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Applying Content Marketing Strategies to Indirect Sales Environments
The document discusses the importance of content marketing strategies in enhancing indirect sales environments, highlighting how content can transform sales reps into thought leaders. It emphasizes that access to the right content, effective distribution, and compliance are crucial for success, with statistics showing the significant impact of content marketing on lead costs and sales conversions. Recommendations include guiding sales reps on content usage and incentivizing effective sales and marketing behaviors.
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Applying Content Marketing Strategies to Indirect Sales Environments
- 1. Applying Content MarketingStrategies to Indirect Sales Environments
- 2. Hey — It’snice to meet you … JEN SPENCER Director of Sales & Marketing | ALLBOUND @jenspencer | @goallbound Revenue-driven inbound marketer who loves animals, hates traffic, and is passionate about empowering businesses to grow through their indirect sales channels.
- 3. And you are… Marketing professional serving an indirect sales channel Executive overseeing channel/partner sales Professional responsible for maintaining and growing channel/partner relationships Hmm … None of these sound like me
- 4. Our Agenda Content Marketing:What’s Happening & Why How Content Transforms ALL Sales Reps Content Challenges in Indirect Sales Channels Our Recommendations for Using Content in the Channel Your Questions
- 5. 9 out of10 Marketers HAVE A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY Source: 2015 B2B Content Marketing Report
- 6. 70%OF MARKETING TEAMSARE PRODUCING & SPENDING MORE ON CONTENT THAN EVER Source: 2015 B2B Content Marketing Report
- 7. Your Buyers HaveChanged
- 8. Your Prospects AreSkeptical THE PROLIFERATION OF MEDIA A HISTORY OF DECEPTIVE ADVERTISING THE TECHNOLOGY EMPOWERED CONSUMER
- 9. Can Content Help?Yes. Using content-driven tactics save an average of 13% in overall cost-per-lead. - HubSpot Content marketing strategies can double website conversions. - Aberdeen Group 90% of buyers find custom content to be useful when making purchases. - ContentWise
- 10. Transform Your SalesReps TEACHERS PROBLEM SOLVERS COACHES THOUGHT LEADERS
- 11. Where to Start? Blogs ebooks WhitePapers Data Sheets Infographics Case Studies Slide Decks
- 12. Direct vs IndirectSales Reps
- 13. Delivering Content toYour Channel Was the content distributed to the right people? Can your indirect sales reps open the files? Do your partners have the tools and resources to co- brand or white label the collateral? Does the content meet compliance requirements for a particular partner?
- 14. Has an end-userever seen a single piece of content you created?
- 15. 75%OF ALL GOODSFLOW THROUGH INDIRECT SALES AND MARKETING CHANNELS Source: World Trade Organization
- 16. Provide Access tothe Right Content at the Right Time
- 17. Guide Reps onHow to Use Content to Sell More, Faster
- 18. Incentivize the ContentSales and Marketing Behaviors that You Know Drive Results
- 19. It Doesn’t Haveto Be Complicated.
- 20. Bring it alltogether… All Your People All Your Training All Your Resources All Your Marketing All Your Funds All Your Data
- 22.
- 23. Thank you! JEN SPENCER Directorof Sales & Marketing | ALLBOUND jspencer@allbound.com For more information about Allbound, visit www.allbound.com or call us at 480.685.5474.
Editor's Notes
- #2 Hi – Thanks for joining us today for our webinar on applying content marketing strategies to indirect sales environments. We have attendees still joining the webinar, so we’ll begin in just a few moments. Hello and welcome to Allbound’s webinar, “Applying Content Marketing Strategies to Indirect Sales Environments.” As a way of doing a quick sound check and also getting you familiar with the webinar control panel, let’s test out this chat feature and let me know where you’re located. I’m in lovely Phoenix, Arizona right now. How about you? Let’s see how many different time zones we’ve got represented here …. [RESPOND]
- #3 Thanks for indulging me everyone. It’s great to meet you all. I’m Jen Spencer, and I’m the director of sales and marketing here at Allbound. There are many many ways to chat with me, but one of my favorites is Twitter, so you can reach me via my personal handle “at-jen-spencer”, or you are welcome to engage with our official Allbound handle “at-go-allbound.” A little bit of info about me – I’m a revenue driven inbound marketer. I love animals. I hate traffic. And I’m pretty passionate about empowering businesses to grow their indirect sales channels. I’m also recording this webinar. So, in case you need to step away, or halfway through you think of a friend or colleague who could benefit from this information, never fear – you’ll have the recording in your inbox tomorrow, and we’ll also post it to our YouTube Channel and our website. But, enough about me …
- #4 Let’s talk about you! When you registered for this webinar, we asked you to select a statement that best described your role. Today, the majority of us on the webinar are executives overseeing channel or partner sales … And then we have a perfect balance of marketing professionals serving an indirect sales channel and professionals responsible for maintaining and growing channel and partner relationships. And, then a few of you let us know that none of those descriptions sounded like you at all. So, if you’re part of that purple segment, and you’d like to share, go ahead and tell me what your role is in your organization. [RESPOND] Thanks so much – this is great. I’m so much more of an in-person kind of person, and I’ve sat in on a number of webinars, and I’ve always wondered who the other attendees are – if they are like me? If they have the same challenges and issues that I do.
- #5 Today’s Agenda ….
- #6 If you’re a marketing professional, it’s extremely likely that you’re doing some kind of content marketing. In fact, according to the 2015 B2B Content Marketing Report, nine out of ten marketers have a content marketing strategy. In fact, let’s see if that stat holds true here on this webinar. Let’s take a quick poll: Does your company have a content marketing strategy? [RESPOND – SHARE RESULTS]
- #7 Now, with any specific marketing strategy comes time and money. And, we know that 70% of marketing teams are producing and spending more on content than ever.
- #8 But why? Why is all of this important? Because regardless of whether you sell direct or via partners, resellers, distributors, etc. …. Your buyers have changed, and the customer now leads the sales process. Earlier this month, I was at HubSpot’s Inbound conference, and Gartner Analyst Tiffani Bova was leading a breakout session called “The Future of Sales: The Customer Now Leads the Sales Process.” Now, there are many reasons why your buyers have changed and why your marketing and sales strategies must change to meet those buyer expectations.
- #9 So, there are 3 major reasons why your prospects are skeptical about your product and why interruptive advertising, cold calling, and email blasting aren’t nearly as effective as they once were. First – the proliferation of media Second – a history of deceptive advertising Third – the technology empowered consumer Messages are everywhere. I personally can’t even visit my dry cleaner or pump gas without being subjected to an advertisement demanding my eyes and ears. Even what appear to be the simplest messages can be deceiving …. Such as food that claims to be all natural but is full of processed chemicals. And then the heaviest hitter of them all. The technology empowered consumer. Got a question? Need an answer? Not sure if you’re supposed to turn left or right? We all have a device of some kind at our fingertips to get us the information we need (or think we need) at any time of day or night.
- #10 So, what do we do? As sales people and marketers, do we just give up. No, we don’t. We adapt. We grow. We leverage content to help. HubSpot reported that using content-driven tactics saves companies an average of 13% in overall cost per lead. And Aberdeen Group found that content marketing strategies can double website conversions. And best of all, ContentWise reported that 90% of buyers find custom content to be useful when making purchases.
- #11 So, what happens when you take great content – and I mean THE RIGHT CONTENT – and you get it into the hands of your sale reps? It’s transformational. The Right Content Transforms Salespeople Into… Teachers -- Sales reps become sources of educational information – not just taglines. Problem Solvers- - Sales reps now better understand the challenges their prospects face Coaches -- Sales reps are better equipped to help assess their prospects’ strengths and weaknesses, encouraging them to think differently And, Thought Leaders – Because sales reps who consistently champion such content are perceived as authorities in their industry.
- #12 Content can take many forms – such as blogs, white papers, slide decks, ebooks, data sheets, infographics, case studies … and more. Let’s do another quick poll – What kind of content is your company using? [RESPOND – SHARE RESULTS]
- #13 Throughout my career I’ve had the opportunity to work with a variety of sales teams. With direct sales, the content our marketing team was creating was fairly easy to track. I had a decent amount of control. I met weekly with the team to discuss new pieces of content. I conversed regularly with sales reps to hear how they were leveraging what I was creating. And, I even had the sophistication of integrated marketing automation and CRM software to provide me with the intelligence I needed to know if what we were creating was working. But our indirect sales teams and channel partners? Boy, that was a different story.
- #14 Did the partner representative I was working with actually distribute the content to his or her sales team? Could they open the files? Did my partners’ marketing teams have the time or resources to co-brand the content I was creating so that it could be used within their company? Did it meet compliance requirements for that particular partner? And then, perhaps the scariest question of them all ….
- #15 Did an end-user ever see a single piece of content I ever created? I had absolutely no idea.
- #16 Why is this concerning? 75% of all goods flow through indirect sales and marketing channels … and 90% of marketers are using content marketing … and yet as sales and marketing professionals we have little to no visibility into how our content is being used with those indirect sales reps and prospects? This just doesn’t seem right. In fact, as a marketer, I’d venture to say that it’s downright negligent of us NOT to maintain the same standards of data-driven KPIs to guide our content marketing efforts in our indirect sales channels. OK, no more scary stats. What can we do to help leverage content marketing with indirect sales channels?
- #17 1) Provide access to the right content at the right time. Sales and marketing and business development need to all work together. We hear this all the time, and while we’ve definitely come a long way, there are still many more advances we need to make – particularly when it comes to supporting indirect sales channels. Marketers: Content isn’t something you simply check off your list. Got a whitepaper? Yep. Got an infographic? Uh-huh. Got a video? Sure do. You can spend countless hours and millions of dollars on content that speaks to the pain points of your buyer personas, but none of this matters if your feet on the street don’t know how to find it when they need it. Sales Reps: Content isn’t just something you attach to an email as a follow up to a sales pitch. Content should be used throughout the sales cycle to cultivate a relationship with your prospect. Remember that slide about how content can transform a sales person. Be the teacher, the coach, the problem solver, the thought leader … Channel Managers and Business Development Executives: Content has to resonate with your channel partner reps. And you know this better than anyone – your company is one step removed from those hundreds or even thousands of feet on the street. Good content that is used properly within your indirect sales channel will help you build brand potency. And your best partners, just like your best employees, are those individuals who are actively engaged with your brand in order to best serve their customers and prospects.
- #18 2) Guide reps on how to use content to sell more, faster Content marketing in your indirect sales channel cannot be “set and forget.” It’s likely that the majority of your resellers are also selling other competing products or services …. So what can you do to keep your solution top of mind? Putting content together into sales playbooks that are filtered by vertical, by persona, by lifecycle stage, or by business outcome will take the heavy lifting off the shoulders of those indirect reps. Think about how you are making it EASIER for them to sell more of your product – faster.
- #19 3) Incentivize the content sales and marketing behaviors that you know drive results. You know your business best. And, if you’re the leader of a direct sales team, you have a certain level of influence over your sales reps’ activities. You’re in their CRM pipeline. You’re probably talking to your reps in one-on-ones about their business. You’re reviewing the hottest opportunities in weekly sales meetings. As a direct sales leader, you’re able to play coach, counselor and chief strategist to ensure your reps are engaging in the right activities to move each and every opportunity through the sales process. And why? Because you all have a quota to make, and when your reps sell, they win, and you win as well. But what about your INDIRECT sales reps? They’re just as responsible for meeting quotas. So, how do you coach a player who doesn’t even report to you … from hundreds or thousands of miles away … across another continent … or, even who perhaps speaks and conducts business in another language? How can you ensure those reps are engaging in the right activities, leveraging the best content, and following the tried and true sales playbooks that you as your company’s expert know will produce results? This is where gamification can be extremely powerful. Instead of rewarding a sales rep at the completion of a sale, how about incentivizing the sales behaviors that you know produce those lucrative results? This very simple shift in sales incentive philosophy has the power to vastly influence the trajectory of your indirect sales pipeline.
- #20 OK, just three little things. There’s nothing Earth-shattering about what I’m suggesting. Content marketing in your indirect sales channel doesn’t have to be complicated. But, I’ll tell you this – It would be hard to hang a picture without a hammer and a nail. And you can see the moon with your naked eye, but through the lens of a telescope that same sight reveals so much more detail. The same is true for managing content within your indirect sales channel.
- #21 And, you’re on an Allbound webinar, so I would be remiss NOT to share this amazing tool with you. A revolutionary software solution that brings together all of your partners, your training, your resources, your marketing content, your marketing development funds, and your content marketing data into one gorgeous platform that does those 3 key things – and more.
- #22 Provide your indirect sales reps with access to the right content at the right time. Guide indirect sales reps on how to use that content to sell more, faster Incentivize the content sales and marketing behaviors that you know drive results.
- #23 Now, before we depart, I’d like to give everyone on the live webinar a chance to ask questions. You can go ahead and use that question field in your GotoWebinar control panel … and I’ll see if I can address as many of your questions as possible in the time we have remaining. What would you recommend if we are using other services like Dropbox to hold all of our content? Services like DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive – and so many others – can be extremely useful tools for holding large files and providing easy access to content collaboration. I’ve found that there are a number of limitations when I’ve personally tried to use these services with some larger partners, but more importantly, when you put your content in systems like these, you’re essentially putting that content in a big-old filing cabinet in the cloud. Great for organization, but how is that service helping you accelerate your indirect sales? With a solution like Allbound, we can actually pull your content from those sources and put fuel behind it to a) make sure it’s getting to the right people in your channel and b) provide you with analytics on how it’s being used. 2. I have partners that are tiered and some partners get access to certain kinds of content that others don’t. How do I manage this? We see this all the time, and the more layers you have within your business development or sales group, the more complicated this can get. So, specifically with Allbound, we can help you filter your content so you can deliver only the content you want to each partner tier. It’s a simple part of your configuration that we do when we’re loading all of your resources into the software. And, as you grow your channel, it’s simple enough to administer that you can make adjustments yourself, or you’ll also have a dedicated customer success manager working with you who can jump in at any time to help.
- #24 Thank you all for taking 30 minutes out of your day to spend with me and talk about content marketing in indirect sales channels. If you’d like to chat more and Twitter’s not your thing, go ahead and send me an email: “j-spencer-at-allbound-dot-com” or you can also learn more about Allbound by visiting Allbound-dot-com or by calling 480-685-5474.