Skip to main content

Why Content Marketing is Changing the Way Your Sales Team Pursues Leads

By October 1, 2013Article

The focus of every salesperson revolves around closing deals. I’ve learned that to do this a partnership between the sales and marketing teams is crucial. A marketer’s ability to generate new, qualified leads represents a big part of how I structure my territory plan, but the challenge is always this: How can I turn these leads into people I can contact? Too often marketing provides an aggregate number of impressions or, if they use a Web form, invalidated information with no real context. How can I leverage this information into a qualified lead? 

The key to effective sales requires not only an increase in the aggregate number of leads but also increased engagement with the sales team’s targets. This is where a company’s marketing department comes in: How can strategic content marketing provide the sales team with the most legit leads while sharing their specific interests and providing more information throughout the sales cycle? 

The answer rests in effectively using publishing and analytics tools. For example, PaperShare, a content engagement platform, provides feedback to marketers when a potential customer views a piece of content that has been published. It shows intent and gauges the interest of the viewer. They didn’t just click on your tweet or like a posting — they watched a video, viewed an infographic or read the newest white paper. They’re interested in your ideas, products and services. Knowing this information bridges the gap between what marketing can deliver and what the sales team needs to know by putting content at the center of the marketing process and connecting the results directly to the sales funnel.  

Another underutilized publishing strategy involves using social logins per every piece of content so with one click a potential lead instantly gains access to the content without having to fill out a long form. The owner is immediately notified providing:

  1. A validated name, title and company (validated, because it’s based on data from their social network)
  2. The potential lead’s interests based on which content he or she viewed
  3. A link to their CRM system   

Based on this data I know how qualified the leads are in my funnel and can spend my time doing what I do best: coming up with the best strategy to secure a meeting. This is much more effective than using most of my day verifying and qualifying bulk leads dumped into my queue. 

Ultimately, now sales and marketing get the best of both worlds: lead totals go up because potential customers get the content they want with a single click and the sales team gets the detailed intelligence to increase the success rate of engaging with a customer.

Blaine Jackson is inside sales representative at PaperShare. He comes to PaperShare with more than eight years of experience starting and building inside sales teams. His focus has been joining early-stage technology companies with great ideas ready for exponential growth. During his career he has had the unique experience of creating both the key roles of lead generation and sales for enterprise software companies like Apptio, Daptiv and ecommerce startup Esurg.  

 

Copy link
Powered by Social Snap