Another way to look at the diagram below is that 'Company and Brand Impact' only contributes 19% to customer loyalty.
Here are the attributes of top sales experience by the sales executive:
- Offering unique valuable perspective on the market
- Help navigate alternatives
- Help avoid potential land mines
- Help educate on new issues and outcomes
- Easy to buy from
- Widespread support organization
It is worth reviewing these against your own content marketing strategy.
Are your sales team demonstrating these attributes to your clients?
Sharing content that is about simply WHAT you do is not going to help with achieving the above. Sales need to be supplied with expert, relevant and timely content - sharing content with granular context and relevance.
The points above make for a good checklist. If your role is within marketing, my recommendation would be to discuss the checklist directly with your sales team to see what else marketing can do to enable. Or perhaps how sales can adopt resources better.
In addition, research by the team at LinkedIn and Edelman has found messaging should not be delivered en masse, by a machine. It must come from someone they know and trust (sales, customer success team etc).
Since most B2B businesses are marketing to their prospects in a similar manner (and in very competitive markets) this approach makes for a quick and easy way to differentiate. It will also enhance your account-based marketing strategy as you can drip feed content throughout the process.
What excites me about this is creating an online world where individuals are producing content that will help others and raising the levels of expertise across the board. And for those that adapt and adopt, it offers a chance to make highly successful company.