Learn Which Pieces are Most Influential to the Sales Process
Many CMOs are still in the dark when it comes to understanding the ROI of content created in support of the sales organization, or which pieces of content influence the bottom line most.
Yet, knowing which marketing content pieces do best after the handoff of Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) is a necessity. Without this data, marketers don’t have the data to make sure that they aren’t wasting time, money, and effort on pieces that don’t get used or, when they are used, aren’t effective.
There are two aspects to putting a system in place that will give marketers the information they need to make smart decisions about this type of content:
- Visibility into content use
- Tracking when and how content is used
Though these two might seem fairly related, implementing a system for each is usually separate. What’s most important is having an integrated CRM, marketing automation, and guided selling tool to give a view to marketing and sales leadership across both. To view which pieces of content are being used by sales, having an effect on prospects, and resulting in a customer, marketers need to have a continuous integration of tools between Marketing and Sales. Once this visibility has been attained, tracking tools can easily report on how Sales is utilizing marketing content. Reports can inform marketers, for example, which pieces of content are instrumental at which stage of the sales process, or how many closed deals are associated with a particular marketing asset.
The ancient turf war between Marketing and Sales is beginning to come to a close with a peace treaty in the form of integrations. As Marketing becomes a more and more technologically reliant field, it’s easier to have the two departments work together for a better understanding of how Marketing affects Sales. This knowledge lets marketers focus on content that is actually contributing to revenue so that they can give Sales the assets they need.
We recently had an article featured in Sales and Marketing Management magazine on this topic. You can preview it here.