There are many different types of content and various strategies that can be used. However, sales-oriented marketing is growing increasingly popular, especially among B2B brands, as it has been shown to help drive growth and revenue, and increase profits.
In recent years, brands have been aligning sales and marketing and seeing promising results. 76% of B2B brands say that an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) approach delivered higher ROI than other marketing efforts — and one of the focuses of ABM is aligning sales and marketing.
Of course, there are many different ways to align sales and marketing, but one of the most crucial and beneficial strategies is through a sales-driven content marketing approach.
Sales-driven content marketing makes it easier for brands to better understand their customers, their needs, their pain points, and what influences their buying decisions. The goal of sales-driven marketing is to build better relationships, ensuring you are targeting the right buyers with the right incentives.
Some of the many benefits that come from implementing a sales content-driven marketing strategy include:
Below are the three most important things you should do when creating a sales-driven content strategy:
Before creating a content plan, sit down with the sales team to get their input. Your salespeople will be most aware of any barriers that exist to conversions, such as the pain points your target customers experience. It’s important to use this knowledge to ensure you are creating content that addresses these concerns.
Questions to ask the sales team that can help you get the information you need can include:
It’s helpful to think of content marketing as an extension of your sales team's efforts. Thus, it’s more beneficial to set very specific, attributable goals for your content strategy, just like sales teams have very specific goals and targets they want to achieve.
Instead of the general goal of “increasing traffic” or raising brand awareness, consider these goals which are measurable and actionable:
These are just some examples. The idea should be to determine goals based on the specific needs of your business and your sales team. Just make sure the content goals are specific, measurable, and actionable.
When implementing a sales-focused content-driven marketing strategy, it’s also important to ensure your content is optimized to give your brand authority. ABM strategies are rapidly gaining in popularity among B2B brands, so simply having your own sales-driven content isn’t enough. Your content also needs to be optimized to give you an edge over your competitors.
If you cover your key topics more comprehensively, it will give your site higher authority and help you out-rank other competing sites. In other words, don’t just do what everyone else is already doing. Use tools to help you create optimized and authoritative content that goes above and beyond to help your brand stand out.
Sales and marketing alignment are key to a successful Account-Based Marketing strategy. However, if you are new to this kind of approach and aren’t sure how to create sales-oriented marketing, Cogo & Co. can help.
Take our Growth Readiness Scorecard to receive a score on your sales and marketing approach with customized results, detailing how you can improve your results quickly and easily. Schedule a free consultation to learn more.