In Part 1 of this series, we discussed getting sales and marketing together as an internal content curation team to brainstorm ideas that resonate with clients and enable the sales team to increase contract closings. Next, let’s take a look at how sales and marketing teams can align to create useful content.
Creating Useful Content
Story telling is a great way to convey a successful problem-solving experience one of your clients had with your company. To do this, using a case study format is ideal as it states the challenge clearly and in a way that is relatable to your sales team’s other prospects.
The case study will start with a short explanation of the business the customer is in. Next, the systems integration challenge is outlined. Pain points, jurisdictional mandates, environmental conditions, funding, government regulations, and other factors related to the challenge are explained. Once the landscape of the application is presented, the solution is described with an emphasis on the value and benefit that the customer experienced as a result. At the end, the marketing team can add other clients’ company names and logos who have had the same or similar challenge and solution with positive results.
And here’s the beauty of the case study: it’s not just for prospective clients who happen upon it to read. It can also be used as a proactive resource by the entire sales team to move their sales efforts along. It can be presented to specific decision makers and stakeholders at the right time for the right type of project to help overcome objections and increase confidence in your company’s ability to deliver a proven solution with tangible results.
Pro tip: link supporting documentation related to the challenge and solution so the reader can continue their information discovery and decision-making processes beyond the case study. This is a fundamental benefit of writing a blog post where the story can be told in its entirety with the case study available as a downloadable PDF along with links to other related resources.
Testimonials Tell the Tale
The case study your team produced is essentially a long-form testimonial. It contains details about your customer, their challenge, and the successful solution. As a result, your prospect will either take the case study at face value, or in some cases may ask for a person’s name to contact for more information on the topic.
Our team is here to support your sales efforts and marketing programs by helping move from great ideas to needle-moving content.
Contact Vector Firm today to discuss your sales initiatives and content marketing needs.
