Content - bringing sales and marketing together

There’s no doubt that sales and marketing can feel like two departments divided by a single mission. Both teams want the company to succeed, but it often seems that their goals are very different.

There are big clues that sales and marketing need to work together on content in the B2B area. The Content Marketing Institute reports that 60% to 70% of B2B content is unused – because it is not relevant to the buyer audience. And on the other side of the equation, HubSpot highlights that 79% of marketing leads don’t convert to sales because connections are not ‘nurtured’.

Value is lost on both sides through lack of communication. But content marketing can be a focus for better communication inside, as well as outside of the business. It can be an area where sales and marketing can truly work in tandem.

As our Content Director Karen Fletcher mentioned in her blog on personas, the sales team is an invaluable source of information on what customers want to know; and what their hot topics are. And of course, it’s vital that sales and marketing are using the same personas to think about customers.

Sales can be far more than an information-gathering source, however. Content can guide and direct potential customers on their buying journey. B2B sales can be notoriously slow to land, so supporting the process with appropriately timed content can be a powerful strategy.

For marketers, understanding the journey that customers make is central to keeping content relevant – and usable. There may be specific types of content that your sales team would like to add to their toolkit for talking to clients. Ask them!

Another way in which marketers can ensure that their sales team is on board with content (and helping to produce it) is to let the sales team know what’s coming out. Launching a guide to Part L? Offering an online Q&A article? These could be conversation starters for the sales teams – so ensure they’re aware of your launch dates.

Some organisations also support sales managers directly, by taking over their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts to broadcast content. This tactic has to be discussed, of course, but it can be a valuable way for the sales team to build their network of contacts. One point to bear in mind is that those contacts stay with that person if they move away from your organisation, so be sure to do this with more than one individual.

The B2B sales process has been helped and hindered by the growth of digital tools. Potential buyers may avoid ‘cold calls’, preferring to research products online. But they happily offer their email contact details in return for a great piece of content that helps them understand a critical industry issue.

Retaining these details and passing them to the right person in your sales chain should be part of the content marketing process. With everyone on the same team, content marketing can achieve so much more.