One of the big struggles for sales organizations today is that the sales cycle continues to get longer because of the growing amount of options available to consumers. We’re overwhelmed with how many different companies are offering the same products. And if the sales cycle continues to lengthen, then revenue streams have the potential to decrease because sales aren’t being made as quickly as before. How can organizations combat this?
We all know that content marketing is important for our businesses. It is necessary to have content marketing so that prospects and clients alike can do research and search for value-add content that will help them make better decisions. But did you know that B2B customers contact a sales rep only after 70% of the decision has been made?1 If that’s the case, then we can logically deduce that content marketing is one of the biggest aspects of a prospect’s decision-making process and could directly affect the length of the sales cycle.
When the buzzword “content marketing” was first introduced, sales and marketing organizations were in a flurry to simply create more content and focus on gathering more web traffic. Now that we’ve had the opportunity to analyze what’s performing well and what hasn’t, marketers are moving more towards creating very tailored content that is geared towards very specific target markets. In other words, there might be less traffic and click throughs, but conversion rates are starting to go up because they are gaining more relevant traffic. And this is an opportunity for your sales organization to shorten its sales cycle.
First, work with marketing to create content pieces that are geared specifically towards your target markets: demographics, job positions, location, psychographics, verticals, industries, etc. Second, make sure those landing pages are optimized and promoted to gain traction. Finally, weed out the prospects who are not a good fit by having a qualifying process.
So, take a good look at what prospects can find on your site and how it will impact their decision. You might be ruled out even before you have an opportunity to sell yourself if you don’t!
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Google+ Kent Potts
1. http://www.marketingtechblog.com/papershare-sales-funnel/
