To improve the performance of your sales efforts and bring more people to the bottom of the funnel, you must have a strong sales enablement content strategy. Building this strategy will help you take full advantage of high-quality, compelling content to establish a real connection with your audience from the awareness stage to the decision stage of the buyer’s journey.
Let’s jump into the different elements of an effective sales enablement content strategy and help you determine how to develop yours.
Identify your target audiences and develop buyer personas
When building your content strategy, the first step is to figure out exactly who you’re writing for. What does your ideal customer look like, and how can you target them?
Conduct research into your existing customers along with the market as a whole. Determine what demographics, psychographics, and behaviors your potential customers exhibit in different segments.
As you segment your audiences, you can craft unique buyer personas that best describe each in the format of a defined character. An example of this could include a buyer persona representing single parents called Single Parent Stevie, which could come with their own set of characteristics. For instance, Single Parent Stevie may follow a certain daily routine to ensure plenty of time for work and child care, leaving specific times when businesses should engage. This persona may also be interested in particular product or service features that would appeal more to a single parent.
Using these personas, you can gear your content strategy toward individual audience segments. But this doesn’t just apply to your sales content. Use your personas to guide the content and visuals you use in marketing content, as well.
Map the customer journey to determine key touchpoints
With your target audience and buyer personas figured out, you can map the customer journey to get a feel for how people engage with your existing content and navigate your business.
You could find that people are falling off at certain spots along the journey due to specific pain points. Maybe your content isn’t in-depth enough, or perhaps you’re not including an enticing call to action. You could also identify certain bottlenecks at the beginning of the journey. Alternatively, you may see leads dropping off toward the bottom of the funnel, keeping them from converting into new customers.
Figure out what’s working and what isn’t. Then, make any necessary adjustments based on performance.
Create the right content for your strategy
You must also determine which types of content to develop for your sales enablement content strategy. This aspect will hinge on your audience and the kind of journey they take toward becoming customers.
Keep in mind that you’ll want to use different types of content for different stages of the customer journey. While informative, topical content will reach audiences toward the top of the sales funnel at the awareness stage, your sales enablement content will drive more action by capturing people during the consideration and decision stages.
In short, people engaging with sales enablement content already know the “what” of their problem, but now they’re looking for the “why” behind the right solution. What about your offering and brand makes it worth the buy? Also, how does your offering stand apart from competitors? This is where sales enablement content comes into play.
Types of sales enablement content
There are many content types you can use to reach audiences and bolster your sales strategy.
Some examples of bottom-of-funnel content at this stage may include:
Case studies, reviews, and testimonials
Three critical pieces of content to enhance the sales cycle include case studies, online reviews, and customer testimonials. Case studies can provide a detailed look into a particular use case and customer experience in your company’s own words, crafting a narrative about a particular problem that you were able to help solve.
Meanwhile, online reviews and testimonials from customers can serve as social proof.
90% of people are more inclined to trust recommended brands, whether those recommendations come from strangers or people they know.
Whitepapers and ebooks
As people move along the sales journey, they’ll want to conduct as much research as possible to secure their purchase decisions. Whitepapers and ebooks offer great ways to inform audiences. Also, you can begin converting people into qualified leads at this point by having people subscribe to your email list before downloading these content pieces. Effective email list management ensures that these leads are nurtured properly, leading to higher conversion rates and better customer relationships.
Videos
Explainer videos, testimonials, product or service demos, and other types of video content can also engage people toward the bottom of the funnel. Use this content for:
- Highlighting specific benefits or features of your offerings
- Conducting interviews with past customers
- Otherwise showing how your business stands out from competitors
Interactive content
When possible, you can use certain types of interactive content to connect with audiences and influence their decisions. Hands-on product demos are a great way to engage potential customers, along with webinars with Q&A sessions, calculators, quizzes and polls, animated infographics, and other content formats that provide a more active experience for customers.
Competitor comparisons
Show what makes your business and offerings different from what’s already on the market by comparing specific aspects of your offerings to competitors. You might show differences in pricing, features, benefits, efficiency, and other aspects that compel people to turn to you over other brands.
Emails
You should also use emails to reach people toward the end of the customer journey. You can create enticing personalized emails using email templates that target each audience segment with tailored messaging.
Remember, pick the most relevant content for content creation based on what your audiences like, and post only on the social media channels and platforms they specifically use. A well-targeted and optimized content marketing strategy will help ensure your content resonates with the right people.
Measure the results of your sales enablement content strategy
To get the results you want from your sales enablement content strategy, you must know how to measure them.
There are specific key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics you can use to measure your campaigns’ progress and success. The specific units you choose to gauge success will depend on your goals.
Some examples of KPIs you might choose include:
- Win rate
- Conversions
- Lead generation targets
- Internal views and downloads
- Number of sales calls
- Closed deals
You can then track these metrics after rolling out your campaigns. Over time, you’ll determine which efforts are yielding results and which need work.
You might find that content is behind poor sales enablement. Alternatively, you could determine that individual salespeople, marketing teams, or others might benefit from improved training and education.
Engage in good content management
After creating and measuring the results of content, continue to manage it to optimize it further. You can do so by maintaining a comprehensive content library and consistently tracking the metrics behind each content piece.
Over time, you can make any necessary updates to existing content. For example, you can improve SEO and generally refresh your content or give it new information as your industry landscape changes.
You may also want to consolidate certain pieces into one larger piece, or you could find that it’s worth removing pieces of content that don’t get results.
Use the best sales enablement tools to improve the overall sales process
As you optimize your sales process to get the best achievable results, incorporate the right sales enablement tools along the way. You can use a wide range of tools to enhance your sales enablement content strategy and convert more leads and customers.
For example, you could use a customer relationship management (CRM) tool to track the customer journey and make it easier for sales reps to consistently engage with leads and customers.
Meanwhile, learning management software (LMS) could assist with training sales teams using more informal measures. Using this solution, you can keep your sales teams up to date on the latest sales techniques. Also, ensure they know how to approach sales at every step, supplementing your content strategy.
Other tools you’ll want to consider for your sales organization include:
- Sales content creation and management platforms that help develop and organize all content types
- Sales intelligence solutions that give meaningful insights into other businesses for B2B sales
- Analytics tools that collect and organize data and provide meaningful feedback
Take the right approach to your sales enablement content strategy
By taking these steps, you can fully optimize your sales enablement content strategy and gear it for success. Choosing the right content, identifying and targeting the right audiences, crafting and curating high-quality content, and effectively managing it while implementing various enablement tools can all contribute toward a solid strategy.
If you’re looking for a dependable LMS solution for your business to facilitate sales enablement, consider a tool like Docebo. Using Docebo, you can harness the power of informal sales training. Develop programs that work best for each individual on your team. Together with other sales enablement tools and strategies, you can use Docebo to supercharge your efforts.
