Prove the Powerof Content Marketing

6 ways Playbooks Can Bridge the Sales gap and tie Back to revenue

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E-Book

Sales playbooks offer a way to capture the content that

salespeople need and provide it to them anywhere, at

any time along with the tools and step-by-step guidance

they need to move prospective customers through the

buying cycle and close deals. Delivered through your CRM

system, playbooks serve up content of any type — from

documents and presentations to videos and audio — in

real-time, no matter where the content is stored.

what are Sales Playbooks?

When it comes to B2B sales, content marketing is booming like never before. The proof is in the numbers: 9 out of 10 marketers use content marketing to grow their business, according to the Content Marketing

Institute, taking advantage of an average of eight different tactics — and spending a quarter of their budgets

on content marketing efforts. And, those budgets are growing, with 60% of marketers reporting they planned to

spend more money on content marketing in 2012 (compared to 51% the previous year).

However, while marketers may be creating more content, that doesn’t mean sales departments are using it. In

fact, according to Corporate Visions’ Q2 2012 Sales and Marketing Messaging Report, 65% of respondents

said their sales teams use less than half of the demand generation content their marketing department produces.

Whether it’s because the content is not easily accessible, considered inappropriate or deemed low-impact, there

are signs of a disconnect between sales and marketing when it comes to content.

It’s no secret that alignment challenges are all too common between these two essential departments —

according to Forrester Research, only 8% of B2B companies say they have tight alignment between sales and

marketing. But forward-thinking organizations are addressing the content marketing disconnect head-on by using

technology-based resources to track the use of content by sales, analyze which content is working

and use insights to create new, useful content that sales teams will use again and again throughout the buying cycle.

According to recent research from Demand Gen Report, 50% of respondents said they do not specifically look at

the role content plays in influencing customer purchase decisions. But marketers that do are a step ahead of their

peers that don’t, and are better positioned to prove content marketing’s value to a company’s sales force (and

bottom-line revenue). This E-book offers six ways marketers can take advantage of tools such as sales playbooks

to bridge the gap between sales and marketing — going beyond lead generation tracking — and directly tie

content marketing efforts back to closed-won business and bottom-line revenue.

MeaSuReMent In aCtIon: ClICk heRe to See howPlaybooks deliver the right content, resources and analytics at the appropriate time

in the sales process to advance a sale.

According to the recent 2012 IDG Enterprise Customer Engagement survey, IT decision-makers download an average of nine pieces of content throughout the purchase process.

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1 Begin by building a buyer persona-based content strategy.

3

of marketers have developed buyer

personas to improve content effectiveness and another

said they plan to include them in win/

loss reviews in the next 12-24 months. 1

You may already have a robust content marketing library, filled with

dozens of case studies, whitepapers, videos, E-books, toolkits and

demos. However, if the content does not reach your company’s

optimal audience of decision-makers, or if content does not address

the questions and needs of prospects throughout the lead generation

and lead nurturing process, sales teams will not use the pieces to

their best effect — if at all. That’s hardly a good value proposition for

content marketing, is it?

Building a content strategy based on the concept of buyer personas

is an important part of the journey toward a content marketing

strategy that shows measurable results. Adele Revella, president

of the Buyer Persona Institute, defines buyer personas as

archetypes — a composite picture of the types of people who buy,

or might buy, your product. Using qualitative research consisting of

direct interviews with real buyers (not second-hand information from

internal sources), you can determine the right targets — their title,

demographics, their pain points, their goals. You want to discover:

Where do they go for information? What are their expectations?

Once you determine those agreed-upon targets, you can begin to

examine the range of content pieces you already have in-house.

“Often, significant gaps are discovered,” says Ruth P. Stevens,

a New York City-based B2B marketing consultant and author of Maximizing Lead Generation. “There may be missing elements in

certain sales cycle stages, or for certain target audiences.”

For example, according to the recent 2012 IDG Enterprise Customer

Engagement survey, IT decision-makers download an average of nine

pieces of content throughout the purchase process. If a company’s

buyer persona is, say, a mid-level IT manager who tends to do

research online over a six-month period, what types of content should

be provided? When should those nine pieces of content be offered?

In what order should the content be presented? Playbooks, with

their ability to serve up content from anywhere and drive plays with

dynamic rules that can be changed at a moment’s notice, offer an

ideal central playing field to begin this exploration.

25%

25%

According to the recent 2012 IDG Enterprise Customer Engagement survey, IT decision-makers download an average of nine pieces of content throughout the purchase process.

Content Metrics

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Only of respondents said that their organization is effective at creating content that speaks directly to every phase of the buyer’s journey, while

said their efforts in this area need improvement.1

Once you have the right buyer personas in place, you can begin to

map your content — that is, determine the right content for each

target group through each stage of the sales cycle. “Mapping helps

the organization see the processes that the prospect goes through

— where the inflection point happens where the prospect becomes a

sales qualified lead, for instance, and the sales process begins,” says

Tony Zambito, executive consultant and founder of Buyerology.

Sales playbooks, with their ability to align content marketing and

sales processes, delivered in the context of a deal, offer marketers

the opportunity to serve up different pieces of content not just by

the individual prospect (and their buying agenda/persona), but by

the exact point in the buying cycle they are at. Based on the buying

personas that are created, sales and marketing departments can

determine what questions a buyer will have at different points in the sales process, based on different pain points and concerns

they might have, and create rules for content marketing that will help

propel them to the next level of the buying cycle.

Is the prospect making an initial inquiry? Have they moved from a

marketing qualified lead to a sales accepted lead? Is the salesperson

nearing an opportunity to close a sale? You create and refine the

rules that determine how content marketing is used throughout the

sales process.

Map your content marketing throughout the sales cycle. 2

Only of content marketers have completed the following exercise to improve their content effectiveness: mapping content to buyer needs and stages.1

13.5%

50%

34.5%

“Mapping helps the organization see the processes that the prospect goes through – where the inflection point happens where the prospect becomes a sales qualified lead, for instance, and the sales process begins.”

Tony Zambito, executive consultant and founder of Buyerology.

Content Metrics

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of respondents felt the greatest impact from an expanded library of content offers was supporting sales follow-up/sales enablement initiatives.1

Perhaps you have taken all the necessary steps to agree upon a set

of buyer personas, through a series of direct buyer interviews, and you

have determined what the right content will be for each part of the

sales cycle. If the content is not easily available to sales teams — at

the right time, in the right context, at the right juncture, in

real time — it still may not be used by the average salesperson,

and its value will still not be proven. After all, even if you have the

most sophisticated and organized content repository — and who

does? — imagine being a salesperson navigating through folders,

searching for the right content at an important juncture in the sales

cycle. If it is not accessible at a moment’s notice, will it be used when

it’s really needed?

The key is to keep content — customized to every buyer persona,

down to the specific client level — at the sales team’s fingertips. With

playbooks, marketing teams can provide deal and stage-specific content

that salespeople can access on the road in real time, with easy-access

links that clearly guide them to the pieces of content deemed to be

most effective in specific situations with individual clients.

For example, perhaps a qualified lead for a mid-sized insurance

firm is passed on to a salesperson within a playbook. The initial

step, based on the content mapping process described above, is

to provide research options for the salesperson to peruse before

making the first call as well as some background materials —

competitor information, for instance, or social networking profiles.

Then, the next step detailed in the playbook might be for the

salesperson to make an initial call — for which he will need a set of

other content materials – such as a PowerPoint presentation and a

couple of published articles.

Depending on how the call goes, the salesperson may move the

prospect to the next level in their sales process, which requires

additional content marketing materials to answer questions and

address potential customer concerns. Playbooks allow the sales team

to interact with content anytime, anywhere — without having to wade

through content repositories and without guessing which collateral

piece will best move their deal along.

keep customized content at the sales team’s fingertips. 3

42.3%

With playbooks, marketing teams can provide deal and stage-specific content that salespeople can access on the road in real time.

Content Metrics

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Brand awareness was the second-most important objective for content marketing, after lead generation:

of respondents considered this to

be a major objective.2

Obviously, confusing valuable prospects is not the key to driving

sales. Instead, as prospects move from inquiry to marketing qualified

lead to sales accepted lead and then closed sale, brand consistency

is essential to meeting client expectations. The tone, design and messaging across all marketing and sales materials, across all

product lines, should maintain a level of consistency that drives

understanding, confidence and, ultimately, sales.

However, with the vast variety of content marketing and sales

materials that may exist in your company, consistency can be hard

to come by: the “rogue” salesperson who uses an outdated sales

sheet he developed, for example. Or, the video with the new company

tagline that doesn’t match the old whitepaper summary prospects

download upon first inquiry. Or, the brand-new survey that uses

statistics which contradict last year’s survey, which salespeople still

insist on presenting at every meeting.

Keep in mind, sales teams typically don’t want to be left to their

own devices when it comes to content: They realize they are not

marketers, but they will do whatever they feel it takes to close a deal

— even if means updating their own PowerPoint presentations or

using an old version of a document stored in their email Inbox.

Playbooks, on the other hand, give salespeople the opportunity to get

it right every time — and solve the challenge of brand consistency by

creating ownership of content marketing. A group of senior marketers

may develop the foundational content and then offer opportunities for

sales teams to customize and configure their presentations,

collateral and proposals using selected content assets that best

support each prospect. User-generated comments and ratings allow

playbook owners to make changes, but the consistency can still be

maintained within the playbook.

Drive brand consistency across all content marketing and sales materials. 4

38%

With the vast variety of content marketing and sales materials that may exist in your company, consistency can be hard to come by.

Content Metrics

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A new B2B Magazine study finds that content marketing has

the greatest impact on generating leads:

of respondents considered it the most important tool for lead generation.

Once your content marketing assets are properly targeted and tracked

in a central, real-time repository, which is used regularly by sales

based on persona and opportunity specific rules, you may heave a

sigh of relief. But this is only the beginning: Now, through playbooks-

based analytics, you can truly allow the power of content marketing

to shine through.

We all appreciate the power of data-driven analytics. And, most savvy

marketers already leverage analytics to reflect some level of marketing

influence on the pipeline and closed-won business, perhaps at the

campaign level. But what if you could use analytics throughout the entire

lead lifecycle and gain insight into what worked — and what didn’t —

with your content marketing? Would you uncover any trends?

For example, perhaps you were sure that sales teams would

immediately start using the third part of your latest whitepaper series

to drive prospects to the next stage — but instead they use part

two more often, and later in the cycle. What messaging triggers

is the audience responding to? What types of content made a

difference for specific types of leads? Perhaps analytics prove CIOs

prefer whitepapers, while CEOs prefer case studies. How have leads

accelerated [or decelerated] toward sales through the different stages

of the sales cycle? Where are there content gaps? What content is

used most in winning deals?

By aligning the sales activity that you tracked in your playbooks with your

CRM data, you can truly get a 360-degree view of what is happening

in your sales organization when it comes to content marketing. And, you

can gain an understanding of what you’ll need to do regarding content

for specific sales situations, customer interactions, and where you’ll need

to make tweaks on an ongoing basis.

Use analytics to gain deep insights into the impact of content marketing on sales. 5

Only of respondents have completed the following exercise to improve their content effectiveness: creating assets and offers that align with the lifecycle of a prospect.1

51%

32.7%

By aligning the sales activity that you tracked in your playbooks with your CRM data, you can truly get a 360-degree view of what is happening in your sales organization.

Content Metrics

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did not feel the solution provider they chose provided them with ample content to help them navigate through each stage of the buying process.3

When it comes to content marketing, it is no longer enough to target,

create, track, measure and analyze. If you want to prove its bottom-

line value, you must close the loop by taking the insights you learn

and use them to continually improve your content assets throughout

the buying cycle. You need to turn around and go back to the first tip

outlined above: do a content audit.

With sales playbooks, however, the content audit becomes an ongoing

process that is constantly being updated and revised in real time. The day-to-day insights gained go right back into your sales

playbooks for future opportunities and your content becomes less

about quantity and more about quality.

“Rather than providing hundreds of files to sales and of those 80%

of them are not high-quality or out of date, you should just provide a

group of sales tools that are a gold standard — the best presentation

you can provide,” says Sales Benchmark Index’s Vince Koehler.

By continuing to identify your best content and enhance the content

you create to best serve salespeople and their prospects, your

salespeople will be prepared for every customer interaction and

increase their closed sale percentages.

Close the loop by creating the right content assets for the entire sales funnel. 6

Only of respondents are using feedback from the sales team to measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns.1

38.4%

30.8%

“Rather than providing hundreds of files to sales and of those 80% of them are not high-quality or out of date, you should just provide a group of sales tools that are a gold standard — the best presentation you can provide.”’

- Vince Koehler, Sales Benchmark Index

Content Metrics

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The key to proving the value of content marketing to the

company’s bottom line is directly linking the use of content to sales success.

That means content must be audited to make sure it aligns with the

company’s target customers. That means content must be mapped,

tracked, measured and analyzed to be sure it meets the needs of

sales teams and addresses the pain points and concerns of prospects.

That means content must be customized for each client and business

situation. That means content must be consistent across the brand,

and available to sales teams at all times and at their fingertips.

Playbooks are at the core of this content marketing strategy —

setting up the sales team for success. By providing them with a home

base that provides what they really need, at all times, to move deals

through the buying cycle and close sales, and tracking those results in

a centralized, metrics-based solution, marketing can prove the power

of content marketing.

Playbooks: Closing the loop on content marketing success

Sources1 Demand Gen Report: Blueprint Content Survey2 B2B Magazine survey, “Content Marketing: Ready for Prime Time”3 Demand Gen Report: Transforming the B2B Buying Process

With the vast variety of content marketing and sales materials that may exist in your company, consistency can be hard to come by.

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About Qvidian

Qvidian provides software applications enabling sales teams to

accelerate the sales cycle and close more deals. Qvidian Sales

Playbooks & Analytics and Proposal Automation have increased win

rates and improved productivity for some of the world’s largest and

most successful corporations. On average, our customers increase

their win rate by 38% and improve productivity by 45%. Learn more

at www.Qvidian.com.

About Demand Gen

Demand Gen Report is a targeted e-media publication spotlighting

the strategies and solutions that help companies better align their

sales and marketing organizations, and ultimately, drive growth. A

key component of the publication’s editorial coverage focuses on the

sales and marketing automation tools that enable companies to better

measure and manage their multi-channel demand generation efforts.

aBoUt

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