So, everyone is using and/or moving towards the use of digital content marketing, but the success of this relatively new practice is highly variable, and many companies are missing the mark in specific areas. Making wins with content is conceptually very easy, it’s the creation that gets complicated. This week we’ll examine how to create content that is tailored to buyers at different stages of the sales funnel for an optimized sales process with a real sales enablement solution.
Summary
- Just about everyone is participating in Digital Content Marketing.
- Digital content is a marketing-based sales enablement solution that often fails to enable anything.
- Poor content creation is so prevalent that the preferences regarding content are already well documented, companies just keep avoiding them and do their own thing.
- Much of the problem stems from applying traditional marketing thinking to content marketing
- The new paradigm of content is engage-share-help.
- Buyer personas that can be optimized with closed loop marketing insights are essential for not only improved content management, but also overall buyer progression.
Understanding Digital Content Marketing
Digital content marketing is the go-to strategy for many corporations, with the internet (and access to it) in first world nations being as ubiquitous as water, the adoption rates have seen an explosion of growth and now, depending on how you choose to define it, anywhere from 86% to 96% of companies are participating. (Source: Content Marketing Institute, 2015)
Content Marketing is often defined as inbound marketing simply because of the nature of content usage. The purpose of content or inbound marketing is to supply the target market with various forms of consumable media that enable a buyer to locate, learn about, remember, and eventually purchase from; a seller.
Hubspot first coined this term as “a methodology that focuses on creating quality content that pulls people towards your company and product” or essentially, ‘quality content’ and ‘magnetic tactics’. (Source: Hubspot, 2014)
With the fundamental goal of content being consumption then behaviour.
Why Even Bother Using Content?
The simple answer: it is desired by the target market.
Marketers are always looking to understand the target market, and add value over time. If the target market wants it, they’ll get it.
Now, the greater bulk of people didn’t just start asking for content all of a sudden, and this is where we get a little more complicated with the question of “why bother”.
Content Marketing has a ‘chicken or egg’ conundrum, that is, it’s awfully difficult to look back and guess which came first; content marketing, or, the empowered buyer?
The complicated answer: The growth of the empowered buyer is resulting in more content marketing.
Marketers always respond to trends, and the empowered buyer is just one of those trends.
The Empowered Buyer
As the internet (or, Google probably) became a more powerful and effective means of investigating and learning anything and everything about anyone, anything, and everything, people started to catch on.
Reporters and industry analysts became a go-to for anyone in the decision journey, and vendor websites were probably seen as nothing more than advertising and/or purchase hubs.
This is how and why buyers enter the sales funnel at any point, and now not only seek out content to further the purchase decision, but even have preference criteria about it.
- Anywhere from 50 – 70% of the typical decision journey is over before a buyer contacts a Sales Rep (Source: Zambito T, 2013)
- 95% of buyers prefer a vendor that “provided them with ample content to navigate each stage of the buying process” (Source: DemandGen Report)
- 75% of buyers want marketers to curb the sales-speak in their content (Source: SiriusDecisions)
Digital Content Sales
In fact, the immense adoption rate, and success of; digital content marketing, has led many to utilize this investment for the purpose of a content based sales enablement solution.
The use of digital content for sales, aptly referred to by the Skura team as Digital Content Sales, is so pronounced that it has spurred the growth of an entire sales content management software industry, which is referred to as Sales Enablement. Go figure, the original sales enablement solution (digital content) invigorates an industry devoted to sales enablement.
Buyers Want Content… But Buyers Hate (vendor) Content (currently)
Before we go any further, it should be duly noted that some organizations and content types are quite effective at content creation, they create content that buyers want to see, these buyers willingly opt to receive notifications of new content, and they share their great experiences with content among their peer group.
The majority of creators under this banner (creators of content that buyers want to see) typically consist of professional associations (consultants), industry group reports, customer case studies, analyst reports, and product reviews. <and in that order (Source: CMO Council, 2013)
This is probably because these groups have absolutely no vested interest in making a sale to you. At best, these groups want you to consider, and make a purchase in; an industry in question. As a buyer, you’re probably looking for something in a specific industry anyway, thus making this content very relevant, unbiased, inviting enough for any reader, light on technical jargon, and highly valuable.
The reasons that buyers dislike vendor content is well known: (Source: Zambito T, 2013)
- The content overhypes the company and the product/service
- The content is overly technical and is thus not useful for the inquisitive buyer
- The content is blatantly self-serving (selling) and/or lacks objectivity
- The content lacks depth and/or is tailored to no specific buyer
Which explains exactly why only 9% chose vendor content as their most trusted source in a pick-one scenario, this is probably the percentage of vendor marketers who do deliver content effectively. (Source: CMO Council, 2013)
Exactly WHY is Vendor Content Failing
I understand your immediate thought, which vendor in the right mind would create content that doesn’t serve their interests? And potentially improves those of a competitor?
And I understand entirely. The issue is that content marketing operates on a whole different level from traditional marketing.
In traditional marketing, the prospect is only going to see your message for a fraction of a second in some cases, so it better convince them fast!
In content marketing, you’re looking to help someone develop a purchase decision, they’ve already come to you, they already want your information, and you just need to position yourself as someone who is there to help.
A New Way of Thinking
Most will be familiar with the concept of Target-Capture-Convert
This is the traditional format, and in some cases, this entire process can happen in just a few seconds like in a TV commercial. Unfortunately, the new paradigm is about supporting the buyer on their decision journey.
The new concept should look more like Engage-Share-Help (Source: Accenture, 2014)
You engage buyers by having an extensive outreach plan that seeks out topically relevant areas of interest where buyers would likely begin their search, remember that the decision journey is no longer about entering at zero, so you need to understand your buyer, the things that influence them at various points in the sales process, and their desired outcomes from any investigation.
You share insights with buyers by having an extensive content plan that allows a buyer to easily and effectively self-educate about an area of subject matter that enables them to develop their decision journey and begin to trust the brand as a reliable ally in their current and long term struggle.
Finally, you help buyers by continually publishing relevant, enticing, entertaining, or just informational content over time. The end goal of helping is to help them with your product or service. If someone isn’t ready to buy (requiring further nurturing), you help with content, if you feel they’re a MQL, you can start to bring out the sales conversations.
Remember, people aren’t afraid to spend money, they’re afraid to spend it on the wrong things, your job with content marketing is to enable sales acceleration in the target persona by instilling that confidence with every interaction.
Purchase Decision Stages
The majority of Marketers and many business people are quite familiar with the stages of purchase decisions for all buyers, these stages influence the type of content and level of engagement required for each respective buyer. Those stages are:
1) Problem Recognition
The buyer realizes that there is a problem, and begins to seek out a possible solution. They’ve now entered the sales process and are ready for introductory levels of content. Your goal with content is to try and occupy the spaces where they would likely start their search, and make it as easy as possible to find you.
2) Needs Evaluation
The buyer is now investigating the specific needs they have in order to solve their problem or achieve their objective. They are seeking out the pieces required to put together a puzzle, your job with content is to clarify the pieces, and direct them accordingly.
3) Evaluation of Alternatives
Once the buyer understands their problem and has decided on a number of possible solutions, they will begin to breakdown the possible vendor solutions. Your role is to establish your competitive advantage, positioning, value proposition, and etc. It must be blatantly clear as to why your brand’s solution is the optimal one for their specific needs.
It is important to avoid down talking the competition. All players in the market have solutions to offer, you should be capable of tying your solutions to the needs of the buyer in a manner which builds confidence in your offer.
4) Purchase Decision
The point where the buyer decides to buy can be influenced by many factors. Often a trusted Sales Rep is the heavyweight factor in question, but as we’ve seen above, a majority of buyers prefer vendors who provide ample content to enable them to develop their own decisions.
The purchase decision is the culmination of effective content at the right times to communicate how and why your solution delivers on the needs of the buyer. The end result being the purchase of the product or service.
5) Post Purchase Reflection
The vast majority of sellers want a buyer that continues to buy and sustains a healthy and profitable relationship. The content doesn’t stop after the sale, in fact, post-purchase content is designed to delight the buyer after the sale.
Delight can mean many things, but in essence, your objective to continue to instill confidence in their purchase, to enable them to utilize the product/service more effectively, and to position for future upselling and cross selling opportunities.
Digital Content Marketing/Sales Stages
There are likely to be many differing opinions on this subject due to the relative newness of digital content management practices. The Hubspot perspective on content management planning is among those that we at Skura consider to be effective. (Source: Hubspot, 2015)
1) Attract
The attract stage is about getting those buyers who are at various points in the decision journey to be willing to consider your content in their information search. Your objective is to convert strangers into visitors with the hopes of progressing this relationship.
2) Convert
If you’ve got the stranger to become a visitor, you want to begin turning them into a lead. This doesn’t mean they’re ready to buy, it means that you’ve got them considering your information in their search, and you’re in the process of capturing information from them.
Your job is to continue to convert them over time, from a new lead, to a MQL, and maybe even a SQL before ever handing off the lead to the Sales team. This is an area where many Marketers struggle, and why many Reps tend to avoid MQLs.
3) Close
The closing process is the point where Sales Reps take over the nurturing process from Marketers. Because the sales process started with content, it often continues with content, and is largely the reason that Sales Reps are using content for Sales.
Effective digital content management is a must, as Sales Reps must be capable of progressing a conversation without repeating something they’ve already heard, or providing information that isn’t relevant to the buyer.
4) Delight
At this point you’ve made the Sale, and the buyer is with you at least for the short haul. Your job is to nurture this stage of the relationship for the benefit of a long term orientation and future sales.
If you haven’t already noticed, these stages align quite well with those of a purchase decision. This is why we consider this layout quite valid.
Who Does What
Marketers Create Content
Generally speaking, it should always be the Marketers who create content. This is an essential component of content management processes for achieving a real sales enablement solution.
Sales Reps are tasked with managing several specific relationships and delivering the right content. If they’re creating content, they aren’t selling, closing, delighting buyers, or etc.
Marketers are positioned well to create content due to their role as facilitators of communication.
Sales Reps Influence/Inform Content Creation
Sales Reps actively interact with the real buyers, they have a level of buyer awareness that cannot be surpassed by market research. If buyers are associated with personas, then optimizing the journey of a buyer will inherently optimize the persona of those buyers.
This is called Sales and Marketing alignment; when both teams work together for streamlined creation and distribution of content (and other operations).
Marketers Attract and Convert
Marketing teams facilitate a one-to-many level of communication. This positions them well to attract and convert, as the ‘attract’ and ‘convert’ role is going to be inherently limited in accuracy and effectiveness.
Like fishing, you won’t know exactly what you’ll get, but you can be in the right place with the right tools. In this case it is the right use of content in the right mediums.
Sales Reps Close and Delight
Sales are responsible for a one-to-one conversation, and are aptly positioned to deliver closing and post-sale conversations. In order to ensure that they have the right content available, they’ll need the right Sales Rep software to get the job done.
This means sales content management that enables them to have the right conversations at the right times and with the right people.
It also means being able to optimize the persona awareness over time. If Marketers are creating all the content, they need to be empowered with insights to create this content right the first time.
Getting Sales Insights for Creating the Right Content
All of this comes down to the right insights. There is no magic bullet for content creation, no set concept to follow and get it all right. It’s about doing the best you can to be in the right place, accepting that you will miss the mark initially, and improving over time.
Improving over time takes the right insights.
1) Buyer Persona Optimization
As introduced above, buyer personas are immensely powerful. It’s all about grouping together variables that buyers share in order to target content for that group.
The powerful thing about persona optimization is that all your wins are going to come from enhancing the experience of the end-user. (The buyer)
This is because you associate buyers to personas. As you improve the experience of buyers at the end of the funnel, you actually enhance the persona awareness and thus improve all similar buyer experiences.
That’s the power of content. You inherently enhance the sales process because you enhance the experience of the buyer. This means a full-throttle investment in individual buyer experience results in a massive overall improvement in buyer experiences. A win-win, so to speak.
2) Extensive Sales Rep/Buyer Level Content Consumption Visibility
Improving the buyer experience is done in exactly the same way that it is done for Marketers. Marketers use Marketing Automation programs that inform about consumption, which enables Marketers to tailor content for greater lead generation, and etc.
When you apply this kind of end-of-funnel insight, you optimize for the actual buyer, not the ‘target market’ (as defined by Marketers).
The process of taking end-of-funnel insights is called Closed-Loop-Marketing, something that we advocate for at Skura. You ‘close the loop’ of consumption awareness, rather than facilitating a one-way interaction.
This kind of insight is achieved with sales analytics software that can capture everything that a Sales Rep shows to a buyer, both from their sales presentations and also from content sent to buyers via digital mediums.
If you’re missing that last piece of the insight puzzle, that end-of-funnel content consumption insight, you’ve come to the right place. Drop us a line and let us tell you about optimizing personas through closed loop analytics; a real sales enablement solution.
In a later post we will cover all the types of content, and what content to use for each stage that we’ve defined above. I’ll hyperlink that future post in here, so stay tuned, and thanks for reading.
