Over the past few weeks, we have been sharing excerpts from Marc Hausman’s newest must-have eBook for modern marketers, The Intersection Point: Where Content, Social and Sales Collide, which offers tips, best practices, case studies and real world experiences on timely topics including content marketing, social media marketing, and aligning sales with marketing.
Today, we’re excited to feature the third exclusive excerpt from the free resource. In the book, authors asked Strategic account directors and clients the following question, “Why is it important to implement a content marketing strategy to support sales?” Here’s a look into what they had to say:
Meredith Lawrence, Director of Public Sector Marketing at Polycom:
Our efforts as field marketers are wasted if we’re not effectively collaborating with sales. It’s not enough to FYI the sales team on a campaign we’re pushing to a certain vertical; walking them through the campaigns and explaining the calls to action and giving them time to familiarize themselves with content is one step.
In planning a field marketing campaign, we make sure we sit with the sales team we support and discuss goals. Not just goals on how many leads we need to produce, but how these leads will convert through from the early stages, to sales pipeline opportunities, and ultimately lead to closed business.
Matt Langan, Founder of L&R Communications, and long-time partner of Strategic Communications Group:
Without bringing any content marketing effort full circle to sales enablement, all we are doing is creating content for content’s sake. While content creation is fun, all of our efforts need to augment sales.
Ultimately, it is our job to be fully connected with our clients’ sales and BD teams to ensure that all content is targeted and shines a flattering light on all sales prospects.
Jenna Sindle, Director at Strategic Communications Group:
A well-developed content marketing strategy allows a company to stop selling via brute force and start engaging with their customers and prospects in ways that matter to the buyer.
If you can tell the story of your products, services, and company, you’ve not only made a sale, but started a relationship with the company and, as we all know, it’s much harder to walk away from a relationship than it is from a product.
Helena Brito, Marketing Manager at Mandiant:
I call my sales team reporters, because they’re out there reporting on news from our organization to key prospects.
One example that I like to give is LinkedIn; LinkedIn has various groups you can join, and I encourage my sales team to join groups and start conversations with prospects that they’ve targeted as high-value leads. But rather than using that opportunity to send someone a message offering a sales demo, we encourage starting conversations and building relationships based on valuable content.
For more information about how thinking like a publisher can benefit your organization, or to download the free eBook, visit http://ww2.gotostrategic.com/lp/ebook.html.
