Content
Creation
Content: a powerful sales accelerator
The right content delivered at the right time and in the right way is a powerful sales accelerator. It is highly scalable, and the same basic insights and concepts can be repurposed for different formats.
Sales growth is the goal of any content creation effort. But to be truly successful, marketing leadership and content managers must maintain a laser-like focus on four questions:
- What is the goal of the content? Examples range from generating interest in a product or describing new industry trends to demonstrating a product’s value and ability to solve client problems.
- What content should receive the highest priority? The simple answer is whatever generates the most sales with the least effort. This in turn is determined by an analysis of the sales funnel and pipeline to determine where your organization’s needs are the greatest.
- What type of content is the most effective? The answer lies in the response to the question posed above, namely what are the goals of the content? For example, if the requirement is lead generation, then short write-ups that grab readers’ attention by addressing headline issues – and that demonstrate the ability of the product to address them – work well. But the solution is different when contracts aren’t moving through the pipeline: since the clients are already engaged with the product, the content can be longer and focused on establishing the product’s depth and quality. In all cases the goal remains demonstrating the value of the product and their relevance to solving prospects’ pressing business issues.
- What format works best for each use case? The options include blog posts, product brochures, white papers, presentations, videos, webexes, and conferences. The answer largely depends on how prospects and clients consume their content.
Close coordination between content generators and users is key to success
A final note is that success in using content to generate sales will depend on close coordination between the generators of the content (marketing and/or research groups) and those using it to produce revenues, i.e., the sales organization. How to measure success is another aspect of the relationship between sales and marketing organizations that needs to be carefully managed — in particular, the teams need an agreed-upon, and realistic, way to measure the impact of investments in marketing. The final piece is the establishment of a feedback loop, so that marketing investments flow to what is needed and what is working, and that failing efforts – and they will exist – are fixed or shut down quickly.
To learn more about the types of content that DWM Consulting Services can create for you, click here.