I came across this pretty eye-opening piece of statistics around the true cost of content from the below webinar (a study by SiriusDecisions) :

• 65% of B2B content created by marketing goes to waste
• When breaking down this number - 37% were regarded by sales as not relevant and 28% have never even been found

This may be a very disheartening truth that many B2B marketeers are coming to terms with - that their time, effort and money spent towards content creation simply aren’t being rewarded with the expected usage or ROI. If we look at the reason why salespeople don’t use this content - I can echo from my previous experience at a large software firm, that majority of the content available to me were either not customer-centric enough (with too much product focused language) or were simply outdated. 

There is a clear need for sales and marketing alignment to address this problem, with help from other functions (subject matter experts, sales enablement etc). The webinar below details 7 steps on how to achieve this. 

The key step that struck me was the need to create a closed feedback loop between sales (who holds the relevant customer insights and challenges), subject matter experts (with the relevant and technical expertise) and marketing (with the analytical skills and tools to track engagement). By measuring the sales usage and customer engagement of the best performing content, marketing and sales enablement can then replicate success across the wider organisation. 

If you are interested in the topic of sales and marketing alignment, OMJ is holding a very relevant breakfast event this month on how business leaders can leverage expertise to enable sales and marketing functions, with roundtable speakers from Stephen Waddington (Chief Engagement Office @ Ketchum PR) and Tony Tarquini (Director of Insurance EMEA @ Pega Systems). You can sign up to the event here.