According to research by the Content Marketing Institute, 70% of B2B marketers are creating more content than they were just a year ago. Despite this expanded focus, however, marketers are doing a very poor job of optimizing content creation. A recent study by SiriusDecisions reports that large enterprise firms waste roughly 13% of total content creation spend on unused or underused content. Today’s marketing teams are held increasingly responsible for quantifying their efforts and contribution to revenue, making it essential that marketers make the most of their budget and justify their expenditures. Naturally, then, content creation processes must be optimized for appropriate return on investment. Large enterprise firms are losing $2.3 million per year on wasted content. How can you ensure your company isn’t one of them?
There are three major actions companies can take to make the most of the money spent on content creation:
- Organize and centralize content
For marketing organizations in large enterprise firms, content abundance is likely an issue. When overwhelming amounts of content are housed in numerous disconnected repositories, the complexities introduced by having an abundance of content are exacerbated. Marketers risk duplicating existing content or producing off-brand, off-message or outdated content with inaccurate data. By having content in a consolidated and centralized repository, marketers can more easily manage existing content. They can also spend their time more efficiently by creating strategic and relevant new content or simply updating existing content.
- Serve content to sales reps contextually
Another challenge to overcome when trying to optimize content creation spend is ensuring that content is actually used by the sales organization. Research from SiriusDecisions shows that 65% of marketing content goes unused. Content produced by marketing should be relevant to the buyer, and should consider factors such as industry, role, stage in the buying process, and more. Having content tailored to specific buying situations will help sales reps increase win rates and can also shorten sales cycles, making it an invaluable resource that reps will definitely use. But content also needs to be findable by sales reps. Of the 65% of content that goes unused, 28% of it is unused because it is unfindable. Serving up content where sales reps spend the majority of their time, such as email or CRM, resolves this challenge by guaranteeing that reps have what they need when they need it, rather than requiring them to search for what they need.
- Employ content usage analytics
Not only should content be easily accessible for sales reps, but marketing should have some idea of how that content is being used by the sales organization. Content usage analytics give marketers visibility into which types of content are successful in certain selling situations and which are not. By understanding which types of content work the best, marketers learn more about what resonates with their target personas in different sales stages. This allows them to focus their efforts on creating only high-quality, relevant content. The right content analytics can make sales reps more effective in future conversations and allows marketers to remove content that is ineffective or no longer relevant.
In order to optimize their content creation budgets, marketers should ensure that their content is easy to find, high-quality, and relevant to target personas. Applying these three actions to your company’s content marketing efforts will ensure that marketing content is accessible and valuable to your sales reps, which can save your marketing organization millions of dollars each year.
