If you’re looking for an effective sales enablement tool for your company or organisation, content marketing is a real game changer.
I’ve blogged previously about why inbound (or holistic content) marketing was a good fit for AR/VR and immersive tech companies, outlining seven reasons why.
One of the points I spoke about was sales enablement. Here’s what I had to say about it last time;
“…Sales enablement is basically the strategy of aligning all of your sales and marketing processes, and making sure that your sales team has everything it needs; tools, training, and not forgetting, content.”
It’s the content, and in particular, content marketing that I want to focus on in this post (something I’m fully certified in). I’ll be expanding upon it further, giving it the depth it deserves, and showing you why your sales team deserves it too.
After all, they’re crucial to your company’s success. Why wouldn’t you give them every tool in the box to help them out?
Here are some reasons why your AR/VR and immersive tech company should be using content marketing for sales enablement.
Easily accessible content – so your sales team can concentrate on their job
Sales is already a difficult job. You’re in a marketplace with hundreds of other companies and hundreds of other sales teams, all of which are trying to close leads on prospective clients.
There’s no reason to make your sales team’s job more difficult by having them repeat the same task, answer the same questions and even create content over and over again, but for different prospects.
In fact, it’s wildly inefficient. Did you know that an average 31% of a sales rep’s time is spent searching for or creating content?
Why are your sales team creating content at all? You wouldn’t want the person in charge of accounts at a bakery having to bake brioche. It’s literally not their job.
However, with easily accessible content for every stage of the decision-making process, they don’t need to do that. They can just pick content that’s relevant to the prospect, and share it with them.
Complement your sales team with powerful marketing automation
Combining your content resources with a decent sales automation tool (there are several to choose from, including ActiveCampaign) is a key part of content marketing, and also a great aid for your sales team.
This gives a prospect all the right information at the right time, and once they’re ready, they’ll come to you.
Essentially, it means your sales team will be able to engage with leads who – by the time they get in touch – have already made a decision and are ready to buy. No more time wasters.
If done right, your email nurturing automation should be responsive, and react to the links someone’s clicked on and the emails they’ve opened – so it will feel like a personalised experience and not at all annoying.
So, how does that work exactly?
Educate and nurture your prospects
Especially with immersive tech, the people that your sales team are going to come across are going to be full of questions.
This is only to be expected. While you might know what’s possible in the field, your prospects may not, and we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible with it all.
Say someone finds you via a blog post that answers a question they had about your AR/VR or immersive solutions. They found it valuable, and saw a call to action that offered them a more in depth piece of content they see value in.
They download it in exchange for their email address, and are converted from a visitor to a lead. Does that mean you get straight on the phone to them? No. But what your automation will do from now on is send them helpful, nurturing emails.
These emails answer all their biggest questions, address their biggest pushbacks, and give them everything they need to make an informed decision about your solutions.
It also means your sales team has access to valuable content whenever their customers have pushbacks or concerns after sales calls or boardroom pitches. They can literally pop a handy blog post, case study or guide in a follow up email!
Become recognised as an industry thought leader
Great content isn’t just a fantastic resource that your sales team can use at the moment of pitching to a potential client (or afterwards). It allows them to build a reputation and to build brand awareness for your company.
Brand awareness is like another sales pitch all on its own.
By publishing content regularly, and sharing it on your social media channels, you’re increasing your visibility for prospects. People are noticing you, and your credibility and authority in the field.
This is priceless.
When people Google a specific question in your field, what shows up? Your content. Who are they going to turn to when they’ve made a decision? Your brand, because you’ve been the one helping them.
And when they think of your industry, whose products or services are they going to think about in the future? Your brand.
You’re the one who helped them, you’re the one that solved their problems, and you’re the one that delivered for them.
The process repeats and builds on itself…
… And BOOM. You become a trusted name in the industry, one with a track record of solving a client’s problems.
In other words, you’re an industry expert. And you have the content to prove it.
Align your sales and marketing messages
It might sound cheesy, but ‘smarketing’ is a term I learned whilst going through my HubSpot inbound and content marketing certification, and it’s kind of important.
Despite this, the alignment of sales and marketing is something that’s very often discussed; less often put into practice.
The process of content marketing and implementing a successful content strategy for sales enablement will ensure the content and messaging you put out to the world is consistent for your brand, and perfectly aligns your sales and marketing.
It also means your sales team will all have consistent messaging, content and even scripts to work from – which is important if you want to achieve consistent results.
What’s included in content marketing for sales enablement?
You’ve probably guessed by now that content marketing for sales enablement doesn’t mean specifically sales content for pitching to potential clients – in fact, most of it won’t be.
There’s all sorts of valuable content that enables your sales team to do their job better, and this includes things like blogs that answer prospects’ biggest questions, case studies that address their biggest pushbacks, and premium content for a deeper delve.
But your marketing department needs to make sure that it’s creating the right content that your sales team can call upon whenever they’re interacting with prospective clients.
It’s called ‘sales enablement,’ after all. It has to enable your sales team to sell.
Here are some of the bits and pieces you’ll need for a holistic approach of content marketing for sales enablement:
- Informative blog posts – Much like the one you’re reading now.
- Landing pages
- Helpful guides in the form of premium downloadable content
- Video content – Considering that this year it’s estimated that the average person will watch 100 minutes of video per day, video content seems like a no brainer to have in your toolbox.
- Case studies and client testimonials
- Interactive content – 43% of consumers prefer interactive video content over other types of video content. Also, this being the AR/VR and immersive tech field, you really should have this sort of content in your library.
- Nurturing emails
- Call to actions
- Checklists
- One-page PDFs.
Whew! That’s a lot of content. But I promise you that it’s worth it to have all of this in your library. The more useful content you have at your disposal, the better able your sales team is able to do their job.
And after all, that’s what you want, isn’t it? To give the people who work for you all the tools they need to do their job!
Advice from a HubSpot-certified content writer
While this does seem like a lot of content, it needn’t be an overwhelming or intimidating task.
It’s best not to think of what you’re doing right now. Instead, think about your buyer personas, and what information they’d need to make an informed decision.
Get your sales team in a room and ask them to write down every question prospects ask them on a daily basis.
Look at your current sales processes and see what areas could be improved and made more focused on prospective clients. The name of the game in content marketing is making sure that your sales and marketing team are aligned.
Once you’ve got this nailed (that’s something an inbound marketing agency will be able to help with), you’ll be able to create the sort of content that actually speaks to and resonates with your prospects.
In a field like AR/VR and immersive tech, you’re uniquely placed to create content that not only wows a prospect and informs them, but also really shows off the fact that this is a tech frontier, where anything is possible.
Skip to the end…
Hopefully I’ve given you more depth into why content marketing for sales enablement is such a powerful tool, but breaking it down to its absolute core, a decent content marketing strategy makes the job of the sales team easier.
While of course your sales team have to be very well informed about what they’re selling to prospects, it bears repeating that they already have a very important job to do; selling.
This is another way that a great content marketing for sales enablement lets them concentrate on what they do best – and what you literally pay them to do.
When you read such shocking statistics like sales people are only spending a third of their time actually selling, it really brings the old cliche ‘time is money,’ into sharp focus.
Imagine how much more productive your company could be if your sales team weren’t bogged down by tasks that literally aren’t their job?
Do you have any more questions about content marketing as a sales enablement tool? Feel free to get in touch!
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Written by Julian Thorpe-Smith, HubSpot-certified content writer
Get in touch on +44131 337 2254 or email [email protected].
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