Driving Growth through Integrated Marketing
This blog presents information, techniques and guidance on how to optimize marketing for your business.
Use Them Together to Move Customers Through the Sales Funnel OVERVIEW Sales enablement and content marketing are both critical components of any effective marketing strategy. But they’re often viewed as completely separate functions that are done independently of one another. The reality though, is that for them to be most effective, they need to work together. This blog will provide an overview of both to help you understand the value of using them together in your business. WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as, “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” Okay, but what does that really mean? CMI expands their definition by adding, “Instead of pitching your products or services, you are providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.” So to summarize, what that means is that content marketing is about providing the customer with useful, relevant information that explains how and why the product or service actually solves a problem. Instead of focusing on the technology used in the product, or the features that are included, content marketing focuses on the solution the product provides to the customer. Content marketing may also include information on what benefits the customer will gain by using the product or service. Customers look at your product or service because it can provide them with a solution to a problem or issue they need to solve. They aren’t interested in why or how a product works; they’re only interested that it works. In other words, the primary focus of content marketing is NOT about the product or service and IS about the customer and their needs. WHAT IS SALES ENABLEMENT HubSpot defines sales enablement as, “Sales enablement is the iterative process of providing your business’s sales team with the resources they need to close more deals. These resources may include content, tools, knowledge, and information to effectively sell your product or service to customers.” Okay, that’s pretty straightforward, but to expand on that definition just a bit more, Seismic adds this, “Sales enablement is the strategic process of providing salespeople with the tools they need to consistently have valuable conversations with customers at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle. Sales enablement includes the information, content, tools and processes salespeople need to succeed at all stages of the sale.” So basically, sales enablement is the process of providing the sales teams (I say teams, because sales enablement really should include both inside and outside sales functions as they are both customer-facing) with all of the training, tools, product information, and customer-facing collateral and materials that they will use as they engage with customers at all stages of the sales funnel. This provides sales with the information they need to be able to answer customer’s questions (i.e., sell effectively) and help move the customer down the sales funnel. In other words, the primary focus of sales enablement is still about providing the customer with the required information about a product or service. In the case of sales enablement, the information just comes to the customer through the sales team instead of the customer accessing the information directly. One other consideration needs to be noted as well. If your business sells through channel partners, sales rep firms, or other third-party channels, sales enablement needs to include these organizations as they too are part of your sales organization. COMMON FOCUS Content marketing and sales enablement also have a lot in common.
As you can see, both content marketing and sales enablement are actually very complementary to and supportive of each other. This is why when they are used together they provide a strong platform for sales success. MISCONCEPTIONS STILL ABOUND Although sales enablement and content marketing are obviously more effective when used together, there are still misconceptions that abound. The two biggest misconceptions are:
Nothing could be further from the truth. While in the past there may have been some validity to those beliefs, it is no longer true. Today, sales enablement and content marketing are used together up and down the sales funnel. Although how, when and where exactly they are used may vary from product to product and industry to industry. The reality is that sales enablement and content marketing are both part of the customer engagement process and both have responsibility for driving customers down the sales funnel. And just like the sales and marketing organizations, both are equally critical to the success of the business. Sales enablement includes not only the product training, tools and processes that sales teams use, but also leverages and uses the material and information that content marketing develops for customers. As such, to be most effective, sales enablement and content marketing should be used together. SUMMARY While the focus of sales enablement and content marketing may initially seem to be somewhat different, in reality it isn’t. The actual goal of both is to provide the information the customer needs. Whether the information is delivered directly to the customer (i.e., content marketing) or indirectly through the sales teams (i.e., sales enablement), the end result is the same – to provide the customer with all of the information needed at all stages of the sales funnel to move them down the funnel towards a purchase decision. © 2020 – Richard Hatheway, Catalyst Strategic Marketing & Tyler Creek Consulting
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AuthorsDaniel Kern and Richard Hatheway both have more than three decades of background and experience in businesses ranging in size from startups to global enterprises in numerous functional areas including Marketing, Sales, Operations, Management and IT. We write our blogs to share our experiences and to drive benefits for our clients. Archives
August 2019
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