How involved is your business development team with your content strategy and are they utilising this knowledge in the most effective way to make sales?
It’s an easy assumption to make: content sits with the marketing team and is developed to grow the brand and drive attention among your business’ core audience. Well, it’s not always the case.
Increasingly, we are seeing business development teams taking a keen interest in the results that content strategy can bring…
This should come as no surprise given marketing and business development share the same end goal: to provide long-term value to the organisation.
Let’s take a look at some of the benefits content can bring from a BD perspective:
Invigorating the sales cycle
Only half (52%) of B2B marketers agree that their organisation provides customers with optimal experiences across their engagement journey.
We work with businesses that have sales cycles of 6 weeks to 6 months. Whatever the touchpoint, the potential clients in your pipeline need to be served the right information at the right time to maintain momentum and be drawn through the sales funnel.
The more you know about your audience, how they think and the way they consume information, the easier it is to drive interaction, maintain interest and build brand affinity.
Increased web traffic and enquiries
Another reason BD teams will normally take an active interest in content marketing is because of the direct leads it can produce.
It’s a simple formula:
High value content, driven by audience ‘need’ = high value web traffic @ higher volume
There’s clearly a link here – 76% of marketers reported that organic traffic is the key metric they use to measure the success of their content.
Content should also be used to generate enquiries. How easy is it for visitors to convert? Are you inviting feedback from your customers and promoting interaction with the brand?
Knowledge is power
The data that content strategy can generate is incredible. One article, blog, video or report (when tracked and delivered in the right way) can tell us so much about the audience engaging with it.
Engineering content to answer powerful questions for the BD team is commonplace in campaigns we regularly deliver. Particularly in B2C.
Take retail, for instance. During lockdown the retail network we work with wanted to get as many people back into their shops and showrooms, safely and securely. So, all the content we created enabled clients to track engagement and get a broad view on what, particularly, was driving up customer anxiety levels.
Content brings intelligence and the knowledge gained from tracking it unlocks patterns and trends that equip BD teams with information that’s fundamental to growth.
Are you confident that you’re harnessing content to make smarter BD decisions?
Supporting SEO as a means for growth
57% of B2B marketers stated that SEO generates more leads than any other marketing initiative. Without content, SEO simply doesn’t work. And, not just any old article will do – it needs to be High-Performing Content that delivers value to the brand and is intrinsically linked to the key objectives of the business.
Content marketing and SEO operate hand-in-hand. Without quality, High-Performing content, the full benefits of SEO cannot be achieved. When it comes to business development, this is obviously a huge barrier to growth.
At GoldSand Digital, we can help align your business development and content strategy teams, to support your content in reaching its full potential. If you would like to discuss any of the points raised or talk to us about how we can help your business, drop us an email and we’d be happy to set up a call!