Why should any salesperson care about content marketing?
To be clear, content marketing is anything you put out to the public that promotes your products, services, and/or brand. A blog is one of the primary tools that content marketers use.
What you may not realize is that content marketing plays a distinct role in the marketing and sales funnel.
Let’s take a look at how it works.
Top: Content attracts new potential customers
Quality content entices readers to learn more, just from the title and the first few words of the piece. Marketers are responsible for making sure content is:
- Optimized for search engines: When quality content is search-optimized, you’re more likely to rank higher on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract new visitors.
- Adds value: If your content shows visitors how you can help them, they may become a lead.
Middle: Content keeps potential customers interested
Once your sales team has a lead, they can take steps to qualify them. You can ask visitors to subscribe to your blog, or you can give away downloadable or gated content in exchange for their contact info. Your team can then review their info and determine whether or not they are a qualified lead.
Bottom: Content paves the way for a sales offer
Now that you have a qualified lead, it’s time to pop the question: Will you be my customer? By this point, you’ve given away plenty of value in the form of free content and the qualified lead is familiar with your company and the worth you bring to them.
This sets up your sales team to come in and make an offer.
Since your team doesn’t have to sell the lead on the value you can bring, they’ll probably have an easier time convincing them to become your customer.
With quality content serving as a primer for the lead, the sale is likely to be much more frictionless than it would have been without the content.
To use a basketball analogy, content marketing moves the ball down the court, makes a few moves, and passes the ball to sales in a seamless motion. Once this happens, all your sales team has to do is dunk it! So content marketing and sales essentially perform an alley-oop to score the deal.
