Are you finding it challenging to keep up with the latest content trends in your organization? Do you want your content to resonate with your audience? If so, you’re not alone. It’s common for sales teams to put effective content management on the sidelines and not prioritize it. Many sales reps are working with their patchwork content management system and don’t know if there’s a better way.
It’s no secret that sales teams need quality content to be successful. But, often, a sloppy content management system is why reps aren’t taking advantage of the quality content available to them. Managing content can be a challenge with everything reps have on their plate, and they might not even know what exists. This blog post will discuss tips for managing your content more effectively and making the process more manageable for your sales reps. We’ll also explore how to create content that resonates with your audience.
Content Management
A recent Forrester report challenged its readers to manage their content better than just making it more accessible to sales reps. They recommended that “Marketers need to collaborate on content effectively while giving sellers more flexibility to create interactive pages or portals. These buyer-branded hubs let sellers incorporate multiple content types and assets in a more immersive and dynamic experience, making it easier to sustain a dialogue, problem-solve, and negotiate terms with prospects.” (The Forrester Wave: Sales Content Solutions, Q3 2020).
Ultimately, you want to ensure your sales reps are reaping the benefits of your content management strategies. Some actionable items for accomplishing this include:
- Filling in the gaps: Keep an inventory of the content you must see what your sales reps lack. You can fill in your content gaps by checking in periodically with your sales, asking what they need, and auditing your existing content regularly.
- Creating content purposefully: Before creating content, ask yourself how the reps will benefit from it and what your customers must gain from it, and then map out a plan for how you will make it accessible to your sales reps.
- Tracking content ROI: Measure the results of your content against the cost of creating it.
- Understanding user engagement: Use content analytics to know what assets your audience is interacting with the most. For example, it’s helpful to see the number of views, downloads, re-shares, and the average time spent on each document.
These are only a few ways that you can manage your content effectively. Your strategies should reflect your company’s culture and needs. Your solutions should make the process of finding, using, and benefitting from content into a well-oiled machine.
Keep it Simple for your Reps
Keeping content management simple and effective is vital to helping your sales reps win more. If your sales reps can’t find the content they need in a few minutes, then that’s a sign it is not simple enough. The first step? Centralize your content. The more places your reps have to search for content, the longer it will take them to find the right piece. On average, reps spend about 30 hours a month searching for content. When you decrease the time spent searching for content, you increase the time they spend selling.
Another way to help reps find content quicker is by recommending winning content. If you already know about content that has seen success, you should have a way for reps to access it easily. Often, reps are unsure of what content will have the greatest impact. Quickly finding what content has worked well in the past could be a good starting point for them.
These days, it’s becoming more common for reps to deliver content to prospects from a distance. That means your content shouldn’t only be accessible, but it should also be easy to share digitally. Therefore, when searching for a content management system (CMS), we recommend prioritizing sharing features.
Create Content that Resonates
There’s more to content creation than just relevant topics. First, you must know your audience and what mediums they prefer to receive their information. Then, select a medium for your message based on your audience’s needs. Finally, whether it’s video, sales sheets, email, etc., you should deliver content to your audience the way they want to receive it.
If you have important information you want to get across, you may also want to consider publishing it in several different mediums. For example, it might make more sense to send a sales sheet instead of a video. If your content is relevant to a broad audience, it’s best to be prepared.
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Finally, to see which content is resonating, use analytics. It’s impossible to tell how well your content is doing without an analytics report. Once you know what content is getting the most attention, you can tailor your content creation to what your viewers want to see.
We realize that managing your content effectively can be a daunting task. It’s hard to keep up with the latest trends, produce quality content that resonates with your audience, and make sure you can easily send it to keep your prospects interested from a distance.
Thankfully, we have a solution that can help you achieve an effective content management strategy. verbTEAMS can take the load off your reps, giving them more time to focus on making sales instead of searching for the content they need. In addition, our easy-to-use interface makes managing content a breeze with its searchable content feature and detailed analytics. verbTEAMS is a platform that can host all your content, so all your assets are in one place. Plus, you can easily share your content from the app and track how that content is received.
If you’re interested in seeing how verbTEAMS can improve your content management strategy, click here to learn more.
