Tired of traditional sales methods? Inbound & content marketing might help

Why?

Content marketing: you may appreciate content marketing because it helps you be more useful and less annoying to your potential customers.

Inbound marketing: you may like inbound because it totally flips the selling scenario around. Instead of spending so much time bugging people that may or may not have a need, you get to focus your efforts on those people that have reached out to you, telling you they in fact have a need.

Pretty impressive, potentially business-altering, opportunities. Let’s pause to let that soak in for a second.

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This in contrast to the following methods that sales plays a significant role in:

  1. Cold calling
  2. Trade shows
  3. Networking
  4. Social selling

How does inbound marketing work with sales?

Inbound marketing allows you to focus your energy on talking to potential customers that have self-identified as having a need. The need may be big or small, but the key is that they have a problem and they’re looking for a solution.

You’re no longer trying to push your services/solutions onto a bunch of people that may or may not be interested. This is a gigantic psychological shift for both you and your potential customers.

The high-level flow for inbound marketing looks like this:

  1. You position your company ahead of time to be found on the internet when a potential customer is looking for help.
  2. When the potential customer has a need, they search and they find you.
  3. They go to your site and see enough evidence that you can potentially help them that they reach out for a discussion.
  4. You respond to their inquiry and begin your sales process with an exploratory discussion.

How does content marketing work with sales?

Content marketing works with sales in a couple ways:

  1. It supports the inbound process.
  2. It provides sales enablement for validation.
  3. It is used for sales outreach support.

Supporting the inbound process

This is an indirect aspect, so we won’t really get into it. Just know that if you’re doing inbound, there’s almost definitely content involved (eg. landing pages, case studies, articles).

Sales enablement for validation

This can play out in a couple different ways.

First off, before someone has reached out to you and they’re looking to validate that you can help, they’re likely to want to look at content (eg. Case studies) on your site to help them start to trust you and understand the scope of how you can help.

Content can also be useful for validation after a potential customer has engaged you in the sales process. Maybe you want to send someone to a particular landing page, a particular case study, or a specific webinar or article that showcases your knowledge and focus on the potential customer’s topic of interest. All of this builds credibility/trust.

Sales outreach support

This is a way for you to be more useful and less annoying when you do things like reach out to people either through LinkedIn or maybe following up from a conference. If you’ve got content that’s aligned with something that the potential customer is likely to find useful/educational, you can actually be helpful to them, which should be one of your top goals.

Next Steps

Interested in utilizing inbound or content marketing to assist you in the sales process? Reach out to for help. You don’t have to take on the world to get started.

Yes, I want to start making progress

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