Research from the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) recently revealed that the single largest budget item in the past year for major B2B organizations was collateral.
Companies spent 16% of their annual dollars on creating and distributing marketing content – more than any other category. With the success of Content marketing, and now the explosion of Content Selling, investing in content is a wise decision, as long as the collateral is put to good use.
Here lies the problem: New research from SiriusDecisions shows that up to 70% of content created by BtoB marketing teams is never utilized. That means the majority of your biggest marketing investment is left for dead on hard drives, never to generate a lead or a single dollar for your organization.
With such a significant investment in marketing collateral, it’s important for businesses to better manage how content is used, with a keen eye on ROI. A KnowledgeTree survey this spring showed that the vast majority of marketing respondents – 84 percent – believe they’ve done a good job in making it easy for salespeople to find the collateral they need. However, just barely half (51 percent) of salespeople feel that the right content is readily accessible.
We recognize that the Marketing department of today is not the Marketing department of 20 years ago. Marketing today is very involved in lead generation and in some organizations, more than Sales. But Marketing still controls the budget for content creation.
The content that Marketing is creating needs to align with all parts of the sales funnel, even after the lead is generated and accepted. Without this alignment, Sales will take a DIY approach to sales engagements, forcing them to create their own sales enablement tools.
New tools and strategies can help marketers get the right content in front of salespeople at the right time. It’s the key to preserving your marketing budget and making sure none is wasted. Additionally, be sure to measure whether a piece of collateral contributed to the closing of a deal.
The more wins, the greater the ROI. If one particular piece of collateral isn’t working, retire it and stop investing in similar pieces. Tying opportunities generated to content can help you invest in the best content.
With Content Selling, collateral is more important than ever. Manage it as wisely as any other marketing investment and it will pay you dividends again and again.
Please take 2 minutes to watch our video and learn how KnowledgeTree integrates with Salesforce.com and helps you get the right content at the right time to your sales teams.