Content Alone Isn't Enough Anymore, Now It Must Power Sales To Keep The Crown
Sure, we all agree that content can be king. Content can drive thousands of eyes to our sites and offers and increase our search engine placement and even convince people that we know what we’re talking about, giving us must-prized expert status. But is it always king?
Simply put, content is only crowned king if it’s directly driving sales. After all, creating content isn’t cheap, so there has to be a definable ROI on its very existence. So we need sales enabled content – the content has to do the work of a salesperson for it to keep its job.
What’s the solution?
Get your sales experts involved in the content creation process from the beginning. Ask for their opinions and find out what content they need to help make their job easier.
Content Must Be Crucial Through Your Buyers Journey
A buyer’s journey isn’t just some well-written buzzworthy term – it’s exactly what the purchasing experience has become. In truth, the entire journey a buyer takes and the amount of time a buyer spends to make that purchase takes twice as long as it did ten years ago. Your content needs to be prepared to accompany and educate every buyer along that entire journey.
The Journey & The Content
Customer & Content Phases
Buying Phase
Content must address the need your buyer has and inform/educate by expanding on their need.
Owning Phase
Content must deepen their knowledge of the product or service they’ve purchased ensuring each buyer is satisfied he/she is now an owner.
Advocate Phase
This is where word of mouth is born and retained. Content must deepen your brand and continuously remind your customer that he/she found something special.
Sales Teams & Material Becomes Inspiration
Traditionally, sales staff don’t work with content creators but that must change, after all, sales and content have the same goal – more sales!
Ask your sales team what concerns, issues and questions customers are facing. What do customers talk about most often in terms of what’s preventing them from buying right now? This information is valuable!
Work the answers and solutions to your customers’ questions and concerns into your brand content. Do that, and you’re going to start driving serious sales leads to your site and your sales department for follow-up.
Keep Your Content Fresh
You’ve brought in your sales team and you successfully have them communicating with your content creators so now you have sales enabling content. What now? Now you must schedule weekly refresh time.
Remember your customers will go elsewhere if the content you provide isn’t up-to-date and fresh-smelling so make sure you have it updated weekly. Keep your hard-earned sales enabled content fresh and you’ll keep your leads fresh! When content gets stale so does its purpose. After all a king will only stay in power when he is relevant to the people!
Content marketing is the backbone of the biggest success stories over the last decade. I’m referring to companies like Zomato, Canva, ThinkGeek, HootSuite and even Blendtec. It’s not surprising that so many brands are focusing on content marketing, given the average ROI is twice any other type of digital marketing.
You have a prospect with a credit card in hand. They’re already in a buying mood. Why not maximize your per sale revenue potential by putting a related offer in front of them. Using these 7 tactics, you can increase your sales starting today.
