Get Better Training and Buy-In for B2B Inbound Marketing

B2B Inbound marketing, while extremely effective, comes with challenges. Year after year, companies seem to struggle with the same efforts. While proving the ROI of marketing activities is still the top challenge, finding an executive sponsor and team training are rapidly rising to the top of the list. Companies need both executive buy-in and appropriate training of sales and marketing teams to achieve the inbound marketing success they strive for. While all other challenges mentioned in this survey have declined from the previous year, these two have increased. HubSpot’s “State of Inbound 2015” report examines these developing trends.

The Direct Link between Content Marketing and Sales

Joe, Shirley, Ruth, and James are hardworking sales people. And they hit their numbers every time. But you need the numbers to increase and your company wants to shift into new markets, so you’re facing a double whammy of a transition. They all have very different personalities and approaches to work, and their own preferences for how and when they communicate to prospects and customers. You spend way too much time creating sales enablement strategies that support each of their styles of working. You need a plan that will encompass all their work habits and keep you from having to micromanage their different approaches for engaging with clients. On top of that, corporate is after you to align branding and messaging more consistently. You need a content marketing plan. 

A Content Marketing Plan Is all about Sales

You’re comfortable doing business the way you’ve been doing it for years. We get that. But there’s an inherent problem with that. Your customers and prospects aren’t; their buying habits have changed—dramatically. Technology has been driving this content marketing train for a while now, and the painful reality is that if you don’t jump onboard, your potential customers will be leaving the station without you. Stale metaphors aside, you really need to get on track with how business is being done and create a content marketing plan. Okay, bad puns behind us now, let’s get to the meat of it.

How a Content Marketing Plan Can Save the Sales & Marketing Marriage

We all feel the pressure to be as efficient at our jobs as possible. Metrics dictate our decisions, follow us around, and predict our relative success … or failure. No one feels this more profoundly than salespeople. After all, if you distill it down, our jobs depend on their success. If nothing’s being sold, nobody’s getting paid. Having said that, the sales team isn’t in it alone. Marketing is an integral arm of sales. Traditionally, they have begrudgingly co-existed in many organizations—kind of like a bad arranged marriage. Both know they have an obligation to be there, yet they’ve discovered they don’t always speak the same language. There’s a disconnect that threatens to derail the best intentions of—what should be—a fruitful union. Content marketing is proven to attract prospects, and sales should be happy to embrace this methodology, because it will deliver the kind of leads they have been demanding for a long time.

What Is Content Marketing? Oh, You’re Already Doing it—Now Plan on Making Money from it!

You know that rabbit hole you go down each time you read an article online and then click on one link, only to click on another, which has you reading an article about the pros and cons of this and that, eventually taking you to a product page? From there, you start clicking down the customer reviews—some of which may even redirect you to another product entirely? Which takes you down that rabbit hole all over again?

That zig and zag through the content marketing minefield is just how business is done these days—both for B2C and B2B endeavors, whether you realize it or not. But wait! The good news is that it’s mining gold … and it can for your industrial manufacturing business when you get on the other side of it.