In a recent webinar focused on putting an end to content-related enablement frustrations, we conducted a poll asking attendees what frustrates them most out of the following:
- The inability to find marketing content
- Not knowing whether marketing materials are up-to-date and if these out of date materials are being used externally
- Not knowing whether and which content is being used by sales
- Having to constantly create presentations from scratch
- Not knowing if/how much buyers have interacted with content
Unsurprisingly, the top frustration of marketers was knowing how/whether sales is using content.
I’m a marketer (yes there’s an actual author here, GPT didn’t generate this), if you’re reading this you’re probably a marketer, and we know this is a problem. We spend a ton of time and energy creating content to aid our reps and buyers and often don’t know whether or how it’s being used by sales and whether or not it’s effective.
Our SVP of Marketing Pam Dearen spoke on this first during the session, saying,
You know, all of the precious marketing resources — that are often limited — go into creating what we believe is going to be the most effective material for the sellers throughout the buyer's journey. But how do we know? Are they using it? Is it working?
Without any kind of tooling and insights, we're guessing, and we're just not sure if we're making an impact in all the right places. So it is a very difficult challenge.
That’s why metrics around content use are some of the most important to track as a marketer and content contributor. And while it’s all well and good to have insights, it's more meaningful to have the kinds of insights that indicate which actions we can take to better move the needle.
Below are a few content insights marketers can pull from enablement platforms (using Bigtincan as an example since it’s ours and we have access to it) that lead to direct action that will improve the performance of your marketing efforts and support you in meeting your revenue goals.
Content insights for marketers to improve performance
Insight: Most opened content
On the surface, this may seem like the most basic, pumpkin-spice latte-esque content metric to consider.
But if you want to support your sales team and improve your own outputs, it's imperative to know what content is actually being used by reps.
The “most opened” content metric lets you know which individual assets and content themes or topics interest your sales team enough to click on and spend some time with them. In an enablement platform, this metric would typically be displayed in a dashboard and give additional context around content usage.
Some primer info before we get into this example: In Bigtincan, content is grouped into Stories or Pages.
In the Story Activities Dashboard in Bigtincan Analytics, you can see which Stories are being opened the most by your team, which are inactive, and overall metrics including activity over time, totals and averages, and other actions being taken on Stories such as likes or questions.
Similarly, in the File Activities Dashboard, you can see the file level. Looking at the file level lets you see what specific files are being used the most, how activity is changing over time, and inactive files.
Insight: Most shared content
“Most opened” file activities reflect the interests and habits of your internal team. But what about files that are shared externally with buyers?
The “most shared” content metric lets you know what kind of content buyers are requesting and/or which topics and assets sellers have deemed most relevant to their buyers. Even more importantly, you can see whether that content is missing or hitting the mark upon the customers’ receipt.
Background info: External shares of content from the Bigtincan platform are called “HubShares.”
In the HubShares Dashboard, you can see stats about content shares that have been going out from your team, including shares over time, average success rate defined as files being opened, who's sharing the most, and some additional metrics including in-email opens and click-throughs.
You can dive into what files are being shared the most and which files buyers are actually opening and viewing.
You can also get these insights into HubShares that were sent via links or Digital Sales Rooms, which let you learn about buyer behaviors via the “Time spent on page and slide” metrics.
Actions marketers can take to increase content performance
So you have your content activity insights. Now what? What actions can you personally take as a marketer to improve not only these specific metrics, but your larger content KPIs over time?
Do you have a datasheet that 90% of your reps open and share and/or download on a regular basis? Do buyers also open and spend some time viewing it?
Find out what makes this piece of content so successful and replicate it — even create a reusable template for your sales and marketing teammates that lets them spin up their own versions when they have an immediate deadline or waiting customer.
Is a piece of content frequently opened but not shared?
Set up a meeting with the reps who opened the content to find out why they didn’t share it. Is the content 70% of the way there but not quite what they think customers are looking for? Make some revisions to get it over the finish line and out the door. Is it not relevant at all? Time for a rewrite using guidance from your subject matter experts.
Was it just not right for that instance in which they looked at it but they bookmarked it for later? Did they just get distracted and close the tab? Find that out so you don't have to stress over it!
Is there a piece of content that NEVER gets opened?
Make sure reps know about it first — maybe it’s just hard to find!
And if they do know about it but don’t think it’s relevant — retire it and declutter your content catalog so reps can quickly find content they do need. The more you make reps search for content the lower your adoption rates will be.
Is there a PDF your sellers frequently share that customers either don’t open or don’t spend very much time on?
Do some investigating. Ask sellers why they shared it, why they think the buyer didn’t care about it, or even have them find out directly from the buyer why they disregarded that content. Take the opportunity to learn more about your customer and how you can speak to them better in the future.
This is all invaluable information that can save you, the marketer, time and help you take actions that actually make a difference in your daily work as well as your wider organization.
Most importantly: stay informed of content activity by using a stock or customer dashboard. Get weekly usage reports that help you actively monitor and maintain your library so content gets added and/or improved and stale content gets retired.
You can even set up pulse notifications that immediately alert you when certain criteria are met on dashboards so you can intervene and avoid any negative impact.
Lastly, come up with an adoption strategy that could include:
- Monthly meetings between sales and marketing representatives
- Regular messages with sales via Slack, your enablement platform, email, wherever your team communicates
- Partnering with your enablement team and sales leadership to remind reps of what content is at their disposal and how they can make effective use of it throughout buying journeys
Real life, non-hypothetical example of content insights to action
Following a sales request, our marketing team created a piece of content speaking to CROs.
A few weeks later a similar request came in from sales.
We followed up and saw that the first asset we created had not been shared yet, and therefore had not been tested with buyers, which lets us know whether we need to create additional/more relevant content or if the existing asset provided its intended value.
Following this quick peek at our internal Content Usage Dashboard, we shared the original asset via our designated Slack channels for marketing communications and direct messages with stakeholder sales reps, resulting in immediate activity on the file.
About a week later we got this feedback from one of our reps:
That’s almost immediate, positive feedback from a rep, our buyers themselves, and the data after saving ourselves hours of work thanks to a two-second peek at the analytics and some quick Slack messages.
Plus, an incident like this helps spread awareness throughout the company that it’s likely the desired content already exists in the system and helps increase adoption of both your platform and your content over time.
And how do you beat that?!
Want more content insights and guidance to improve your marketing efforts?
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