The Truth About Sales Reps & Content Marketing

Stop wasting 65% of all content marketing efforts.

The truth lies somewhere within both the facts about the importance of content marketing for B2B sales and the pre-existing perceptions among sales reps.

Did you know...

96% of B2B buyers review thought leadership content before making a purchase

89% of B2B buyers stated that winning vendors “provided content that made it easier to show ROI and build a business case for the purchase”

62% of B2B buyers said they engage with three to seven pieces of content before connecting with a salesperson
B2B buyers are 57% – 70% through their buying research before contacting sales

How Important Is Content To Sellers?

Content is so necessary that sales reps spend on average 440 hours per year searching for the right content. Yet, no salesperson has ever been hired for their content creation or research capabilities.

On top of this, sales reps don’t use 60 to 70% of marketing content. That means that about two-thirds of the investment in content development — often as much as 12% of the entire marketing budget might simply be wasted.

According to Forrester, an estimated 65% of content marketing assets that are produced go unused because they are irrelevant.

The truth is that as much as content marketing has been heralded as the most cost-effective marketing strategy, it has to be executed correctly, with a joint sales and marketing effort.

4 Steps To A Successful Content Marketing Plan

First off, the quality of content needs to be the top priority of content marketers. 71% of decision-makers say “half or less than half of the thought-leadership content they read or watch gives them any sort of valuable insights.”

Second, Gartner recommends mapping high-quality content to the buying process. However, up to 51% of content created is primarily for the top of the funnel (TOFU).

Additionally, sales reps need the ability to analyze who opens their content, when they open it, and how they engage with it. This will give them the right analytics to not only appreciate the content but see how it stimulates more conversations along the purchasing process.

Third, content marketing ROI needs to be calculated. Nine out of ten B2B buyers say online content has a moderate to major effect on purchasing decisions. We need to get better at tracking content marketing. Roughly 50% of B2B marketers use 3 or More MarTech Tools for content marketing measurement.

Fourth, content marketing’s role in revenue generation needs to come from the C-suite down. “Content-Focused Sales Enablement: Your Next Secret Weapon?” is the right corporate philosophy, as portrayed by Forbes.

The Key To Sales Enablement Success

According to Gartner, “The fundamental premise of sales enablement is that it helps all salespeople whether you have a sales organization of one or 1,000. Therefore you need to make sure that whatever you provide to salespeople is easy to use. When designing for usability, make sure resources are easy to find and easy to apply.”

Ease of use and tracking are keys to sales enablement success.

The best sales enablement programs track and enforce whether resources are being used across the sales organization. Most importantly, they optimize future sales enablement efforts based on what is used and what is not used.

Conclusion

Without high-quality content, there will be far less sales enablement success and positive ROI. However, there also needs to be a partnership between marketing and sales. The trends, personas, problems, and use cases all need to be mapped out and agreed to as the foundation of any content marketing plan — upfront between marketing and sales. Only then can any misalignment between what content is being created and what sales see as being irrelevant be addressed head-on.

To learn more about how to create highly successful, revenue-producing content marketing and sales enablement strategies, please CLICK HERE to schedule a 20-minute strategy session.

ELEVATING CONTENT MARKETING STANDARDS RAISES A CRUCIAL QUESTION:
Why shouldn’t the very act of creating thought leadership content also spark new conversations with in-pipeline deals, top prospects, and high-priority customers for revenue expansion? Or serve as the cornerstone for learning and applying voice-of-customer strategies? That’s the power of ABM Podcasting—engaging B2B buyers and customers in meaningful conversations that uncover essential go-to-market insights, support long sales cycles, reinforce your market perspective, build peer-level trust, and dismantle objections that kill deals.

Steven MacDonald

Steven MacDonald is the founder of Content Strategies, CEO of a MarTech SaaS Company, fractional CMO consulting with leading B2B companies and former Director of Strategy and Client Service at top ten digital marketing agencies.

Follow Steve on LinkedIn.

Steven MacDonald

Follow Steve on LinkedIn.