Content types: blog posts, videos, infographics.
- Consideration: Here, they are evaluating solutions. Content types: case studies, comparison guides, webinars.
- Decision: This is when the prospect is ready to make a purchase. Content types: product demos, testimonials, free trials.
Utilizing Content to Address Pain Points
Your audience comes to you with specific pain points or challenges, and content marketing is the best tool to help address those. By crafting content that focuses on solutions to these pain points, you can better position your product or service as the answer to their problems.
For instance, if a prospective client is struggling with audience engagement during virtual events, create content around best practices for creating engaging virtual event experiences. This builds trust and showcases your expertise in solving their problems.
Tracking and Measuring the Effectiveness of Content Marketing for Sales Enablement
Key Metrics to Monitor
Tracking and analyzing the performance of your content is what determines long-term success of your resources, which will also have an impact on your sales enablement efforts. Important metrics to track include:
- Lead Conversion Rates: This means how many prospects turn into customers, thanks to your content marketing efforts.
- Engagement Metrics: Check the volume as well as the quality of audience engagement with your content, which can happen in the form of click-through rates, downloads of e-books, comments on blogs, etc
- Content Consumption: Which type of content are your target audience consuming the most – blog posts, e-books, etc. This helps you to get a fair view of what you can count on and what not.
Using analytics tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot can help provide detailed data.
The Role of Technology in Leveraging Content Marketing for Sales Enablement
How Virtual Event Platforms Facilitate Content Sharing
Platforms like Airmeet allow companies to share content during virtual events, seamlessly. A good virtual event platform will facilitate several ways of content sharing which includes the on-demand videos, live interaction done via chat, polls, and session replays, etc all of which help in continuous engagement. Work on content distribution by leveraging these tools and gain valuable insights on attendee behavior.
Automation and Personalization with Technology
You can also leverage automation tools, which can aid in simplifying content delivery and ensuring that your audience goes through the right content, at the right time. Some automation tools have AI-driven solutions which can make personalized recommendations for your target audience, based on the attendee behavior during the virtual events.
Conclusion
Content marketing should be done carefully, when effective sales enablement is the goal. Getting it right with personalized, engaging, and valuable content, helps in attracting prospects and nurturing them successfully, eventually building a loyal base of customers.
