4 Ways Sales Enablement can be Supercharged by Marketing Efforts

We’ve spoken a great deal on developing and producing quality marketing content to attract prospects to your firm, and doing so helps your firm reap multiple benefits. What your marketing team creates kills two birds with one stone, in that once great content is produced, it will not only expand your firm’s reach and exposure, but such content opens the door for sales and plays a crucial role in helping your sales team sell and close deals. Two for the price of one, if you will.

Here are 4 key ways in how your marketing team sets up a strong foundation for sales to succeed:

1. Marketing Provides Content that can be Used as Part of the Sales Process

When you create content that caters toward your firm’s buyer persona and makes a point to address the different stages a lead might be in of the buyer’s journey, you now have at your disposal a gold-mine of valuable resources to help you close a deal.

Let’s say that you’ve made initial contact with a lead but you realize that they’re not quite ready to make a commitment with your firm just yet. Typically at this point, your only strategy is to push your firm’s own solution to them but because they’re not ready yet, you would be stuck at a dead end.

However, an Inbound Sales strategy is all about meeting the lead where they’re at in their buyer’s journey and helping first, in other words, lead nurturing. In this case, you are able to avoid the dead end because the content your marketing team has worked hard on can serve as a “middle ground”. By this we mean that sending such content to a lead and tailoring it to their own preferences and pain-points will provide information to them that is helpful and relevant and importantly, builds trust so that they will naturally be ushered forward through the sales process and nurtured for closing.

2. Marketing Provides Leads that are Interested because they Interacted with your Content

As is in all sales, we know it’s exponentially easier closing a deal with someone who’s already interested in your brand and services versus chasing after people through cold calls. When leads engage with the content you’ve produced and shared through your website and social media such as blog articles, podcasts, and eBooks, use this as an indication that they’re putting one foot in closer to their commitment to your firm.

For example, if a prospect came across your blog article through social media, found it helpful, and then decided to download an eBook on that same topic that was made available through your firm’s blog, you can gauge a considerable level of interest on their part and have good reason to start up a conversation with them. The chance of them being open to receiving your help is much greater because your firm’s brand and services have already been made aware in their mind from the previous content of yours that they’ve consumed.

3. Marketing Provides a More Reliable Sales Funnel in Terms of Quality Leads

Let’s say that your firm has acquired a lead that has filled out a Contact Us form from your website. At this point, you would have very little, quite generic information on such a lead, not knowing if they would be a good match for your firm. However, by taking advantage of the content your marketing team has generated, you could send a series of emails to this lead including links to some helpful blog articles on alternative investments, see whether they read and click on the resources you attached, and set a list of criteria this lead would need to meet to become a marketing qualified lead (MQL) and then sales qualified lead (SQL).

In this way, your firm’s marketing content functions as a gatekeeper and tool to narrow down your incoming prospects until you’re left with quality leads that hold great potential in investing with your firm.

4. Marketing Provides Marketing Intelligence Insights

Where there is content is always an opportunity to learn more about the people consuming the content. There is no better way to understand the kind of questions your leads may have, what content format they are most receptive to, and what topics and information they are most interested in than by directly observing their activity and engagement with the content your firm puts out there, whether it be blog articles, eBooks, emails, and more. 

Using a CRM makes it easy to track the online activity of your leads, from seeing who clicked on your emails at what time, whether they chose to click on particular links attached in such emails, what pages they’ve visited on your website, and if they’ve downloaded any offers or resources from your website.

Gaining this sort of marketing “intelligence” on your contacts will be key to guiding the direction of your firm’s future content and marketing efforts and will help you receive a wider understanding of your leads and how to nurture each one of them best to move them forward to sales.