Digital marketing
for sales support

Digital marketing for supporting sales is very different than digital marketing for generating sales-ready leads. Sales support implies your sales team is already making initial connections with potential customers and they need supporting content to facilitate their process.

Does your sales team feel like they’re having to explain the same things over and over again? Do they feel like they need some proof points to back up their conversations? Here’s some things to consider to move in the right direction.

Getting input from the sales team

Though not your only source for input, this is the most important place to start to get ideas about what content you should create first.  Why? Because they’ve got the best first-hand insight into your customer’s heads. Sit down and gather their thoughts over multiple sessions. They may get too drained or strained if you try to capture all their feedback at once. You’ll want to follow up periodically (every ~2-4 months) with them for new thoughts.

Questions / objections / concerns from potential customers

Do your potential customers ask unique questions that you’ve never heard before? They probably do. And that’s fine. That’s what your sales team is for. There’s likely another category of questions / objections / concerns: those that get asked frequently. These are the questions you want to make sure you’re creating content around. Your best source for these is your sales team. You’ll also be able to gather this info directly from customers in little pieces over time, and even gather indirect indicators from your analytics.

Case studies as proof points

Case studies are wonderful. They help build trust, and sales wants to build trust more than anything. This is especially true for B2B and services-based businesses. You still want to poll the sales team to get ideas for which case studies are worthwhile, but in this case, the core content will usually come from the project lead / SME for that particular project/solution.

Supporting content – articles, white papers, webinars, calculators, videos

You want to select the format that lends itself best to the topic at hand. You don’t start with the format. You start with the content, and let the content drive the format. You’re not limited to landing page messaging, FAQs, or case studies. Whatever makes the most sense is what you should be developing. You’ll need to pull information and/or work with whomever the SME is for the topic at hand. For some topics, there may be several SMEs that contribute.

Content for potential customers vs existing customers

The topics of interest between those that are considering becoming a customer and those that have been a customer for years will obviously be quite a bit different in many cases. With a potential customer you’re focused on building trust. With existing customers you’re focused on helping them get to the next level with more sophisticated solutions. These motivations should drive your content strategy.

Gathering feedback

The first step is to understand how often and what pieces of content sales is using. Don’t just assume that because you’re creating it, sales is using it.

If they’re making good use of the content, make sure you’re tracking engagement with the content. Some content will do better than others. Use that as feedback for where to focus your next round of content.

Next Steps

Looking for sales support help? Reach out for a chat.

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