5 things to do to ensure that your marketing content helps your sales process

Marketing content takes many forms and is used to represent a business or its products/services. In the simplest sense website content communicates about a business, so does a brochure, data sheet, case study. Today there are many advanced content strategies like usage of white papers, blogs, and webinars being actively used to engage with the target audience and generate more business leads. What do you need to do to ensure that marketing content helps your sales process

How do you ensure that your marketing content helps your sales process ?

1) Needs to be in-line with core messaging

The content that you publish should not be random and should be in line with the core messaging that you have decided for the company. How you arrive at the messaging definition is a completely different topic altogether.

2) Should provide something valuable to the target market

While it is common for most sales collateral to talk more about the product/service, for your content to be effective, it should provide something valuable to your target market. Nobody is interested in what you are offering; they are interested to know how this can help solve their problems

3) Should be crisp and short

With so much information available, readily, it is very essential that you make your point as soon as possible in as crisp a manner as possible. Nobody has the patience to wait through long conversations or heaps of text.

4) Should have residual value

Most B2B decisions involve large amounts of investments and so these are taken over a period of time. The content that you present should have some residual value and should stay current and valid for a good period of time. That way you can ensure that when your customer is ready to take a decision, you can simply build on what you already presented in the past or just refer to it.

5) Enable viral mechanisms and an effective CTA

With social engagements getting so important, you should enable your content with mechanisms to promote viral spread of the content. Also you should have effective CTA integrated, so that you can achieve the objectives that you have set for your content piece.

These are just some thoughts. Any other ideas, suggestions welcome. It is vital that your marketing content helps your sales process in more ways than one. You might also want to read 5 Essential elements of a marketing content strategy