Digital content marketing has grown exponentially, and created vast swaths of valuable content for Sales teams to use at every conceivable point of the sales process… but they aren’t. Sales and Marketing alignment is part of the problem, but many buyers and Sales Reps share similar feelings on the matter. A 4-step method may hold the answers to unlocking digital sales enablement solutions.
SUMMARY:
- The growth of digital content marketing isn’t showing signs of stopping
- Content marketing has exceptional ROI, improves SEO, and provides buyers with marketing communications they prefer
- Vendors are adopting the trends faster than they can effectively plan for them
- Buyers and Sales Reps feel similarly about the created content they consume
- The state of Sales Rep effectiveness is declining as a result
- The empowered buyer feels less confident in Sales Reps, which only adds to the deterioration
- Best-in-class reps are actually using content, and Marketing teams tailor their content better to end-of-funnel consumption
- 4-steps to effective use of digital content involve Marketing and Sales teams having the right tools, which is Marketing Automation, and Adaptive Sales Enablement, respectively
Growth of Digital Content Marketing
Whether you call it inbound marketing, or content marketing, or what have you, the art of creating collateral for the purpose of educating and delighting a buyer is here to stay.
- 85% of companies are practicing some form of inbound marketing in 2014, that’s up from 60% in 2013 (Source: Hubspot, 2014)
- 34% of Marketing budgets will be allocated to inbound tactics, that’s 11% more than outbound
- 48% plan to increase spending on inbound, that’s 3 consecutive years of near 50% annual increases
Content marketing is growing as a preferred marketing method of choice for a number of reason, as it provides exceptional ROI, meets the current needs of the B2B buyer, and improves SEO while increasing the value of the company’s online portal.
Exceptional ROI is something that every marketer dreams of having, and many struggle with. Proving ROI from activities is the top Marketing challenge reported for 2013 and 2014, with 25% and 29% of Marketers indicating so, respectively. (Source: Marketing Charts, 2014)
- Website conversion rates are nearly 6X higher for content marketing adopters
- 41% of Marketers confirm that content marketing has positive ROI
- Brands using inbound saved an average of $14 per new customer acquired, as compared to outbound strategies. (Source: Kapost)
The current needs of buyers are changing, many sources report anywhere from 30% to 70% of the buyer’s journey is complete before ever making contact with a sales rep. Though a 50% spread is quite large, it stands to show that buyers want to develop their own decision journey, on their own time.
Content marketing delivers on that need and adds value to the sales process by informing the buyer about areas of past interest to others.
As a content marketing strategy develops, the creator of the content will see improved SEO and value to their website by virtue of having more industry-specific material, in line with what others would search for using a search engine.
Explosive Growth can be… Destructive
Content marketing has seen a steady increase in adoption over the last few years, as explained above, and that has led to some unfortunate outcomes for newcomers.
Instead of serving as a sales enablement tool, content marketing is being increasingly recognized as nothing more than corporate selling under the guise of reporting and analysis. Many experienced buyers actually shy away from content, citing that it is often:
- Blatantly promotional
- Overly technical
- Lacking any real substance
- Encumbered with too many requirements for access (Source: CMO Council, 2013)
Thus far, the majority of buyers (87%) state that content availability has a major or moderate impact on vendor selection for the following reasons:
- Identifies new approaches to problems
- Introduces fresh thought leadership on issues
- Validates the value of products or solutions
- Highlights companies that understand customer issues
But the state of buyer perceptions may crack at any moment it seems, as only 9% feel that vendor content is among their most trusted. This is a dangerous scenario as non-vendor content risks being inaccurate, out of context, out of date, and etc.
Impact on Sales Reps
The explosive growth of content marketing has, if nothing else, shifted the balance of power between the buyer and the seller. Other than buyers entering the sales funnel at any point in their decision journey, Sales Reps have been less than effective at finding content to actually use, and are spending more time than ever creating content as a result.
The growth of content marketing has revealed an immediate lack of essential content management for Sales Reps. The common frustration among 71% of reps is an inability to locate content quickly enough. (Source: BrainShark)
Other challenges:
- 51% have to spend time modifying existing material
- 41% say materials are out of date
- 41% say there isn’t enough hours in a day to sufficiently prep for a meeting
- 30% say it’s hard to know when they’re accessing the most current version
- 28% say that the material isn’t relevant to the prospect of customer
- 24% say the material isn’t in a format that is useful
- 19% say they DO NOT HAVE the materials they need
As a result, 43% of reps say they spend half a day preparing for a meeting.
In order to compensate for their inability to locate useful content, reps are investing more time than ever trying to create their own content. In a surprising twist, 71% agree that they do receive their content from Marketing, yet a further 68% say they create it themselves. This suggests that Reps are creating their own content in lieu of receiving content that Marketing teams believe are being used.
A separate report confirms this, as 78% of respondents (Sales Reps) Never or Sometimes make use of Marketing content. Their report found that the common concerns were that the content was: (Source: Firebrick)
- 67% - too generic
- 40% - not relevant
- 36% - prefer to make their own
- 20% - content is out of date
Interestingly, these reasons are quite similar to those of buyers with respect to content marketing.
Reps are spending less time actually selling as a result of the content marketing mismatch, in an average week, 40% to 50% of a Reps time is spent in sales preparation activities. (Source: ROInnovations)
- 2.4+ hours a week spent searching for marketing collateral
- 5.8+ hours a week spent searching for customer related material
- 6.4+ hours a week spent creating presentations
In 1998, up to 47% of a Reps day was reported as being spent in direct selling activities, as of 2013, that number has dropped to 35% of their day.
The Buyer’s Perspective
All that extra time spent on preparing for sales would be more than justified if the outcomes were strong positive closing ratios and customer satisfaction. This is not the case. (Source: The Sales Way)
- Only 62% of sales reps were deemed as “knowledgeable” about their own products
- 24% of salespeople were deemed as knowledgeable about the buyers specific business
- 23% of salespeople can relate to a buyer’s role and responsibility in an organization
- 22% of sellers understand the buyer’s issues, and are able to see and position where they can help
These statistics are absolutely appalling, if not completely telling. Reps are spending more time preparing for sales, and are seen as less prepared as a result. If this trend continues, it will achieve nothing but a further deterioration of the Sales Rep, and wasted resources.
The Issues in a Nutshell
The immediate issues are obvious:
- Reps should NOT be CREATING content, they should be consuming it
- Marketing teams MUST include Sales insights in the creation of content
If marketing teams aren’t including Sales in content management and development, they aren’t going to be able to create content that the buyer enjoys, and that drives the decision journey forward. Worse still, without Sales and Marketing alignment, the communication being delivered by both teams could be at odds with one another.
Reps should have one singular focus, to sell. Selling requires nurturing, constant communication, and deep awareness. Many studies now refer to Sales Reps as Micro-marketers. This label may not be welcome by all Reps, but it does accurately define their role. A Sales Rep cannot do all this AND create content, this is the primary role of the Marketing team.
4 Steps to Achieving Digital Content Sales
Digital Content Sales is upon us. It is the act of using digital content for the purpose of making sales, just like how digital content marketing is used for marketing communications.
It is worth noting right now that, just like Marketing, successfully delivering a digital content sales strategy is next to impossible without enabling technology. For Marketing, this is called Marketing Automation, for Sales, this is called Adaptive Sales Enablement.
With this kind of technology, the process of closing deals with content is as easy as a 4-step process:
1) Sort content to the buyer persona
Using the same personas that your Marketing team may (should) have as part of their content delivery strategy, Reps can have marketing content preflighted to their playbook, and ready for any interaction. This kind of planning becomes more robust with time, as personas are optimized with each interaction.
Playbooks optimized from the CRM, and updated with interactions from the Marketing Automation (MA) system to the Sales Enablement platform, result in a level of sales content management accuracy that cannot be underestimated.
2) Analyze content consumption
Adaptive sales enablement automatically updates the CRM and MA system to provide predictive sales analytics with each interaction. If you’re familiar with MA and content tracking, the concept is identical, except it’s for sales, where the interactions are beyond the visible range of any MA system.
Once these insights are applied, Marketing teams will possess an unmatched level of end-of-funnel sales content consumption awareness. Every piece of content made thereafter will be the result of consumption that actually led to sales, not just lead generation.
Sales Reps use these insights to gauge whether a buyer is ready to buy based on their behaviour with content. Adaptive sales enablement extracts consumption details down to individual slides in a PowerPoint -for example, enabling incredible behaviour awareness.
This step is known as closed loop marketing.
3) ‘DESIGN’ tailored content offerings
Remember, Sales Reps should consume content, not create it, they have neither the time nor the marketing environment insights to accomplish this on their own.
Digital content Sales involves the effective use of Micro-marketing. An adaptive sales enablement system allows a rep to disassemble any content piece and ‘design’ tailored content that combines all essential pieces from various files. This happens within the sales enablement system, which means that analytics aren’t lost, and any regulatory compliance restrictions on the content remain valid.
Designed content, in combination with a keen Rep, allow the sales call to be maximized to just that which the buyer wanted to hear, and limited to the least number of interactions possible.
4) Close and reflect
At this point, you’ve showed the buyer content and insights that are specifically tailored to their needs, if they aren’t ready to buy yet, it is more likely a matter of time, confirmation, money, etc. and less likely that it was the wrong communication.
If it was the wrong communication, go back to step three and try another Sales Call. Refine the message, keep what information the buyer enjoyed, and remove that which was less than contextual for them.
The process of digital content sales is very similar to that of digital content marketing, just at a more focused scope. It is impossible to achieve digital content sales without adaptive sales enablement, just as it would be impossible to deliver a digital content marketing strategy without marketing automation.
The sheer fact that it is ‘digital’ should be enough to validate the need for technology.
If your marketing teams are delivering a digital content strategy, but your sales teams are stuck trying to make heads or tails of what’s going on, you may be in need of an adaptive sales enablement solution.
