From Face-to-Face interaction to remote customer meetings, follow-up via email, or instant Web portals, one thing is for sure - the sales rep/customer relationship depends on engaging content more than anything else.
Marketers in B2B organizations engage with customers using digital assets to demonstrate that they are leaders in the industry with the thought leadership collateral to prove it. In order to better understand customer behaviours and preferences, world-class marketers work with rich insight into customer profiles to understand their needs and determine the next steps to take in the engagement process.
In order to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time through the right channel, marketers spend a great deal of effort refining marketing campaigns. And that means using content marketing to really zero in on customer needs. This is why content development takes the biggest chunk out of going to market. The various channels of interaction - email, social media, webinars, remote and interpersonal all require content to sell.
Below is a list of 5 ways to reduce the cost of content marketing with Sales Enablement.
1. Segmentation
Launching marketing campaigns without thorough knowledge of customers and their needs is like shooting arrows in the dark. Having information like geographical location, age, gender, who the decision makers are and creating lists based on these segments allows marketers to generate targeted content on a more granular level.
2. Marketing and sales alignment
Marketing and Sales alignment takes the form of agreed upon sets of definitions that allow the two departments to understand when a customer becomes sales-ready. From prospect to closed business, marketing and Sales work together to create targeted marketing campaigns which enable sales during the Face-to-Face interaction and in the follow-up stages.
3. Marketing automation
The objective of a marketing automation platform is to create more refined marketing campaigns. Marketing automation enables marketers to create a 'set and forget' marketing process that allows marketing campaigns to run on auto-pilot. Automating the marketing process works to increase operational efficiency and cut spending on campaign creation.
4. CRM
The most important tool for customer relationship management is a CRM. A CRM is the solution for prospect and customer record-keeping and is used to track the history and activities that occur with each customer at each stage of the sales funnel. A CRM is fed information from a marketing automation platform - things like, downloaded publications, email campaigns, filled out forms on websites, microsites and landing pages, and other data in order to view the path a lead took in order to reach the sales-ready stage.
5. Training
Without the proper tools for a robust workflow and marketing and Sales process, sales reps don’t get the proper training and can’t be effective when it comes time for the Face-to-Face interaction. A lot of money goes on sales training, and the wrong content material throughout the marketing and Sales process could be costly.
How do you fair out? Are you maximizing your content marketing strategy and going to market at the lowest cost?
