connecting with content: a salesperson's guide to content marketing
TRANSCRIPT
A Salesperson's Guide to Content Marketing
Connecting with Content
Table of Contents
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What is Content Marketing?
Why is Content MarketingImportant for Sales?
Contributing to the ContentMachine
11 Quick Tips for Getting theMost Out of Content
Keep this in mind next time you take a sales call: Whoever is on the
other side of the phone is probably halfway to a purchase.
Actually, CEB found that 57% of a purchase decision is made before
the buyer even talks to the company.1
So...they’re more than halfway.
When someone can access millions of webpages in a fraction of a
second and poll hundreds of peers among their social network, it’s
no wonder they rely less on a flashy brochure and a 30-minute call
with a sales rep.
This is why you’re hearing so much about content marketing.
Perhaps it’s been bandied about by your colleagues in marketing.
But what does it mean, and why is it important for sales
professionals?
57% of a purchase decision is madebefore the buyer even talks to the company.
Connecting With Content Page 2
-CEB
1Why Solution Selling No Longer Works. CEB.
First, a definition. Content marketing is the creation, publication, and
distribution of engaging and educational information to attract the
attention of a target audience and move buyers toward purchase.
The word “content” can encompass several types and formats—
e-books, blog posts, videos, infographics, podcasts, images,
interactive media, and more.
Marketers are tapping content to generate a big pool of web traffic,
which turns into leads, and then gets passed on as qualified
opportunities to sales. Creating content about benefits and features
is rarely enticing, therefore, marketers focus on producing valuable,
informative content that speaks to a buyer’s pain points and
challenges.
This attracts the right visitors and leads based on their needs, not
how well they know your products. And when done well, content
marketing accelerates the sales cycle, aids reps in building
relationships with prospects, and affirms value and confidence
when an opportunity is ready to buy.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content.Page 3Connecting With Content
Glad you asked!
Sales representatives need more than good phone skills these days.
The best reps are thought leaders, industry experts, and
knowledgeable resources.
As the best-selling book The Challenger Sale notes, the sales rep who
pushes buyers to think differently, educates buyers with new
insights, and tailors conversations to their needs consistently
outperforms the others.2
Good content marketing helps achieve these goals. The content
you share should deliver insights that engage your prospects. With it
you can share thoughtful commentary through channels such as
email, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, making you a valuable
resource for your prospects.
But in order to produce and distribute content that supports your
goals, sales and marketing need to work hand-in-hand.
Why Is Content Marketing Important for Sales?
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Not only is Mark Hunter an expert on sales profitability, keynote and motivational speaker, and workshop leader, but he’s also a pro content marketer. His website and blog, The Sales Hunter, helps sales professionals reach today’s buyers and close high-profit deals.
For Hunter, informative and educational content plays a key role in attracting the right audience. "People don't search my name. They search a subject and a topic. That's how they find me." And it works. "I was talking to a
Fortune 500 company on the phone, and they mentioned very specifically a couple of my blog entries."
Ultimately, content marketing is about building relationships and earning the trust of your audience—goals closely aligned with the sales process. "Your objective on every sales call is to earn the right, the privilege, honor, and respect to be able to meet with that person again. And that's what a blog post has to do. A blog post is to earn the privilege, honor, and respect to be able to meet with that person again. And if you do that, wow, that's huge."
MarkHunter
Sales Spotlight
2 Dixon, Matthew & Brent Adamson. (2011). The Challenger Sale. New York, NY: Penguin Group.
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Up to 70% of content created by B2B marketing teams is never used
by sales, according to SiriusDecisions.3
Why?
The content sitting unused by sales teams is product-centric instead
of buyer-centric, and speaks to the benefits of a “solution” instead of
examining the problems facing a prospect. And the prospect isn’t
interested.
Sales reps need the right content to succeed. And the only way to
get it is for sales and marketing to collaborate.
Here are a few ways you can support the creation of content that
will impact the decisions of your prospects.
Share Questions, Comments, and FeedbackAccording to Mark Hunter, sales expert and keynote speaker, "Every
question that a customer asks, every objection that a customer
has...becomes a viable blog post and/or a viable e-book.” The
conversations you’re already having with customers get at the heart
of their challenges, and the best content marketing seeks to answer
these questions.
Write down the most common questions you receive from
Contributing to the Content Machine
Up to 70% of content created by B2B marketing teams is neverused by sales.- SiriusDecisions
3 Estep, Erin. (2013). B-to-B Content: The Revolution is Now. SiriusDecisions.
Connecting With Content
Collaboration
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prospects, and share these insights with marketing so they can
strategize the best way to address those topics with content.
Share Your Content NeedsDo you need more testimonials? A case study for a specific industry?
More support in explaining important processes or best practices?
Share these needs with marketing, and tell them why these topics
are important to you and your prospective customers. Providing
marketing with that context will help them prioritize production.
Your insight can aid marketing in fixing holes in their content
stockpile. "If you're attacking the biggest problems and challenges,
you'll find you're filling those gaps," said Kyle Porter, CEO of SalesLoft.
O�er to Create ContentThere’s no better way to get the content you need than to create it
yourself.
Public-facing assets such as blog posts, articles, and podcasts help
your prospects see you as an industry expert and thought leader. By
sharing your insights and ideas, you’re simultaneously helping out
marketing and building authority in your industry.
Contributing to the Content Machine
CONTENT MACHINE
Content Content
Feedback Needs
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11QUICK TIPSFOR GETTING THE MOST
OUT OF CONTENTOkay, so you’ve got the content. What’s next? Use
these eleven tips to strategically promotecontent and track your efforts.
Connecting With Content
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Take Advantage of Every Email.
Email is one of the most powerful ways to
reach and engage your target buyers. In
fact, email has a 2x higher ROI than cold
calling, networking, or trade shows.4 At
SalesLoft, Porter says that his sales reps
place unresponsive prospects into unique
drip campaigns, through which original
content is delivered to them on a
semi-regular basis.
Content provides you with an excuse to stay
in touch, or to reach out to cold leads
through email, and effective reps take every
opportunity to make an impact.
Don’t Use Attachments. Use Trackable Link Shorteners.
When you want to share content in an
email, don’t send an attachment. Use tools
like bit.ly to shorten links to that asset,
whether it’s a blog post, article, e-book, or
video.
Link shorteners allow you to track clicks on
specific links. Not only will you know
whether a buyer acts, but it’s also more
convenient for the recipient. Clicking a link
is easier than downloading an asset. Not to
mention, attachments can be stripped from
emails by protective software, particularly
for heavily monitored and regulated
organizations.
.
Deliver Content Speci�c to Pain Points.
When you’re crafting that follow up email
after a demo or presentation, include
content that addresses a specific pain point
raised by the prospect during your
conversation. This shows that you’re paying
attention to their needs.
"We simply ask them, ‘Why is it that you
called me? What was it in particular?’” says
Mark Hunter. “Then, when we get done
talking, we will email them links to some
additional content. We stay in
communication with them."
.
#1 #2 #3
4 20 Shocking Sales Stats. (2013). BuzzBuilder.
#1 #2 #3
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Track Activity, Then Propel Them Forward.
Technology such as marketing automation
and CRM software allow marketing and
sales to track the actions taken by
prospective buyers more closely than ever
before. Use this information to your
advantage.
Take a look at what your buyers are doing
before you reach out to them. Can you tell
which topics they care about based on the
e-books they download or the webinars
they attend? Is there a piece of content that
speaks to those same topics, yet moves
them one step closer to understanding how
your product fits into their needs?
Leverage Visual Media.
Videos, infographics, and images are
fantastic assets to use during the sales cycle.
Typically considered top-of-funnel assets,
these eye-catching pieces can actually
engage your buyers at every stage.
Visuals are processed 60,000x faster in the
brain than text.5 When you’re sending
emails or following up with a prospect,
visuals make an impression.
.
Use a Variety of Content.
In line with the last tip, don’t limit yourself to
written content. People respond to different
channels, different formats.
“You have to have multiple levels of
content,” says Mark Hunter. “Not everyone is
engaged with just text. The infographic is
really taking off…videos, audios—we have
to be able to engage our customer or
prospect in as many different manners as
possible."
.
5 Why Do Infographics Make Great Marketing Tools? Neo Mammalian Studios.
#4 #5 #6
Connecting With Content
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Set Up Alerts for Your Accounts
If you’re paying attention to what’s
impacting your prospects—to the news
around their organization or
industry—they’ll see you as more than just
someone pitching product.
Set up alerts for each of your top prospects
using a tool like Google or Salesforce. You’ll
receive an email once a day with news on
that company, providing you with
additional fodder for conversation. Even
better, share an article or content asset
relevant to these updates—even if that
content isn’t created by your organization.
Create Twitter Lists for Your Top 25 Opportunities.
Aside from alerts, Twitter is a fantastic way
to stay in the loop. But it can feel
overwhelming to keep up with every new
tweet.
“For salespeople, social is that last frontier
that not a lot of people have adopted,” says
Porter. “We're advocates of our salespeople
finding their top prospects, and following
them on Twitter. The way you do this is to
go into your CRM and find the people who
are opportunities...Put them on a private
Twitter list. Then, you can use tools that will
send you an email of the daily digest of
their tweets.”
Subscribe to Your Company’s Blog.
“Every member of the company should be
subscribed to your own blog,” Porter says.
This ensures you’re updated on all the new
content being produced by your
organization, and gives you ideas for new
content to share during conversations and
calls.
It might even spark some ideas for
addressing content gaps, which you can
share with your marketing team.
.
#7 #8 #9
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Subscribe to Your Prospect’s Blog.
Keeping track of their blog will supply you
with valuable ideas while keeping you
updated on the prospect’s goals. If you
understand your buyers, you’ll be able to
use this information to target the content
you share more effectively. And it gives you
a catchy way to reach out.
“One of my favorite cold emails…that
someone wrote me to sell me a product,
had the subject line, ‘Your Seven Quotes
Blog,’” says Porter. “I had just written an
article that was seven quotes...They took the
time to read it, reference it in the email, and
they went on again to reference it in the
body of the email.”
Join Conversations Online.
Go where your prospects are. Simple, but
effective.
If there’s a relevant group on LinkedIn, join it
and participate. If there are Google
Hangouts that will get you in front of the
right people, mark them in your calendar.
These are real opportunities for sharing
content organically, and to engage with
your target buyers.
.
Kyle Porter is the CEO of SalesLoft, the
simplest way to build accurate and targeted
lists of leads on the internet. They serve over
12,000+ sales professionals with their
prospecting product and that number is
growing rapidly. They were recognized by the
Technology Association of Georgia as one of
the Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in the
state. Porter is an avid writer and speaker on
the topics of sales, marketing, and
entrepreneurship.
Content marketing is a team effort at
SalesLoft. Every morning, the company has a
stand-up meeting and salespeople share their
roadblocks. "It's important to have a good
relationship between whoever is in charge of
sales and whoever is in charge of content."
This constant communication inspires
valuable content for the sales team and their
prospects.
KylePorter
Sales Spotlight
#10 #11
Connecting With Content
“Marketing” might be the word that follows content, but that
doesn’t mean sales doesn’t play a big role.
Content creates an opportunity to contribute to more effective
assets, reach out to prospects, and monitor interest during the sales
cycle. Couple your insights with these easily implemented tactics,
and you’ll be able to have more meaningful conversations with
prospects and opportunities.
Kapost™ helps enterprise brands grow revenue with content. Their content marketing software simplifies and centralizes the cre-
ation, distribution, and analysis of content across a range of channels. Marketing teams of all sizes can collaborate on content,
manage assets in one platform, organize extensive campaigns, and establish an efficient, process-driven operation.
Hundreds of the world’s top brands — including Lenovo, AT&T, and VMware — use Kapost to create, publish and scale their con-
tent operation, so they can focus on serving their customers and growing their business.
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And you’ll earn their respect as a thought leader and industry
expert.
Remember, buyers are already halfway to purchase before contact-
ing sales. Stand out from your competitors. Prove you’re paying
attention. Share relevant, valuable content.
Conclusion
Connecting With Content
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