Using Sales Team to Improve Content Marketing Effort

In a business, sales and content marketing are considered two different poles. In fact, the business owners regard these two departments as two separate islands that don’t have a common meeting point.

However, this is not the right approach. In fact, for an effective content marketing strategy which generates leads, you need to connect these two departments. The experts, who deal with social media campaigns, say that for a successful business strategy, you need to mix these two divisions.

If you can strike a balance, you will be able to get more success in your business. This is the reason – you must make an effort to have a look at these two divisions and try to find how you can create the right connection.

Confused?

Well, for the beginners, this can be confusing. After all, content is the creative part and sales is the execution. So, how can you combine these two?

We have done a detailed research and in this article, we are going to share the pointers we have found.

However, before discussing the pointers, let’s have a look at the reasons for which you must make an effort to combine these two distinct departments.

• If you can combine sales and content departments properly, you can drive the sales rate 60% higher than traditional sales effort.

• This combination can drive the ROI higher as well.

So, you can see, you will be in a win-win situation when you opt for sales and content combination.

Here are the pointers which can help you create the right content marketing strategy by bringing in the sales team into the picture.

Sales Calls can Help in the Ideation Stage

According to the B2B content marketing trend 2018, the customers look for contents that are rich in creativity and crafty in the approach. This means the sales pitch does not work any longer.

The creativity in the content is judged by the topic you are dealing with. If the topic is trendy and interest evoking, people will regard the content as creatively stimulating.

Coming up with new content idea every time you sit to write can be a difficult task. This is why – you can involve your sales team in the content creation process.

Sales team, due to the regular contact with the customers, can help you understand the market requirement. The sales team can help you in the ideation process by giving ideas about the problems people have about your products. They can also help you understand the strength of your products.

Based on this, you can create your contents. You can address these problems with your content. One way you can address the common problems of the customers is by creating a detailed FAQ page.

If you can make it a point to take notes while the sales calls are being made, you can create this page without much difficulty. If you can enrich the FAQ page properly, this can be a great tool for getting high ranking.

Create Sales Contents

Well, even though people are looking for high quality content, you cannot deny the need for sales pitches. If you want to create proper sales content, you need to seek assistance from your sales team.

Only an effective sales team can help you create content that can generate leads and drive conversion.

You must realize the fact that your sales team can gauge the issues that your customers are complaining about. They can feel the resistance by the tonality of the voice. This is why they can assist you to create the perfect content with right sales pitch to nudge the buying instinct of the customers.

If you look at the data, you will see that more than 70% of the marketing content go unnoticed. This is because – most of the content that get generated fail to evoke the readers’ interest.

With the help of sales team, you can create contents that can evoke the interest of the customers. People get automatically attracted to content that come in the form of e-book, whitepaper or webinar.

In case your sales team does not have the credibility to create contents, they can help in content idea generation.

Using Direct Sales Leads

All the sales leads are not generated from content marketing. Some leads get generated through direct calling or meetings. These leads can be used at the time of content creation.

You can get content ideas from the data accumulated from the sales leads. However, before writing down the content, make sure to have a discussion with these leads. They will be able to offer you a detailed insight into what they are looking for.

These people might show interest in your product, but, might not be ready to buy from you. By talking to them and gathering information, you can generate content to lure these people to buy from you.

Accurate Buyer Persona

Well, for effective content marketing strategy, you first need to know about your target customers. You need to know who these people are. You need to know about their lifestyle. You also must know what they are looking for.

This information can be derived from Google analytics. However, business owners forget that the sales team has direct contact with the people they are dealing with.

With the help of sales team, the buyer persona can be created in details. So, when you are creating buyer persona, you need to focus on some important questions.

• What are the biggest challenges, customers are facing?

• How do they get their information? Do they use blogs, or magazines or books?

• What stops people from buying something from a website?

These are the common questions which your sales team will be able to find out. Create a questionnaire in details and ask your team to start talking to the potential customers. With time, you will find a detailed outline of the people who can be your customers.

At the time of content creation use the data you have gathered from your market research process. Remember that without the buyer persona, you will not be able to write customer focused content.