B2B Demand Generation Requires More Than Just Content Marketing
This blog is part of our regular series of posts on what we have learned over the past several years, as an outsourced B2B demand generation company, to help to align sales and marketing. This first post will be part of a short two part series that frames what your content marketers can do to generate demand. And what your sales reps can do to get your buyers to engage.
As an outsourced B2B demand generation company we are committed to marketing automation platforms and content marketing. Over the past year we have seen across clients a typical buyer consume 14 plus pieces of educational or verification content before they purchase. We believe Joe Pulizzi, author of Get Content, Get Customers that “The one who has the more engaging content wins, because frequent and regular contact builds a relationship because done correctly the content you create will position your company not as just a seller of stuff, but as a reliable source of information.” As a source of reliable information you will build trust. However that content and trust will only take you so far. At some point you need to take the buyers that are consuming your content, buyers that are developing trust, and get them to engage to increase that level of trust. And the best way to get them to engage is by picking up the phone and actually engaging them in helpful conversations.
Below is a quick framework of how you can align your content marketing with the efforts of your phone reps to support moving buyers deeper into the pipe.
- When your buyers are early in the buying process they are trying to figure out what their problem is. Your job as a content marketer is to help them define their problem. The job of your inside rep is to help your buyer figure out if your company can even help and then share some additional content to help them define their problem a little more. Your telesales reps should not be ‘selling’ yet. They should be asking “how can we help”.
- At some point your buyer is going to have their problem framed. Ideally with the help of your content. At this point you need to “start engaging”. Don’t start selling yet. But you can start talking more about your solution specifically and move away from pure thought leadership. At this point your content marketers job is to be supplying your telesales engaged leads with content that allows them to share what other companies experience or have experienced with your company. Your content needs to start giving your buyer a sense of what it would be like to “own” your product or solution.
- Finally we move to a Sales Qualfied Lead. Your buyer is engaged and its time for content marketing and inside telesales reps to step out of the way and transition over to the closers.
This blog post has been written from the perspective of what you need to do to support your buyer. However its also important to support your sales effort. In Part 2 of this series we will discuss how you can use these early stages of telesales engagement to provide your closers with the information they need to:
- Understand where the buyer is in their buying cycle
- Capture information that allows your closer to do their job more effectively for your company and your buyer to make the final transaction as seamless and professional as possbile for your buyer and your senior sales executive so everyone wins.
To visit Part that discusses where to integrate your telesales reps CLICK HERE.
To see if Gabriel Sales outsourced B2B demand generation can help you close more business creating a seamless and aligned sales and marketing process that sells to your buyer the way they want to buy please feel free to contact us for a free benchmark review.
