Some organizations have a content problem. They are either lacking in quality or volume, or both. But what about the other organizations that have ample content that’s really good but are still struggling to provide a great content experience? These scenarios can be more of a head-scratcher. However, if you’re finding that your own company is in such a situation, there are some pretty common reasons for it. Read on to find out the top two and how to fix them.
- You’re not fast enough. This is almost always the main issue when customers like the content a company puts out but still end up feeling disappointed by the overall experience they have. Let’s consider an example. One of your salespeople chats with a prospect who is extremely interested in your product but wants to see a cost comparison between you and a competitor before buying.
Your salesperson thinks they remember seeing a piece of content like this, so promises to send it over in a hurry. They dig … and dig … and dig … and still cannot find the piece of content. Eventually, they give up and ask marketing for help. Your marketers then take the time to either find or create the requested content and then take even more time to drop it onto a page and send it back to the salesperson. Efficient? Clearly not.
In the meantime, the “extremely interested” prospect is now feeling irritable. While they waited for you to send over the requested information, they started researching your competitor. They also ordered a lovely takeout lunch, ate it, attended some meetings, and came back to their computer, all to find out they still did not have the content they wanted in their inbox. That’s a pretty bad experience, even if the content is stellar when it’s eventually sent over.
The takeaway is this: Speed is crucial in a top-notch content experience, and yet it’s missing in countless organizations’ sales and marketing. In fact, in a recent study, 30 percent of sales folks surveyed said they have to seek out content pieces for themselves, and 17 percent said the content is hard to find. So to elevate your content experience, you must store it all in a central repository, tag it based on topic, persona, and stage of the buyer journey, and make it accessible to the sales team. In other words, cut out marketing, the middle person.
- The way you share content is weak. The second major factor that contributes to a poor content experience is how content is distributed. In the example above, the salesperson will likely send the content piece to the prospect via a link. But links are pretty “meh” if you’re aiming to deliver a great experience, especially when included in a long black-and-blue email where copy is unnecessary, links get lost, and CTAs go to die. Salespeople agree, stating in a survey that they would love for marketing to give them “a more compelling way to share” content.
The most compelling way is to use a content experience platform to create and share a personalized content destination. Once your content is housed centrally in such a system and tagged correctly, salespeople can quickly and easily find the content they need and drop it into a truly personalized, wow-worthy landing page that recipients will love.
Even though salespeople say that the content their marketers produce deserves roughly four stars out of five, there’s still a long way to go to bring the overall content experience up to a five. Increasing your speed and improving the way you share are two ways to change this, making life easier for your salespeople and making the experience richer for your buyers.
Randy Frisch is the cofounder and chief marketing officer of Uberflip, a content experience platform that empowers marketers to create content experiences at every stage of the buyer’s journey. He has defined and led this movement, prompting marketers to think beyond content creation and truly put their customers first by focusing on the experience. Frisch is also a host of Conex: The Content Experience Show podcast, was named one of the Top 50 Fearless Marketers in the world by Marketo, and is the author of, F#ck Content Marketing: Focus on Content Experience.
The following Randy Frisch from 2022 provides their research perspective. HERE