The following post is authored by Peter Mollins, vice president of KnowledgeTree, the world’s first Content Selling solution.
According to the DemandGen Report, an incredible 95% of enterprise buyers chose the vendor that supplied them with useful, relevant messaging. And it’s no surprise why this is true. Buyers are more savvy than ever before. With no shortage of information online and in other sources, they can quickly find a wealth of intelligence.
But this huge amount of data has a challenge, too. The wave of information makes it difficult for buyers to filter out important data points from the noise. They can’t find the data that helps them find great vendors or build a compelling business case.
Sales and marketing teams can overcome this problem by providing targeted, relevant messages to their prospects. When messages and content are highly focused on the needs and persona of the prospects they’re targeting, the information is relevant and wanted.
But it’s not something that is done well. Forrester estimates that nearly two-thirds of buyers think their vendors don’t add value in a sales engagement. So, how can you overcome that challenge?
Here are three key ways that you can get relevant fast.
Marketing Automation Tools
A major development in the marketing world in the past 10 years has been the rise of tools like Hubspot, Marketo, and Pardot. These marketing automation tools nurture prospects with compelling content via web, social, and email channels. As their name suggests, these tools automate the process of delivering messages to large audiences.
When choosing a marketing automation tool, look for two key attributes. First, look for tools that address the channels that matter to you. Channels like social, email, web content, and others may be especially important for how your prospects consume information. Make sure your selected tool is strong in those areas.
Second, look for deep analytics that can help you make smarter decisions about how to adapt your marketing mix. You’ll want tools that provide insight to let you make better decisions; not just vanity metrics.
Voice-Based Marketing Tools
Inbound phone calls are the leads that convert most often to business. That’s because when someone calls you, they are usually further along the buyer’s journey and ready to engage with a sales rep. That’s why inbound calls are the leads sales people value most, and marketers most want to generate from their campaigns and content.
Effective content marketers are able to measure what content and messaging resonates with prospects at each stage of the sales cycle. They know what messaging brings in leads at the top of the funnel, and what content helps move them to become an opportunity and a customer. And while marketing automation tools are helpful for tracking online responses to content, they don’t work if someone engages with your content, picks up the phone, and calls you.
To track those phone calls back to content and get them to the right sales rep, you need a voice-based marketing automation tool with call tracking and routing technology. That’s why we direct marketing teams use tools like DialogTech. Their solution allows marketing to assign inbound phone numbers to specific online, mobile, and offline campaigns and content. So when calls come in, we can measure what messaging was effective at driving that call. The tool can even automatically route that call to the right sales person or group of sales reps based on the specific content.
Content Selling Tools
The next thing to look at is the middle and bottom of your sales funnel. During this stage, your sales team has to be on top of its messaging. It needs to provide materials that keep prospects engaged, interested, and moving through the pipeline.
Your marketing team has a wealth of materials at its disposal. White papers, videos, presentations, and more. However, this content is often a challenge to find and use. Especially if it is stored in a shared folder or requires sales teams to navigate to another tool.
That’s why we recommend a Content Selling approach where your best content is recommended to your team based on their sales situations. When content is matched with a lead, opportunity, or other record you get the best materials for your buyer’s persona, industry, or other attribute.
These three approaches can make it easy to message in a highly targeted way to your prospects and measure effectiveness, regardless of their stage or channel into your organization.