Solving Problems and Closing Deals with Effective Content

We’ve all experienced this at one time or another: The frustration of making a search query on a search engine in an effort to find an answer to a problem, but having no luck finding a single clear answer that presents the right solution.

It’s aggravating. But it also illustrates the most important determining factor in the effectiveness of our content; to a potential customer more useless information is bad, but the right information is invaluable. The reality, however, is that the shift towards intensive content marketing strategies over the last 5-10 years have often missed the mark. Companies aren’t delivering the right content to the customer just as Google queries don’t always bring up the right results.

Marketing collateral like white papers, case studies and eBooks are being produced at a rapid rate. Unfortunately, much of it ends up never to be discovered.

To ensure your marketing collateral impacts the bottom line, you need to make sure it ticks the following boxes:

• engine rankings, but it will definitely damage your credibility. Refined content with a unique solution will get readers to trust you. Ensure that you don’t rank high on search engines with ineffective and untargeted content.
• It’s organized and concise. People read articles and reports to find answers. Usually this means scanning – not reading. Endless pages of text are hard to scan, and many readers will give up before long they get to the end of the asset. Information that is well organized into subheadings and tables, with bullet points and clear headings will convert better.
• It’s easy to find on any device. Whether your audience uses a mobile device or a desktop, your content needs to be user-friendly.
• It uses the right tone. The best content is written with the consumer in mind – a typical customer persona. It speaks in his or her language, and uses a tone that’s authoritative and friendly.
• It enables your sales rep to become the expert. A loose, disconnected mass of information can do harm. A sales team that is well-trained, and has easy access to the right data becomes a formidable asset.
• It never stagnates. Content effectiveness needs to be continually evaluated, refined, re-tested and improved to keep adapting to changing consumer needs.

Most importantly, effective content forms part of a unified strategy. It’s not just a mass of collateral tagged onto a website to make your company appear more knowledgeable. Effective content is expertly aimed at your customer’s challenges– the problems that you’re going to solve.

Top performers ensure that the right content is available at the most opportune time when it comes to closing more deals. Successful sales and marketing teams understand the needs of the customer at each stage of the sales cycle. And they deliver the right content when it matters most.

Effective content enables sales reps to close more deals and find the right solutions for customers. How effective is your marketing collateral? Are your sales reps successful in the boardroom with your marketing material?