The Connection Between Content Marketing and Sales Enablement

How Well-Written Content Can Help Generate Leads and Boost Conversions

Information is power, and when contemplating a big investment, customers typically have lots of questions they want to be answered before signing on the dotted line. High-quality, well-written content crafted by marketing professionals often helps with this, as it can answer many of these questions while also providing peace of mind.

This is why it is so important for marketing and sales teams to align with one another and work in tandem, particularly when it comes to content marketing.

Keep reading to learn more about the power of content marketing and sales enablement.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy focused on creating and sharing online written content. Typically, content marketing strategies are developed to help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). However, content can also be used by sales associates to share with prospects and clients in order to attract and retain customers. 

Such content can include, but is not limited to:

• White papers
• Blog articles
• Research papers
• Product information
• Case Studies
• Email newsletters
• User-generated content

How Can Content Help Sales Teams?

Content is a powerful sales tool, and when crafted strategically, it provides existing and prospective clients with valuable information to assist them at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

The different stages of the buyer’s journey include:

• Brand awareness
• Consideration
• Purchase
• Referral
• Engagement.

Below, we’ll dive deeper into the numerous benefits that content marketing can offer in-house sales teams.

Content Helps Generate Leads

Content is one of the key pillars of SEO, as Google analyzes the content on your website to determine how useful it would be to people searching for that information. This is the reason that content marketing is often incorporated into SEO strategies. 

If Google is satisfied with the quality of your content, it will rank your website pages high on its search engine results page (SERP). When your website has strong rankings, you begin to generate more leads as more people come across your site through Google searches. 

Content Helps Nurture Leads Through The Sales 

Once your content has attracted new leads, it can also be used to nurture them. 

Content that is posted across different channels should be designed to support leads throughout each stage of the buyer’s journey. This helps your sales team nurture and engage these leads so they can convert them to paying customers.

Content Provides Clients With Valuable Insights

Sales teams often spend hours of valuable time answering the same questions repeatedly for prospects. Instead, your sales team can work with the marketing department to create content that answers prospects’ most commonly asked questions. The sales team can then provide this content to prospects to answer their questions before they’re even asked. This saves hours of time that could be spent on other tasks.

Content Marketing Tips For Sales Teams

Wondering how to create insightful content that is valuable to prospects and will help close deals? Below we’ll share a few tips for crafting sales-enablement-focused content.

Understand Your Customer Personas

It’s crucial that you understand the types of customers to target with your content. If you have not done so already, map out your customer journey and determine who your customer personas are.

Create Content For Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

As we’ve already mentioned, sales-focused content should be created for each stage of the buyer’s journey. Here’s how you do that:

• Create Your Buyer Personas: Buyer personas represent the types of customers you are trying to attract. You can create your buyer personas by getting to know your customers, analyzing data and looking for trends, and segmenting the audiences.

• Come up With Content Topics That Match Each Stage: Determine what your clients’ specific needs are at each stage and come up with interesting topics that will help address them.

• Create Content for Each Stage: Work with the marketing team to create content based on the relevant topics you have come up with and distribute it through the appropriate channels.

• Add Relevant Calls to Action (CTAs): CTAs should always be added to your content based on which stage of the buyer’s journey the content is crafted for. This helps to facilitate further action once a lead has consumed the content. For example, if they are in the ‘Awareness’ stage, include a CTA to book a discovery call or consultation. If it’s the consideration stage, you can include a CTA to start a free trial.

Keep the Lines of Communication Open

Often, different departments can lose focus on the big picture and keep to themselves rather than working together. 

When it comes to sales and marketing, it’s important that these teams feel comfortable with one another and are communicating well. Why? When these two teams aren’t communicating or collaborating properly, it makes your sales and marketing efforts significantly less effective.

Here are a few tips for boosting communication and collaboration within different departments:

• Ensure both teams are using the same terminology and processes
• Assign a point of contact on each team for sharing information
• Host routine meetings
• Ensure data is being shared and updated regularly

Amplify Your Content

Marketing teams should be actively sharing their content not just with the sales team but with the whole company. This can be done through various internal channels, such as an employee newsletter. 

How Consultus Digital Can Help You Develop a Content Marketing Strategy

Still feeling unsure about venturing into the world of content marketing? Our experienced team of content marketing experts at Consultus Digital is here to help.

Our Toronto-based experts have the expertise to develop unique, high-quality content that can be used by your sales team to help generate and nurture leads to conversion so that they can become long-term customers. 
For more information on content marketing or to chat about anything digital marketing strategy, Contact us — the experts at Consultus Digital.