Content: The King is Dead, Long Live the King

Over 20 years ago, Bill Gates claimed in an essay published on the Microsoft website that “content is king,” and he could not have predicted it more accurately

The idea of content being the key driver behind all marketing efforts has certainly manifested itself and marketers in companies of all sizes have been focusing heavily on content development, from eBooks, to whitepapers, slide decks, blog posts and more.

However, in an age of content abundance, how can you be sure that the content you are providing is actually reaching its audience?

The King is Dead – The Hard Truth About Your Content

The truth is that marketers are missing out on a big opportunity to provide sales teams with the right content at the right time. The result is that typically only a very small percentage of content is actually being used consistently by their sales colleagues. In fact, 65 percent of marketing content is never used by sales at all.

The reasons for this are manifold: Content is often scattered across multiple platforms and locations (think Dropbox and Google Drive folders, Salesforce libraries, Microsoft Teams chats) or buried in a large, amorphous repository that is difficult to search and navigate. Different content versions are circulating, your colleagues are rummaging around in a clutter of content without being able to find the assets they need and don’t know if what they find is up-to-date. So, you might be providing the most amazing content, but no one knows where and how to find it.

Even worse than providing content that no one can find: You invest time and effort into creating and providing content that no one needs. Without visibility into how content is being used, marketing can’t evaluate which content their sales colleagues prefer, how much content is being used, how content is modified, and how content is influencing revenue.

Unfortunately, this lack of insight for both sales and marketing pushes both teams to fall back into the age-old trap of pointing fingers in both directions about how to prioritise content investment. The result: a major disconnect between sales and marketing.

Long Live the King – How to Breathe Life Into Your Content

Sales enablement provides a powerful opportunity to bridge that gap between marketing and sales teams, not only by housing the content that marketing produces in a repository that is easy to browse and navigate, but also by providing guidance on how to best use the content as well as insights into content performance.

An effective sales enablement solution provides visibility into content that is not being used so that marketing can examine why and react accordingly. Content audits give you an understanding of which content is working, which isn’t and how to take action. This can take many forms, from archiving old assets to creating new industry-specific case studies. Audit insights are essential to keeping a pristine content library that allows users to quickly find relevant content for any situation.

This is an essential step to ensure that organisations are investing wisely when they make content decisions. With a sales enablement tool collecting and reporting content usage and effectiveness, sales and marketing teams can better align and optimise their focus and investment in sales content.

As a result, it becomes easier for sellers to guide their prospective buyers through the sales process, allowing them to win more deals. With easier content discovery, higher quality engagements, and more analytics, sales enablement tools create drastic improvements for today’s seller effectiveness. At the same time, sales enablement empowers marketing to use their resources effectively, by producing exactly the kind of content their sales colleagues need.

If you’d like to learn more, download our whitepaper on how to Put and End to Content Chaos.