Is there a disconnect between content marketing, customers and sales departments?
B2B content fails to engage sales prospects or relate to customers according to a recently published report by Forrester Research.
Having interviewed 33 companies in healthcare, finance, IT technology and pharmaceutical industries, one of the main complaints from those surveyed was that after the cost of content development and generation, it simply sits on the proverbially shelf unused by the sales department.
Although B2B marketers spend 9 per cent of program and media budgets on content marketing, according to the report much of it is wasted on sales departments or customers who do not find it relevant.
“If sales doesn’t feel like they have the content they need to sell effectively, while marketing believes they deliver great content to sales that isn’t being used, these are signs of a disconnect. Quite often, sales reps revert to using outdated or misaligned content or, worse, creating their own resulting in inconsistent messaging and lost productivity,” noted Joan Babinski, VP of corporate marketing, at Brainshark in the report.
In order to reverse this trend, those surveyed said that B2B marketers need to get sales involved in their content development and strategy, and they must offer well organized, friendly, easy to navigate, and relevant content each time. In other words, B2B marketers who treat sales as their primary resource for marketing content, and if marketers understand which topics and types of content salespeople find most effective when interacting with customers, they can give sales reps what they need to respond to inquires and follow up on leads generated from the content.
Additionally, those surveyed said that marketing often stores content in one repository that is inaccessible to sales teams. Advances in tools from companies like Brainshark, SAVO or Seismic can help sales find what they need while marketing can keep the message consistent. And, if sales teams need to tailor the content for their specific accounts, B2B marketing teams need to offer content that can convert into account-specific material.
"We struggled to provide personalized materials for sales and international distributors due to language barriers and different account requirements. We implemented Storyworks1 to fill these needs and make our global business more local and relevant," said Pam Gajdosik, VP of commercial excellence, American Medical Systems.
B2B marketers must ensure that content is aligned with sales interaction so that the message does not get muddled. Customer understanding is essential, the report states, and the more customer-centric a marketing department is, the less conflict with sales will come up. If B2B marketers try to understand the role that both sales and marketing play in solving customer problems, it is more likely that the content will begin to better meet the needs of the customer from the get go.
The report reminds marketers that if “mobile-first” is the new rallying cry for digital design, then “sales-first” should be the priority for marketing when delivering and distributing content. New technology tools and knowing how to implement them is key also.
“Our marketing team is able to use platforms like showpad to see how sales uses content, what is used, and where we can prioritize our efforts for effective marketing materials that drive sales,” said Russell Wurth, VP of solutions management at optiv, a cybersecurity firm. “This helps to make the working relationship much easier for both content creators and content users.”