The gap between marketing and sales

Since the early beginnings of the creation of the marketing department, marketing guru’s have argued that sales and marketing should cooperate in order to increase sales and revenue. The gap between both exists and continuous to exist.
In many companies there is even a larger gap between the sales pitches, activities, presentations and meetings of the salesmen and the content on the website by the web marketers.

Website content

In most cases the content on the website is created by people who don’t meet with customers. They actually know little about customers besides general information and statistics making customers like a number consisting of numbers/stats. From their offices it is hard to understand or image what the prospect or customer really requires and wants.
Do they know why the salesmen really sell ? What really sells the product or service ? Do they know the competitors ?

Salesmen know their customers

On the other hand salesmen and sales reps meet with prospects and customers and know what ideas, worries, problems, perceptions and concepts that live amongst their prospects and customers.
The feed back from meeting with customers and prospects to the marketing people is minimal or not existent. As such marketing is creating content which is far or not related to what the prospects or customers concerns.

Product managers

In some cases the product managers are asked to write the website content for their products which is a step in the right direction as product manager do meet customers, but in most cases only important or innovative customers as they do not meet the average customer.
Product managers are halfway through as they know some customers, their products and the competitors.

Content by salesman

In fact it should be the salesman who should write or define the content on the website as they are the closest to the prospect and customers. he knows how they react upon his sales pitches. However a salesman has no intention to waste his time on writing content for the website while he is being paid on a commission on his sales.

The increase of purchase risk

Due to the gap between marketing and sales, it will be hard for salesmen to tell or present the same story, concept, benefits, advantages, industry view and positioning as on the website. If there is any difference then it will induce a hazard or danger for the purchase decision.
Any increase of risk, will decrease the chances of a sale.
Therefor the content on the website should match the content in the meetings.

Sales pitch should match the website

Before the Internet and the almighty presence of the company website, salesmen had only to deal with advertising, press releases or editorials which concerned a small part of the total of benefits, advantages, concepts, views and perceptions . Whereas now the website has all the content only a click away.

Synergy sales en marketing

A synergy between sales and marketing is needed. Even more than before as the website content is visited and inquired before and after every meeting, telephone call and even emails from the salesman. Any difference will increase the purchase risk.
The website content and the salesmen need to align up in order to form one front and have one view exposing the same messages and the same vision.

Do you have a sales pitch matching the website ?

In order to influence a purchase in B2B there a wide choice of methods, tools and channels that can be used:
1. Website
2. White papers
3. Case studies
4. Technical articles by third parties
5. Analyst reports
6. Reviews
7. Popular or known bloggers
8. Webinars / Webcasts
9. Video/screen cast
10. Free trials
11. Proof of Concepts
12. Nurturing by email
The problems is that they all are effective, some more than others depending on your market and the product or service you sell, but it is nearly impossible to propose all of them effectively as it just will cost too much money and time.
As a result you will have to make a selection what is best for you.

1. Website without a website people will doubt you are a legit company.
The website plays a large role in all phases of the purchase process.

2. White papers are effective, show your authority and knowledge, but can be too technical or too rational which limits them to the technology influencers. people will download the white papers but gating for this content won’t help much as often free web mail addresses are being used.

3. Case studies have the advantage of a recognizable brand name and a story of a problem getting solved that resembles the existing company. Thus even CxO will read it. However getting the case study written and approved is a long investment.

4. Technical articles by third parties are just to be too technical limiting them completely to engineers and technology influencers.

5. Analyst reports have the advantage that these reports are to be paid by the company or can only be obtained upon request to one of the vendors making these reports more exclusive which drives the interest. Moreover this a a view or insight fro ma third party which is highly respected. There is also a risk involved if the analyst gives you a below average rating.

6. Reviews have the benefit of combining a technical insight, an easy scoring and a short summary for the offering of each vendor requiring not much effort. Even CxO’s will read the conclusion and look into the scoring. Again your product needs to score high as else the review will have a negative effect on your sales.

7. Bloggers that are popular or known will bring their authority and supposed knowledge of the market to the table, which will be taken for granted. As their reviews in their blog posts are short, CxO’s might just read it and stick with it thus you better get a good appraisal.

8. Webinars / Webcasts have the benefit of knowing who is in the virtual meeting allowing for interaction and follow-up. Of course no CxO will ever participate in a webinar, leaving you with technologists, managers and influencers.

9. Videos and screen casts can be great and can be boring – can convince or leave the decision maker indifferent. The cost of creating and professionally editing a video can be high as it needs to be entertaining. One of the problems is that a video is only effective if it is not too long (2minutes) resulting in having to cramp too much information into the short time. And people will press the Fast Forward button missing.

10. Free trials are very tempting and you have to hope the product sells itself. if your product is complex or has special features then you have to make sure people will use these features to make your product stand out.
Actually a free trial can slow down the sales process as the customer first need to install the product which requires time and effort and then during the 15 to 30 days the customer should be using your product which is beyond your control. During the free trial the sales process is being halted as all await the result and conclusion of the free trial, which can take time too.

11. The Proof of Concept is rather similar to a free trial but is mainly to show the solution is actually working within the environment of the customer, but it requires investment of time and money of both the vendor and the customer.
Still the question remains if the potential customer will actually use the system.
And again the sales process is completely halted during the POC (weeks if not months) and the duration of the POC conclusion report (weeks).

12. Nurturing by email is very important too as without it most of the above will be much less effective.

Probably all tactics and methods have their place depending on your market, type of product and what your competitors propose and use. In B2B you have probably be able to offer most of these methods and marketing content as you have to use whatever the potential decision maker expects or requires. Don’t send him an invite for a webinar when he wants a video/screen cast.
Or you have to send a white paper to the technology influencer and a matching case study to the CxO.
Free trials or Proof of Concepts are probably the last step after a longer decision process in order to select between two competitors.
The influence of content by third parties are very important just due to teh fact they are third parties.

What do you use and is effective ?

Analyze traffic

If you analyze your web traffic you will find that only a few pages attract most traffic. These pages have the better content for your target market. Writing quality and publishing content is the most effective to get the highest volumes of traffic in your business. It is worth more than anything else. It’s your best investment ever.

What is quality content ?

The problem is what is the better content ?
When are you writing the quality content ?
How do you know upfront what is quality content and what is not ?
Is this blog post quality content or not ?

How can the quality of this blog post or any content be measured while writing and editing ?
Of course we know that popular keywords will generate more traffic than less know keywords. Still it is not sure using the most popular keywords the traffic will come as the content still can be mediocre.

Traffic is not leads

Even if we would know how to measure our content quality upfront and it would bring traffic, then still the type of visitors is decisive for generating leads or not. Thus great quality content but missing to address the target audience has no value.
Even if your great quality content generates massive amounts of traffic but without generating leads or landing customers then the better content is worth as much as garbage content.
the quality content needs to bring the required interested and potential customers.

Doomed to produce much content

As we don’t know upfront what is the better content and if it will bring the necessary potential customers, we are doomed to write a lot of content with the hope to produce every now and then the better content which also attracts the target market segment that holds potential customers.
It’s almost like trial and error leading to the production of massive amounts of content.

Social Media has gained importance. Due to this you need to take care in order to avoid mistakes and missing the goal of your social media marketing.

1. Lacking content quality

The content you bring should reflect the quality of your products or services. Rubbish or junk text or video’s will have a negative effect on your business.
The aim is to publish and spread quality content.

2. Not interesting stuff

Normally quality content should also be interesting enough to drive the traffic to your content and to return visiting your content. People should have a reason to visit and re-visit from the millions of webpages on the Internet.
Your content needs to be interesting.

3. No spreading or replication

If your content doesn’t provoke the impulse to spread it, then you will miss the main benefit of content that allows you to reach out further.
The best content or information is what gets replicated, forwarded to others. Your content should stimulate the reader or viewer to take action.

4. No Call to Action

Not providing buttons to spread or ask attention for your content will decrease the effectiveness of content in social media.
Make sure it is easy and convenient to forward, replicate, share, “Like”, “Follow” or Tweet it.

5. Grammar and spelling errors

Although it seems obvious not having grammatical and spelling errors in your content this should be avoided by proof reading or at least using a spelling checker.

6. No social media scheduling plan

Shooting from the hip with content to social media will be far more less effective than planning upfront a scheduling for all of your social media.
Make a social media scheduling plan and stick to it.

7. Not targeted content

If you just write or create content for whatever comes up to your mind, it is likely large segments of your potential customers will be missed by not targeting it.
Define your market segments and then create targeted and appropriate content.

8. Missing interaction

In the event people comment on your social media content not responding is avoiding one of the main advantages of social media.
For each comment make sure you thank them, answer, acknowledge or add on to their comment.

9. Non-personal

If your write or create content like an encyclopedia it will be non-personal. As such you will miss the personal touch in social media.
Make sure your content and your interactions have a personal touch.

10. Too personal

Content or comments that are too personal or about your personal or family live will not be appreciated in a business environment.
Avoid becoming too personal in your content and comments.

11. Missing “About”

When there is no “About” or a profile available, then who are you ?
Make sure people can know who the originator of all the quality content is.

12. Not linked to your business

Even if you have the best content, driving a high number of visitors each month and getting returning visitors but missing to make the link with your business, then why all the effort ?
You content should clearly point to you business and even drive them to visit your business pages in order to generate online leads.

Internet spam is different from email spam

Sending spam email message to people is not done, considered negatively and will have a negative impact on your brand.
On the other hand spamming on the Internet with content is approved by the search engines and even people.
- The more references search engines find of links your product or website the higher it will be ranked and appear in the searches.
- The more people notice your content and products or website the more likely they will find your brand name familiar. This brand awareness will even create trust.

There is a huge difference between email spanning and content spamming on the Internet.

Unique content spamming

It is important to avoid copying the same content and publishing on different places. Each content should be unique. Unique in the sense unique in the series of words and phrases used. Not unique in true unique content.
The more you leave unique content and messages on the Internet dispersed over many different websites, the more beneficial it will be for the company. The unique content doesn’t need to be really unique as variations on the same theme are good enough.

Hence Web-Spam-A-Lot seems the way to go as this will result in a better findability, resulting in more traffic to your website as people will recognize your brand and will click on the link.
The combination of more traffic and brand awareness / trust will lead to converting more visitors into leads which will eventually become sales.

Do you spam on the web ?

Relevant for Google & Co

The more keywords you can present to Google or Bing the more chances of getting found on the Internet. Hence the requirement for creating as much content as possible: variations on the same matters related to your solutions.

Just hoping on one piece of content on a particular subject will score less or has less change to get found than a series of content on the same subject. Content marketing and SEO are a gamble as no-one can predict the outcome.

Relevant for visitors

As you need to create variations of the same content, the problem is that your content still needs to be relevant for the visitor landing on your website.

If your content is rubbish then the visitor will not appreciate it and leave – probably to never come back as you have wasted his time.

Hence maximize the amount of content, make sure it is relevant and brings value to the reader. And above all make it entertaining.

Improving on SEO will help the findability of your website. You will land more visitors and have more traffic. However if the landing page is not meaningful, worthless content and not relevant the visitor won’t stay on your page.
Hence the challenge is to create as much content as possible without spoiling the visit value for the visitor.
Creating massive and quality content is a skill and art.

How well does our content score for SEO and your visitors ?

Not gating for content distribution

While gating for your content will mainly result in collecting worthless email addresses (gmail, hotmail, aol, wanadoo, yahoo.co.uk), it is way better not gating for your content. The benefit is in the distribution of your content: the Content Marketing.
Actually their payment is in the distribute of your content which requires your content to be good and appropriate to their needs or interests.

Social content payment system

Still chances are your content never gets distributed and nobody knows about it.
This is why paying with a message on social media could be the best solution. When asking for a download, the system will ask your social media credentials in order to log in to Twitter or Facebook and publish a message on your behalf. The message you define upfront gets Tweeted or posted on your Facebook.

Beneficial social spamming

Some say this is social spamming as the Tweet is not authentic and personal.
However:
- The person can edit and change the content of the Tweet in order to make it personal or more authentic
- The content has the interest of the person as he wanted to download it
So it is personal and authentic as it relates to their current interest.

The benefit of this Pay with a Tweet content gating method is that your product or your content header gets published and distributed.
It is beneficial for:
- Increasing awareness of people
- Improving content marketing
- Boosting SEO as Google will index it (social media is still preferential)
- Better findability
Thus bringing value to the company.

Do you gate for content or not or social spam?

Hoarding expertise and information is history

All the information and expertise of a salesman that allowed getting an appointment is now available on the Internet. This can be provided by your competitors or by peers on social media (forums, LinkedIn, Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc).

If you keep your expertise and information to yourself then your potential customers will find it on the Internet from another source. Thus bypassing you completely. This could make your company and its’ products obsolete as people won’t find you on the Internet.
Not getting found increases missing sales deals. Hence hoarding information and expertise is history.

Share your expertise, knowledge and information

Instead you should share your expertise, knowledge and information in order to keep up with competitors and make sure you are being considered for all the possible shortlists. It is not solely your products, the feature and functions of your products, the quality of products and after service and the brand name that will get you on the short list as your company and products might get overlooked or simply net found during the research phase of the purchase cycle.

Not gating for content

In most cases influencers and decision takers will not contact you before they have made up their short list. In order to get on the short list it is better to provide information and expertise without gating for this content as this is part of the sales cycle. Asking for contact details is a hurdle in your sales process and won’t help sales.

Instead of waiting and hoping getting invited to present all of your knowledge, expertise and information during a sales meeting, you need to publish this as it will:
- Bring traffic of interested parties
- Build your authority in the business
- Get you on the short list
Only when on the short list you will be contacted for information about your solution and price negotiations. This kills the concept of opportunities moving through the funnel as it has become ultra short.

Are you still hoarding your expertise ?

Content marketing

As people are fed up with interruption marketing (ads, emails) it seems that content marketing is the way to go as people prefer to search online for solutions and products.
Content marketing will drive your inbound marketing for the complex sale in B2B.

Having just a few text documents, presentations or video’s might be sufficient for starting the process of generating interest, however you need to cover the entire purchase cycle and address to all of the people involved in the purchase decision. Your content needs to support the purchase process just like a salesman would do.

Purchase process and buyer persona

Hence you will need to identify:
- The different steps in the purchase process
- The different people that get involved
You need to identify the buyer persona’s. The different steps in the purchase process need to be supported by appropriate content for each of the people involved. Even if in one step different people get involved then different content needs to be created as a user-employee has different takes and views than a manager and again different than a CxO or VP:
- Functions will interest users
- Features will interest managers
- Benefits will interest CxOs

Content inventory

For each of the process step and for each of the people involved you will need to create a piece of content in your content inventory.
In order to do so make a spreadsheet having on the left the steps in the purchase process and the top the buyers persona. Then indicate who is involved in each step. Then define the content that is required for each cell in your spreadsheet that you indicated. Then start creating texts, presentations or video’s.
This will make sure you have no gaps in your content marketing.

What’s the status of your content marketing ?

Marketers as publishers instead of pushers

Marketing execs have always had the mindset of selling products or services using mainly interruption marketing with advertising, commercial messages through multiple channels. The more money spend the more likelihood of getting attention and promoting the brand or product. The more they pushed the more chance of success.

The challenge of content marketing for marketers is that they need to start thinking as publishers providing interesting and valuable content.
As content has become the currency instead of money, this is quite a change for most marketers: the shift from outbound marketing to inbound marketing.

Findable targeted content

Instead of pushing advertising, commercial messages or any other interruption marketing to potential customers, the roles are now reversed as the potential customer is now in the drivers’ seat:
- The headline and short introduction need to be enough teasing, compelling in order to attract an audience
- The content and information provided should be valuable and interesting enough to keep the interest and attention.

Making the content findable is another challenge besides creating interesting and valuable content, as you can have the best and most interesting content in the world, but if nobody can find it then all the effort and time is wasted.

Marketing the content

Just like advertisements and commercial messages were targeting specific market segments, different pieces of content need to be created in order to target each of the market groups.
Instead of pushing the marketing message to the potential customer, now the potential customer needs to find the specific content and take the time to read or view the content. The created content needs to be marketed !

Are you as marketer ready for content marketing ?